FicWad

Beyond Grave Peril
By Random Shinobi

Summary: An accident sends Harry Potter into another world and soon his talents are needed more than ever before. The question is not whether he can win, but can he survive? Insurmountable odds have never been this insurmountable for him. [HP/Dresden Files crossover. Not DH compliant. Starts before Grave Peril.]

Genre: Action/Adventure

Rating: R

Disclaimer: If you recognise it, then it might well belong to Ms. Rowling or Mr. Butcher. I only claim my OCs and plot.

Special thanks to snuggle the muggle for her help.

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Chapter Four: Past the Point of No Return



There was a brief feeling of nothingness before his feet hit the ground. The sudden feeling of vertigo had caught him unaware so he lost his balance when his feet struck against earth, his knees giving way under him, and collapsed on the bed of yellow flowers in full bloom, snapping fragile shafts and crushing delicate blossoms under his weight. A flowery smell filled his nose as he lay on the soft earth and he could hear the sounds of traffic and the faint whisper of thousands upon thousands of leaves shaking in the light spring breeze.


Harry quickly scampered back to his feet, absently dusting off his dirty robes, and took in his new surroundings, clutching the holly wand tightly in his hand in a preparation to ward off any possible enemies that might try to sneak up on him. Nobody seemed to be after his blood at the particular moment, though. All things considered, it was only moderately reassuring.


He was standing in the middle of another, very different, garden. The only other person nearby was an old man standing over ten yards from him. Their gazes met for a second and the young wizard could practically feel the other man's disapproval. Harry didn't know whether it was because of his unkempt appearance or the fact that he was standing on a bed of now-crushed flowers. The Potter scion flashed a wide smile at the older man, who then turned around, apparently not deeming a young ruffian in a weird costume worth his attention. Harry's overtly cheery fake-smile left his lips the moment the man turned his back at him and made way to a much more serious expression, his mouth compressing to a thin line.


Harry stood there for a long moment, the wet breeze fluttering his ripped and blood-stained robes, before he turned his attention away from the departing man. Unlike Chicago and the weird garden he had visited a few minutes earlier, it was relatively sunny here; meaning that he was probably on the other side of the globe again. At least that was good news, even if also somewhat disturbing. Also unlike the earlier place that looked like it had been patiently and lovingly tended for innumerable centuries, this one was much more haphazard and less lush, and that made Harry assume he was in some sort of a community garden. Somehow, the place even felt eerily familiar to him and he was almost sure he had been here before, but he just couldn't place it.


Of course, that might be just because he was currently far more concerned about 'why' and 'how' than 'where.' The white-haired witch had somehow Apparated him here...wherever this place was, after saying something about his needing to do something before he could start his...duties. Somehow Harry doubted he wanted anything to do with her, very pretty though she may be.


After walking around a little, Harry was stopped in his tracks, his gaze locking onto the small pond next to his feet. The young wizard stared stupefied at the glittering surface that rippled slightly in the cool breeze, startled to notice that he had no reflection. Apparently the mirrors in the pub hadn't been enchanted after all...


Harry cursed loudly and his fingers tightened almost painfully around the holly handle of his wand, a few angry red sparks escaping the tip. He could almost feel the headache coming. Nothing had made any sense after the incident with the Circle and he was growing highly irritated...and when he was irritated he tended to blow shit up. Trying to calm down, he started walking towards the nearest building hoping that it could offer more clues about his whereabouts. Then, as if on cue, he caught a glimpse of an old movie theatre through the thick plants. Something clicked in his mind and he recognized his surroundings: the Phoenix Garden – he was in London! He was straight next to St Giles Passage and Stacey Street, north of Shaftesbury Avenue and east of Charing Cross Road, where the Leaky Cauldron was located.


Happy that things seemed to finally be going well, Harry quickly re-applied the bunch of protective charms that he used to keep on himself, adding a weak Notice-Me-Not Charm to the mix to dissuade Muggles from paying any attention to his walking in wizarding robes in broad daylight, before striding towards the nearest exit. Casting the multitude of defensive spells on his person was his morning ritual, and something the vast majority of wizards and witches did during these dark and violent days under the constant threat of Death Eater attacks. Of course, his selection was a bit more comprehensive than most...


