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The next morning Harry woke up, went through his normal routine, made a brief stop in the kitchens and then joined Ororo in her Arboretum as usual. Harry found Ororo there already, moving about and watering her plants in her own fashion by conjuring up a small localized shower above both her and the plants in question. Hedwig was perched on a tree that had obviously already been watered, but for once Harry had no desire to look at his familiar, his eyes were glued to Ororo's body.
Ororo turned to him, smiling a little. She knew that this was one of those instances where Harry could not get past the fact that she was nude. He seemed to be fascinated by the movement of the water down her body. She waved her hand and the small storm cloud dissipated quickly. "Hello Harry, did you sleep well?"
Harry coughed a little, broken out of his reverie by that question, but it had some unfortunately brought to mind the fact that he had some rather erotic dreams last night. And for the first time since meeting her Ororo hadn't been the only star in them. "Er, I slept well, how about you?"
"Very well," said Ororo moving up to him and kissing him leisurely on the lips. His arms went around her, but she was pleased that he kept them in the safe zone on long her back rather than lower down. After a second she pulled back and grabbed his hand pulling him over to the loveseat.
Harry moved to the tea set and began to make the two of them some tea to go with the biscuits he had brought in as she sat down at one end of the love seat. While he worked on the tea she looked at him thoughtfully for a few seconds then spoke up, her voice soft, whimsical yet at the same time somehow serious. "You remember how I told you how I spent my teenage years on the Serengeti plains?"
Harry nodded looking over at her quizzically wondering where she was going with this as well as the odd tone of voice.
"I was always fascinated with lions, with the pride, one male and multiple females with all of them contributing to the whole." Harry kept looking at her blankly, wondering where she was going with this.
"I love you, you know?" she said looking at him, a calm smile on her face. "It took me a while to really realize how much I had come to care for you, but I also have come to care about Jean." Harry flinched guiltily looking away and Ororo chuckled.
There was a long pause before Storm's voice continued."And I think she cares about you too."
"Ororo, luv," Harry said calmly setting the tea set down. "Where are you going with this?"
"I wish to say that I am not adverse to sharing Harry," she said reaching out and taking one of his hands, her smile noticeably wider than it had been, and rather crooked too. "I can see how you look at her sometimes, and I've seen her look at you as well. I waited so long to bring it up because I wanted to make certain that I knew what her feelings really were, but now I am, and I would like us to include her in our relationship. I think we three would be very, very good for one another."
Harry looked at her head cocked to one side. "I won't deny that this is, you know, the ultimate male fantasy or anything, because I'd be a liar if I did. Nor will I try to defend the fact that I've… developed feelings for Jean. But are you certain that you'd be happy with this? I mean, I love you too, and I don't want to screw that up." He shook his head. "You're the second person I've said that to, you know, I never even said it to my godfather."
"Hermione?" asked Ororo softly not letting go of his hand.
Harry nodded. "I wanted to wait to say it to you, mainly because I wanted to make certain what I felt for you not just lust or anything like that. And I do love you, there's something in you that even… that even Hermione at her best didn't possess, a willingness to challenge the world, to face any challenges on your own two feet. But you won't have to face anything alone any longer; I'll stand with you, whatever you do! You and Jean share that kind of mentality, it's part of what attracts me to both of you. If you really are happy with that idea… well, I won't push anything but if something happens I'll be happy."
Ororo smiled, nodded and very firmly grabbed him by his hair and pulled him into a kiss. The kiss lasted for several minutes, and when she let him go his emerald eyes were glassy. "Something will happen, I won't force anything either but as I said I think the three of us could be very happy together."
Harry nodded almost robotically still a little shell-shocked by her kiss and turned away to finish pouring the tea. She giggled at his reaction, always amused by the fact that her kisses could do that to him when her sitting here naked only made her him raise an eyebrow these days when she wasn't consciously aware of it or as Harry put it, naked rather than undressed.
Time enough later to think of for bringing in Emma, after all I'm not certain at all about her thoughts. Silly Harry she chuckled a little. How could we not have fallen for him after all that has happened, after we have seen the kind of man he is? Hah, he never even noticed that Kitty was also giving him looks at first. Harry turned to look at her having heard her chuckle and she shook her head. It wouldn't do to have Harry realize what a magnificent catch he was after all.
Later that day at breakfast with the kids Harry announced that he was going to go away for the day.
"Are you going anywhere where you would require some help?" asked Ororo looking at him calmly. "You know what happened the last time you went off on your own."