He walked out of the community garden into the crowded London streets, his pace quick but unhurried. It took him only a minute to reach the place where The Leaky Cauldron was located...or to be more exact, the place where it was supposed to be. But instead of facing the shoddy bar, Harry found himself looking at a small flower boutique.


Okay, Harry thought as his eyes scanned the shop's front. A small frown crossed his lips and he was seriously starting to get irritated. It's possible that they have just changed the entrance to the Diagon Alley... Don't worry, there must be a rational explanation to all this. Or at least he sincerely hoped so, because things were starting to look like an excerpt from a bad horror movie. You know, the moment when nothing seemed to make sense any more; just before the terrible secret was revealed to the main character and the zombie-apocalypse began...


He briefly visited the flower boutique to be absolutely sure that Tom hadn't just decided to...renovate the place while he was away. Unfortunately for Harry, he had no such luck; it really was just another Muggle shop. Luckily his magic hid him from the shop attendant as the young brunette woman looked far too upbeat and chirpy for him to handle at the moment without Transfiguring her into a poodle or something. The Notice-Me-Not Charm didn't really make him invisible, rather it made him so ordinary-looking that even the most searching gaze could slide right over him. To the vast majority of Muggles and even some weaker wizards and witches, he was literally beneath any conscious notice. After a minute of pondering his options, he exited the shop and jogged all the way to the nearest wizarding location he knew, the Ministry Headquarters.


It took him almost a quarter-hour to reach the place. Breathing heavily, he entered the lone phone booth, pressing the phone against his ear and entering the correct code that would let him inside. Seconds passed by and nothing happened. Harry stood there for a few minutes, before finally putting down the phone with an audible click.


Harry rummaged his pockets and found a few Muggle coins amidst the much larger amount of wizarding currency, which he then put into the machine. Then he slowly pushed the buttons in a different sequence, carefully entering the Grimmauld Place's phone number. Harry bit his lip as he waited, praying that someone would answer... Then he heard the click of a line opening and a raspy woman's voice spoke to his ear, "Elisabeth Boulton speaking."


What the fuck!? Harry thought, but his reply was a bit more polite, "Err... Are you a member of the Order of the Phoenix?"


"Um... no," the voice answered after a moment. "Who are you?"


Harry closed the phone and slumped against the wall. It seemed that he wasn't in his home after all... He was seriously starting to consider that the Circle incident had thrown him into another word, dimension or whatever they were called – Hermione could probably tell him the right word, but as she wasn't here, Harry wasn't very concerned about semantics. The idea of travelling into parallel worlds sounded stupid, but as wizards were able to travel in time too, it probably wasn't a too far fetched scenario. If it weren't for the fact that everything looked familiar, he might have thought that he was in the future or past. Still, he quickly checked the date from the nearby kiosk selling newspapers just to be absolutely sure. At least accordingly The Times, there hadn't been any temporal mishaps.


He walked all the way to the nearby Hyde park, his thoughts running a thousand miles per minute. When he eventually arrived in the large park, Harry sat down on the nearest free bench, wondering what the hell he could do now. For a moment he contemplated whether he should try to Apparate into Grimmauld Place, but eventually decided against it as trying to Apparate into a location that might not exist was highly suicidal. And even if it existed, he would probably not be keyed to the wards, making the attempt doubly ludicrous. Despite what others might think, he didn't actively seek death; it sought him. Thus far Harry had been winning their little competition, but death only had to win one round...


Then an idea came to him; if he couldn't find wizarding world, maybe it could find him. Standing up and pointing his holly wand at the nearest tree, Harry intoned the deadliest curse he knew, "Avada Kedavra." The muttered incantation was followed by the howl of an invisible wind and a faint flash of light, the twisting bolt of miasmic energy striking against the tree trunk and exploding into a small ball of sickly-green fire. The protective magic woven around the wizard diverted the shower of burning shrapnel, blasting them away from him with renewed speed.


Harry studied the small blackened spot that now marred the trunk, wisps of dark smoke curling upwards from it. When striking against a soulless tree the Unforgivable was unable to function properly and snuff all life out of the target, instead the spell simply bled out the tainted energy it contained in a rather unspectacular detonation. The scorch mark was smaller than his palm and quite pathetic as far as Killing Curses go – He could hardly muster much killing intent towards a tree, and so the spell wouldn't have caused more than a nose-bleed even if he had actually hit someone with it. Had the spell been at his full power, the lethal curse would have blown the old tree into smoking splinters. Now he would just have to wait for the cavalry to arrive. This was, of course, assuming that Auror Corps still existed.


Minutes passed by and nothing happened. Harry frowned, becoming more irked and unsure with each passing second; the normal Auror response time was about four minutes, and so they were either terribly slow today or...he really was in another world or something. Despite sounding highly improbable, it was the best shot he had, discounting the idea that he had simply gone mad. While he had never been any paragon of sanity, that did still sound a bit overt. Harry tried to remember if one of the Death Eaters had hit him with a some kind of Confusion Curse, but he couldn't recall any such occurrence. Which, on the other hand, didn't actually prove anything if he really was Confunded...


Even more minutes ticked by, and the young wizard decided that, due some malfunction in the Ministry's detection spells, the Unforgivable could have just been undetected. He lifted his wand again, re-casting the deadly spell. The flash of sickly green was quickly followed by an invisible Imperio and the faint red jet of a Cruciatus Curse.


The instant the third curse left his wand, Harry knew he had made a mistake in casting so many seriously Dark spells in a rapid sequence. Sweet torrents of black magic surged in his veins, bringing pleasurable sensations and clouding his mind in an euphoric haze. His eyes closed and he inhaled loudly, his mouth opening. Casting Dark magic had felt nice even before this, but now it seemed like he had crossed some invisible boundary and the Siren's song of the Dark Arts beckoned Harry like never before. He had to fight the sudden urge to cast even more Dark magic just to feel the exhilarating rush of sweet power again, and for a moment his heart pounded wildly against his ribcage and he trembled like a drug-addict in a dire need of another fix, but the raw, magic-induced need passed quickly, leaving behind only a distant feel of longing. Harry reopened his eyes to see people quickly leaving the area of the park where he was, leaving him alone in his thoughts. While his magic kept the Muggles from really noticing him or paying any attention to what he was doing, they still could sense the aura of utter wrongness in the Dark Arts he had just unleashed, and unconsciously fled from it.


It was an interesting phenomenon that Dark magic always felt wrong to anyone else but the caster...and almost paradoxically, Muggles seemed to feel the effect even more clearly than wizards. In fact, there were many Muggle-deterrent wards that worked by saturating the boundary with Dark magic. While the profane energy did keep Muggles and non-magical animals away, it tended to have rather bad side-effects on nearby flora, fauna and those unlucky enough to actually come into contact with the boundary.


Then, without any warning, Harry felt a foreign pressure envelope him as an invisible hand lifted him into the air, his feet dangling over a yard from the ground. Wind was forced out of his lungs in a rattling hiss as the spell tightened around him, totally immobilising him with its almost painful embrace. The crushing pressure was quickly followed by another sensation: a cold tickle spreading all over him. He shuddered as coldness and numbness seeped into him and, in seconds, the invisible force that held him vanished and Harry landed into a low crouch.


"I applaud you, warlock," said a feminine voice behind him and Harry quickly spun on his heels to face the speaker, his tattered robes swirling at the sharp movement and his wand rising to deflect whatever spells she would throw at him next. About fifteen yards from him stood a dark-haired woman of average height, her long grey cloak fluttering in a sudden gust that washed over the park and sent thrash, fine dust and fallen leaves flying. Harry's attention was immediately drawn by the three foot-long, thin-bladed sword in her hand that shone with soft azure light. He could see air warping around the sword, distorting and bending the blue light it emanated so that the blade seemed to burn with gaseous flames.


"You managed to corrupt my spell without any incantation or apparent magical foci," the woman continued, lowering her glowing blade so that the tip touched the ground and sunk into it with a sharp hiss. "And you did it fast. Not many are capable of doing it even half as quickly as you did."


While the achromatic cloak concealed most of her physique, he could tell that she was lithe and athletic. Most of her hair was tied into a neat braid, with a few raven locks left hanging on the sides of her face, framing it nicely. Her face had an ageless quality that made discerning her actual age very hard. Harry guessed that she was thirty-something, but she could easily be a decade older or younger.


"I'm assuming you are not an Auror?" Harry said after a moment, training his wand at her, the eleven inches of holly still smoking faintly after the Unforgivables. "Looking at how things have been going lately, that would be far too much to hope for..."