Harry shrugged. "Not to sound mysterious or anything but where I'm going you can't follow." She looked at him, one white eyebrow raised and he chuckled. "Its got non-magical repelling wards on it love, powerful ones."
Jean's eyebrows rose and she smiled happily at hearing the emphasis on that last word that wouldn't normally be there when Harry used the slang 'luv', quickly discerning that something had happened between her two friends, and stamping hard on the initial rush of jealousy that filled her at the idea. She was the only one who noticed however.
Harry went on, "It's just a sort of journey of self-discovery really. I won't tell you more until I figure out what's actually there to be found, I don't want to get your hopes up, or look like an idiot later. But hopefully I'll come back with some more resources at the very least."
"Why do I get the impression I really don't want you out of my sight today?" said Ororo looking at him. Jean chuckled from where she was sitting next to her friend, and the other teens followed suit.
Scott asked "Will you be back in time for tonight's team exercise sir?"
"I should, if not…" Harry paused and looked at the glasses wearing teen thoughtfully. "If not I think you should lead it Scott."
Scott looked up at him, clearly startled, and then around the others. Evan and Kurt both gave him thumbs up, while Rogue merely nodded and Kitty smiled. Jean looked a little thoughtful but after a moment she nodded too.
Xavier looked over at Harry, and Harry nodded firmly, which caused the older man to smile faintly and speak to the table. "Scott, I believe your probation is over. Speaking for myself I am extremely proud of the way you have handled your demotion, and the way that you have turned it into a learning experience."
"You've gotten a lot better at listening to others, you don't jump to conclusions any longer, you're more empathic, and you are personally much more flexible," said Harry ticking off points on his fingers. "Demoting you from leadership seems to have taught you all the aspects of leadership that you hadn't had before. And I don't have to tell you that your work ethic since I met you has been impeccable. All in favor of reinstating Scott as team lead raise your hands?"
All the teens raised their hands even Jean while Ororo merely smiled and nodded while Logan grunted and raised his drink. He'd been a little irritated lately, since he had seen some news from Canada that made him think Sabertooth had survived somehow. Harry had no idea what happened to the bastard, he sure as hell wasn't anywhere aboard his asteroid anymore, and had disappeared before Harry began his reconstruction project. The best either could come up with was there had been an escape craft somewhere and Creed had used it sometime during the final phase of Harry's fight with Magneto.
Scott blushed a little at this show of praise, but nodded firmly. "I won't let you down Sirs. He looked over at his team. "And I'll try not to backslide or anything, I'll do my best, not just as your leader, but as your friend, and, um someone who cares about you all." He blushed a little at that, and Kurt and Evan slapped him on the shoulder eager to get past the sappy moment.
"That's all anyone can ask," said Jean nodding. She looked over at Rogue who was looking back at her and Jean sent out a little feeler thought to the southern belle. Don't worry, I'm still planning to leave, regardless of how well he does or anything else. If you want him, go for him.
Rogue frowned for a moment then nodded, not responding mentally just looking away after that. Charles however had caught a bit of Jean's telepathic message and frowned, wondering what Jean was talking about and determined to ask her later.
Harry stood up grabbing a piece of bacon which he swiftly fed to Hedwig who was suddenly on his shoulder, appearing as if from nowhere. "And with that troops I'm off." He disappeared with a soft clap, and reappeared up in his asteroid to spend a few hours with Melody before getting down to business.
OOOOOOO
At the same time that Harry disappeared from the mansion a blind middle aged woman and a young lady who she had befriended near the start of her journey in Seattle were getting back on their bus after having their passports checked at the border between Canada and Washington. "There we go Iris," the young woman said, helping her friend into her seat. "No muss, no fuss right?" "Indeed Rachel," the older woman, named Iris for now, responded, "If only all government offices ran as smoothly as that."
The so-named Rachel smiled back. "I think that has more to do with my winning ways than anything else." She stood up again, joining a slightly obese man dressed in a hideous t-shirt who was exiting the bus. "I'll be right back, I just need to use the ladies room." Iris nodded and leaned her head back wearily, letting the noise of the slowly filling bus lull her for a moment.
The first the two watchers knew of their danger was when during a lull in the line of people entering and exiting the bathroom, a rather heavyset arm went around one of their necks. The arm began to drag the rather thin, almost emaciated woman back behind the ladies room from her position at its corner, where she had just seen the same woman enter the bathroom with her target. A quick wrench and the thin woman walked around the corner again, heading toward her partner.
Her partner was a man leaning against a parked truck in the parking lot, his eye locked on the tourist bus stopped in the light of the checkpoint.