"You are right, warlock. I do not know these Aurors you speak of," said the woman evenly, her tone perfectly neutral despite the fact that she was obviously quite hostile towards him. "I'm a Warden of the White Council."


Harry tilted his head lightly, his eyes narrowing. He had no idea what this White Council was, nor did he really even care. "If you are not from the law-enforcement office, then why did you attack me?"


"Child, I just told you I'm a Warden," she said patiently, as if she was talking to a little boy. "I am a law-enforcer. And for why I'm here, I sensed the black magic you unleashed and came to investigate. Now, may I ask for your reason for doing so?"


Harry almost snarled, a few bright red sparks escaping the wand tip and spewing towards the ground; he didn't like the witch's condescending tone at all, and thus his reply was not perhaps the most thought out: "Why should I tell you anything? This day is already fucked up enough without you adding to it."


The grey-cloaked woman looked at him for a moment before speaking, her brown eyes hardening, "Then I will take you in by force, warlock."


He couldn't help it, a small laughter escaped his lips. It started as almost inaudible snorts but quickly acquired nearly maniacal quality. "Does everyone want to fight me today?" Harry said after the laughter had subsided. He lifted his left hand, showing his palm at her. "No, don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question."


The witch and wizard faced each other, standing on the opposite sides of the clearing, the gentle breeze billowing their clothes and hair. Harry's expression betrayed his anger and frustration, while the grey-cloaked woman's face was serene – a fact that annoyed the young wizard even more.


Then the witch moved, her sword cutting through the air in a wide arc. The air hissed, whistled, twisted and rippled in front of her, forming into a dozen razor-sharp blasts of wind. A casual twist of Harry's wrist moved his wand in a well-practised motion, magic pouring out of the tip and calling forth a shimmering, silvery barrier to intercept the wind blades that struck against it with tremendous force. The wand trembled in his hand with each jarring hit, ripples travelling along the gleaming shield, and for a short horrifying moment Harry thought that his hastily-created Protego couldn't hold under the pressure.


Luckily the low-level shield resisted and a few of the almost invisible blades were rebounded back at their caster, the rest of them slashing against his surroundings. The violent winds howled in his ears for a second that seemed last for an eternity, and the large bench next to him was ripped apart in a series of loud crunches and cracks, filling the air with sawdust and tiny shards of wood. Harry could actually feel the earth shaking as the nearly-invisible blades tore into it, gouging deep gashes as they went by him, and kicked up bucket-loads of soil and small stones. Many trees were cut into pieces, causing them to collapse around Harry in tall heaps, his shimmering shield diverting any branches that would have otherwise struck against him.


The woman's eyes widened in surprise as her own magic was partially turned against her, but she recovered with the speed of a seasoned veteran, one of her hands leaving the shaft of the glowing blade. She made a sharp, agitated gesture with her free hand, whispering something that Harry couldn't quite hear, and the cutting winds dissipated into harmless puffs of air that only succeeded in billowing her grey cloak.


Harry wasn't too fazed by the show of wandless magic; while it was not a very common skill – especially at the level of proficiency she was displaying, he had seen it done before, and so he pressed on, his wand moving in a blur. She had thrown lethal magic at him, and so he returned in kind, and a second later the woman was forced to dodge as a twisting bolt of ruby-red light buzzed past her ear like an angry wasp. The young wizard watched in growing annoyance as the witch moved with sinuous grace, avoiding his furious barrage of curses, hexes and charms, sometimes by mere inches. Occasionally she stopped to cut an incoming spell apart with her sword, reducing the deadly sculptures of magic to harmless pyrotechnic shows.


Harry decided he needed something stronger, something she couldn't just dodge or cut up with her glowing blade. "Infurnacio!" the young wizard intoned harshly and his hand bucked as a huge torrent of swirling flames burst forward from his wand tip, the Wellspring's searing power turning the modest fire-spell into a bus-sized inferno that travelled the distance between the two combatants in a split second. Then the low roar of flames was was drowned by a howling wind storm, a freaking cyclone forming around the witch and blasting his fire back at him, fanning the swirling flames into a huge wall, almost as tall as the trees around him. A heartbeat later the veritable tsunami of fire came crashing down on him, but not before a quick Flame Freezing Charm robbed the blazing conflagration of all of its searing heat.


The woman, who was currently standing in a bad-ass crater carved by her own spell and surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust, stared in evident surprise as the flames washed over Harry and the tall trees behind him without burning them to cinders. "Illusionary? But I felt the heat..." she murmured to herself in apparent confusion, and was almost caught by surprise when Harry didn't subscribe to any momentary cease fire and promptly sent an amethyst Defodio at her, followed by a score of other equally lethal curses.


The volley of spells detonated with loud bangs against the witch's olive green shield that sprung into existence just in time to intercept the barrage. Harry raised his eyebrow while his wand continued to spit almost continuous stream of spellfire at the witch; he had never seen a shield with such a colour before. The protective screen seemed to work by not absorbing or deflecting the hostile magic as most shields did, but by breaking the offending spell's structure, causing the blazing curses to detonate into multicoloured sparks of leftover magic. It was an interesting approach to an ages-old problem, but the young wizard didn't have the time to contemplate it any further as he was forced to dodge into his right, a single blade of wind zooming past him, less than an inch from nicking his triceps.


The attack was quickly followed by nearly a dozen others of its kind in blindingly rapid succession; far faster than Harry could clap his hands. The young wizard cursed loudly – the woman was apparently able to cast spells through her own shield and that made things a lot harder. A flick of Harry's wand batted away the nearest few wind blades rushing at him, scattering them into random directions, and he jumped over two more, a piercing whistle filling his ear as the final one of the barrage gashed a thin red line across his cheek, cutting a few errant strands of his messy black hair as it went by and almost taking a piece of his ear.


"Fusillade," Harry hissed angrily while slashing his wand vertically in a wide arc, fire blossoming at the tip, and suddenly the air between the two combatants was filled with a volley of fiery orange-red streaks. The salvo of pyroprojectiles – supercharged with fiery power burning within him – hammered against the witch's green shield with weird hissing-whistles, bursting into large blasts of swirling fire at the contact, and for a moment it looked like she was bathed in bright flames...which really wasn't too far from the mark. It didn't matter too much if the actual spells couldn't get through the shield when heat and a few random tongues of fire could...


The woman screamed in pain as the air around her superheated and magical flames licked her cloaked form. Harry's moment of victory was, however, interrupted violently as he suddenly found himself hurled backwards through the air, picked up by a fierce and very localised gale that was probably strong enough to rip smaller trees from the ground. He was thrown over ten yards back, smashing against the ground with a dull thud and then rolling a few yards more until his momentum was finally killed by a tree standing in his way. Something broke, and it wasn't the almost two-foot-wide tree trunk.


Harry lay on the soft carpet of grass, his world spinning. The Potter scion groaned softly, tasting the coppery tang of blood on his lips, and blinked furiously to clear his blurry vision. He felt decidedly sick, a steady flow of warm blood trickling from his mauled nose, and if it weren't for the specialised Cushioning Charm, he was sure he would be dead, his head cracked against a bloody tree. Even now he got his nose broken and the makings of a terrible headache. Bringing his wand tip near his injured nose, he hissed through clenched teeth, "Episkey." There was a faint flash of blue light and Harry yelled out in pain as the healing magic forcibly straightened his broken nose and then mended the ruptured cartilage and broken skin. His face no longer looked like it had been hacked with a mallet, instead he looked like someone had just run over him – repeatedly.


Harry stood up, ignoring the feeling of weakness and nausea as well as the legs shaking under him, and faced the witch again. She was literally smouldering, wisps of dark smoke surrounding her. The grey cloak she wore sported many smoking burns and her skin was red and partially blistered. Her magical sword was no longer glowing and he could see tears of pain streaking her scalded cheeks. She was trembling heavily and looked like she could collapse at any moment now. The witch actually appeared even worse than he felt and Harry was strangely satisfied by the fact.


He pointed his shaking wand at the sword-wielding woman, yelling the first incantation that came to his mind, "Stupefy!" She dodged even though his aim was seriously off and the blazing red bolt would have missed its target by many feet even if she had stayed perfectly still. The sharp movement, however, lost the witch her balance and sent her staggering around. Her movements were jerky and sluggish – a far cry from her earlier fluid grace.


Then the silvery sword fell from her suddenly limp fingers, clattering against the scorched earth, and her body followed a second later, hitting the ground in an unmoving heap. Harry blinked owlishly, his abrupt victory stunning him.


Suddenly a wave of dizziness washed over him and he threw up, the churning feeling twisting his stomach finally reaching its peak. Blood and bile mixed into one nauseating puddle on the green carpet of grass as he fell on his knees and emptied his stomach to the ground. The taste that filled his mouth was acidic and utterly disgusting, almost enough to make him throw up again.


He just knelt there for a moment, using his hand to keep him stable until the dizzy spell passed. A few scarlet drops of warm blood fell down his gashed cheek and then joined the stinking pool on the ground. Just as he was about to stand up, Harry witnessed a weird phenomenon: the puddle of bile was slowly losing its colour and texture, becoming more and more transparent and uniform until it was all gelatinous goo.


"What the bloody hell..." he muttered slowly to no-one in particular, his green eyes widening. There was something very weird happening here, and Harry wasn't sure if he really wanted to know exactly what – it was almost bound to be something exceedingly bad. First the mirrors and now this...


Harry straightened up and looked quickly around, feeling somewhat nervous and apprehensive as he witnessed the widespread destruction the brief wizarding battle had brought. There was no way that two sorcerers could demolish an acre of public park in the middle of a bright day without being noticed, and so he thought it might be in order to get his ass out of there and fast. He didn't really fancy spending rest of the evening in a Muggle jail. Of course, the police couldn't stick any charges on him... No Muggle judge would ever believe he levelled a small forest's worth of trees or burned a woman using only a short wooden stick.


Paying one last glance to the unconscious witch sprawled on the scorched ground, he ran away, dashing through the crowded London streets, people instinctively giving him the way. He didn't have any particular direction in his mind. There were many wizarding places located in London he hadn't checked yet, but as he had never visited them through Muggle methods, he didn't have the faintest idea of where they were physically located.


Eventually he just stopped running and walked into some random alleyway. Harry sat down and slumped against the pleasantly cool brick wall. The young wizard knew he was screwed. If he really was in another world as it seemed, then the grey-cloaked witch had to be an Auror-equivalent of this reality, and that meant he was a hunted fugitive now. And considering what the American wizard had said about a Memory Charm carrying the death penalty, he didn't even want to know what they did to those who smacked up one of their own. Harry didn't expect they would show any shred of mercy if they ever caught him...


He didn't really have too many options left. Harry was in a desperate need of knowledge and that white-haired witch, Aurora, was the only magical person he knew here that wasn't instantly hostile towards him – In fact, she was a bit too friendly... But on the other hand, her habit of casually violating his personal space, was absolutely nothing compared to some of the more rabid fangirls he had met.


Harry sighed loudly and stood up. He applied a bunch of healing and cleaning charms on his mauled face, the bleeding gashes and dark-purple bruises vanishing in seconds. A few other spells temporarily repaired his dark robes and washed away the sweat, dirt and blood, making him smell like wild flowers. It had taken him only a few flicks of a wand to make himself somewhat presentable, although he might have preferred a bit more manly scent... While the six years of Hogwarts' education didn't really help much in his fights, it sure came handy in other situations.


His last attempt at Apparating had been far less than a stellar success, but Harry had no idea if it was just a singular incident, or did it signify something deeper, like that Apparation simply didn't work properly here. He was not that well versed in magical theory and he had no idea what – aside specific wards created just for that purpose – could hinder Apparation. Deciding to take a calculated risk, he gathered his will and pictured the lush garden he had visited not a hour earlier. The young wizard twisted on the spot and vanished with a sharp pop.


*


She lay in her luxurious bed, her blonde hair sprawled on the soft, pink pillow. She grimaced as she watched her burned hands. All of her hard work had been wasted. The demon of the Outer Night had escaped the circle so easily she could hardly believe it. Red-Moon-Stalker had proved to be much more powerful than she had anticipated.


Suddenly the room went dark and she could feel cold seeping through the thin silken covers, her breath fogging and the glass of mineral water on the bedside table freezing in seconds. Magic, her mind screamed in alarm. Someone was using magic in her home, somehow penetrating the Threshold and her many wards. Worst of all, she couldn't even feel the magical power being thrown around.


"The Outsider," she exclaimed fearfully as the terrible realisation dawned at her, the woman's voice barely above whisper.


Someone chuckled faintly behind her, the sinister high-pitched sound sending cold shivers all over her body. She spun around, throwing the silky covers to the floor, and her hand rose, red power cackling at her fingertips. A vaguely humanoid shape, seemingly formed of liquid shadows, hovered in the air next to her large bed, its vaporous form in constant flux. Despite the otherworldly demon's terrible eyes that shone with malicious inner power, shining like hot coals in the twilight of her bedroom, she didn't hesitate a split second.


There was a brilliant flash of piercing light and her vision went white for a second, the blazing threads of red lightning leaving her hand and tearing the opposing wall apart in a thunderous explosion of sulphurous fire and burning shrapnel. The shadowy apparition moved with speed and fluidity far surpassing that of any corporeal being, easily gliding away from the jagged strands of scarlet lightning, the smouldering pieces of wood and concrete tearing through its smoky body seemingly without harming it.


Before she could recover from her foci- and incantationless magic use, one nebulous hand struck like a snake and sunk into her chest, ethereal fingers tightening around her heart, and for a moment it felt like blood had suddenly frozen in her veins. For the first few seconds she experienced agony like no other, her pained screams echoing through the whole apartment building, but then her mind went mercifully blank. She collapsed and her scantily-clad body fell to the floor with a dull thud, threads of dark shadows curling around her as they slowly entered her through every orifice.


In seconds it was over and the woman re-opened her eyes. They were no longer the cool bluish-grey domes they had been, but burning pools of blood-red with snake-like slits for pupils.


"Potter," she hissed sibilantly, the sound plainly unnatural from coming from human lips. "I will see you dead."


*


There was a brief sensation of intense pressure and he felt something part before him, before he re-appeared with a sharp, whip-like crack, hundreds of golden sparks dancing madly around him. Harry quickly checked that he still retained all his body-parts, and almost sighed in relief as he realised the Apparation had been fully successful even if it had felt significantly different than usual and had new light-effects.


"Returning already?" a musical voice commented from Harry's left before he had time to survey his new surroundings. "I didn't think you would have finalized your personal business quite this soon – whatever it was." She smiled radiantly at him as she stood up from the beautifully carved bench of some dark wood she had been sitting on. The young woman had discarded the white body-armour she wore when he had seen her the first time, instead she had on a gown of flowing yellow silk, laced through with veins of white and gold, a belt made from a twisted braid of silken threads of emerald and bronze circling her slim waist. "Nevertheless, I'm glad."


Harry couldn't help but smile back at her even though he wasn't exactly sure why he did so. "I'm happy that you are happy, Aurora, but I have been wondering if you could answer a few questions for me?"


"Oh," she exclaimed softly and tilted her head slightly, brushing a few curly locks white hair from her pretty face. "Feel free to ask anything, Lord Potter. I will not promise I will answer, though."


Harry didn't waste any time – he seriously needed the answers she could provide. He had to know if his suspicions were true or just a ridiculous theory. "Have you ever heard of Aurors or Voldemort?"


She lifted one perfect eyebrow at his question, but seemed to ponder it for a moment anyway, licking her full lips. "I have never heard of Aurors, but 'voldemort' is French for 'flight of death.'"


"Eh... It is?" Harry exclaimed, not really caring the entomology of the snake bastard's fake name. Besides, he was rather preoccupied by the other implications of her words; assuming the witch wasn't a total recluse, she would have heard of the Dark Lord if he existed, implying that his outrageous hypothesis could be true... "I didn't know that."


Aurora walked closer to him and offered her slender arm, which the young wizard took after a second of hesitation. Perhaps he was just getting paranoid, but tying his wand arm with hers didn't sound like the best idea as he had been attacked in this very garden just a hour before... Then she almost dragged him into the maze of pathways, the pair walking in silence until she spoke, "I take it you have never studied languages?"


"Well, yeah," Harry agreed and quickly glanced at the beautiful woman walking beside him, decidedly aware how her hip and shoulder sometimes pressed against him. "Never had the time or indication. I can speak some Latin, though, but it's not like I have ever systematically studied it." He didn't think it would be a very good idea to mention anything about Parseltongue as he had no idea of what kind of reputation the ability had here.


"By the way, what is the White Council?" Harry knew it was an abrupt change of direction, but he didn't really care. It was not like he could say much about the subject of languages anyway; it certainly wasn't his area of expertise.


"They are currently the strongest faction of human wizards in existence," she told him after a second. "It's not too surprising that an Outsider such as yourself is not aware of them as they have been here barely over a millennia."


Harry was silent for a moment. There it was, the final proof: He was fairly certain that no White Council existed in his world. If these guys really ran around killing people for merely Obliviating too curious Muggles, they would be rather hard to miss – with such a level of fanaticism and insanity they couldn't be anything but public knowledge. Besides, now when he thought about it, the magicians he had seen here wielded their power quite differently than he did – they didn't even seem to use wands! "I see... And Wardens are their enforcers?"


"Yes," Aurora answered promptly, confirming Harry's suspicions, before she turned her inquisitive gaze from a small crystal-clear pond with a score of blooming water lilies at him. "Did you already meet one?"


Harry sighed tiredly, closing his eyes for a second. "Yeah... One of them is going to take a prolonged sick-leave."


"Ah... I understand," she said evenly and Harry was relieved to hear no outrage in her voice. In fact, he somehow got an inkling that she was actually very pleased that he kicked the Warden's athletic ass, which, on the other hand, was pretty disturbing. "I feel I should warn you, though; they will endeavour to hunt you down and execute you for what you did...and are. They can be unbearably zealous and self-righteous sometimes."


Harry grimaced. "Yeah... I thought they might try to do that. I will just have to keep my distance."


"You should not underestimate them. Their mastery over the unseen forces is impressive; avoiding them could be far harder than what you might think. Unless..."


"Unless what?"


She abruptly stopped walking, forcing Harry to halt mid-step, and turned to face him, her green cat-like eyes burrowing into him. It was the first time he truly noticed her vertically slitted pupils, briefly wondering what kind of creatures the witch had in her lineage. "Unless you align yourself with another powerful faction."


Harry just looked at her, cocking his head slightly. He assuming that she was about to propose something and he wasn't disappointed; there was a moment of silence, before the white-haired woman spoke again, "Lord Potter, I have a deal for you. If you fulfil your obligation to me and pay your debts in full, I will grant you the protection of Summer and give you free lodging and upkeep for as long as you serve me. To sweeten the deal a bit, I will also grant you access to the Summer Wellspring. What say you?"


The young wizard blinked in surprise. Her offer was unexpected, but not really unwelcome as he would need means to sustain himself as he searched for a way to return back to his home dimension; while he didn't have much he would really miss about his home, he couldn't leave his friends fight Voldemort alone. Besides, if she could really keep those crazy White Council wizards from coming after him like the Spanish inquisition, it would make things much easier...


Despite everything, he was about to decline the offer as he didn't know anything of this 'Summer' or her intentions. He had already rushed heedlessly into danger far too many times, and he didn't really fancy any repeat performances – people close to him tended to die in those. Worse, they usually died for nothing, just like Sirius. However as he refocused back on the woman, Harry could see the hopeful expression on her face. He froze.


Harry had never been one to deny his help from people in need, and the fact that she was stunningly gorgeous and currently clinging to his arm didn't make things any easier. Of course, the rational part of his brains said that her unearthly beauty was just a reason more to decline her offer. Somehow, he never got around doing it.


"I... I agree, Aurora," he mumbled out, the fateful words leaving his mouth without consulting his brains. Once again, the young wizard felt the foreign power move inside him. But unlike last time, the feeling was more like a gentle warmth surging through him in spiralling paths rather than a sharp burning jolt twisting his innards. The Summer's fiery power seemed to...align with his own magic. Sure, it had bent to his will before, allowing him to throw high-powered spells left and right despite that he was supposed to be out of magical juice, but now it almost felt his. Harry almost shuddered as he thought the sheer amount of raw power he would wield once his magic fully returned to him in a day or two...


A brilliant smile came to the Summer Lady's face and she leaned towards him, drawing Harry from his thoughts. "Very well, my Emissary," Aurora whispered to his ear, her warm breath tickling his ear and sending cold shivers down his spine. "Your first task is to bring me the famed Arthame, the enchanted ritual dagger that once belonged to the human Sorcerer-King Solomon."


Only a few seconds after the deal, Harry was already having a bad feeling about it.