The emaciated woman walked toward him and he looked at her for a moment then away, frowning a little. He waited until the woman was leaning against the truck beside him, reaching inside her purse for a pack of cigarettes, then spoke as she pulled one out and stuck it in her mouth. "What's up, you know we're not supposed to meet while the targets still around."
The woman didn't answer immediately, instead reaching inside her pocket for something, but instead of a lighter she pulled out something small and black, pressing it swiftly into his side. A brief jolt of electricity went through the man and he twitched, then leaned sideways against her shoulder.
The woman rolled her eyes as if amused by something her boyfriend/lover whispered into her ear, and with one hand behind him, led the way around behind the truck to the far side, where there was no one to see them. Once there she pulled a thin roll of wire out and bound his arms behind his back, then searched him from head to toe, coming up with a distinct lack of papers.
The man began to come to, but found himself staring at a knife directly between his eyes. "Now," the woman murmured, "You're going to tell me everything I want to know, starting with, who you work for, and why you were sent here?" The look in the thin woman's eyes changed just a bit, and the man gulped, then began to talk rapidly. It turned out to be a mixed bag of good and bad. He didn't know who he was working for, but he hadn't been sent here specifically, he was part of a large team assigned to watch the four border crossings between Washington and Canada. They hadn't known which to watch out for, but they had a description of one of their targets and used that.
After about thirty minutes questioning the thin woman put the knife away giving the man hope that she would let him go. This hope ended when she swiftly reached out with both hands and snapped his neck with far more strength than her body suggested she should have. After that she moved his body into the woods behind the truck a ways, and then left some little surprises on it for anyone who found him. Not nice, but it would further muddy the issue.
She then walked out from behind the truck, ostentatiously fixing her ruffle clothing and ignoring the various looks she was getting as she walked across the parking lot and into the ladies room. A moment later Rachel walked out and swiftly joined her friend Iris on the bus again.
"Yes indeed," Mystique muttered as she sat down next to Irene, already planning how to change her friend's appearance even further and disappear even more, "No muss, no fuss."
OOOOOOO
Rather than play skipping stone again Harry maneuvered the asteroid over England and then sent Hedwig down to scout out the area. As a familiar she was immune to all of the wards in the area around Hogwarts that were intended to keep wild animals away, and she had a very odd ability to find the outer edge of wards that he didn't quite understand, but that ability would allow her to find a place where he could apparate in and then walk towards the school.
It took her several hours to get there from her starting point in Switzerland, but she finally teleported back to him, and when she did she had a place to go. Surprisingly Harry recognized it, though it did look very different without the cobwebs and with sunlight streaming through the branches.
A moment later the two of them appeared in what had been the center of the acromantula's domain, right in front of the tree that the giant spider Aragog had made his home in. Harry looked around quickly, but didn't see any sign of anything dangerous, animal or human. "Nice spot Hedwig," he murmured, "I guess whatever happened to wizard-kind here happened well before Hagrid's time, I can't imagine a universe where he didn't have that odd sense of his about what was dangerous and what wasn't."
Hagrid had introduced him to Aragog and the giant spider's chosen successor during his third year since Harry had shown a distinct touch with animals in his course. Needless to say that had shattered whatever trust Harry had in his giant friend's common sense.
His familiar nibbled at his ear for a moment, her amusement coming clearly over their link. After a moment however she flew off, determined to search for something small and squeaky while her human did his human stuff.
"Well someone has her priorities straight," Harry chuckled, then oriented himself and moved towards the castle. Almost immediately he felt the outer anti-muggle ward wash over him, but as he wasn't a muggle it didn't affect him. Nor did the next three wards, since A, knew that the school was there, B, had a strong enough will to not turn away from the aversion ward, and C didn't have any dark artifacts on him for the third ward to recognize.
Harry broke out of the woods and onto the grounds around the Castle after about thirty minutes of walking later, and he took a moment to stare at it in wonder again. For some reason when he saw Hogwarts like this, with the lake to one side and the forest at his back he could only remember the good times in the castle, not the bad. Looked at objectively the bad had really rather overwhelmed the good, despite his friends and of course Hermione but because of them he'd had so many good moments in the Castle he couldn't bring himself to have negative thoughts about it. The people who had lived in it of course were another matter.
He briefly entertained the notion of going in and using the headmaster's quarters as a pranks workshop, but realized that would be rather childish. "Still fun though," he muttered to himself as he walked towards the doors of the Castle. As he got closer he felt the rest of the wards reaching out for him, and he stood still letting them wash over and get a feel for him. These were war wards, and he still hadn't quite gotten over his awe at them.
They weren't exactly subtle, nor were they anything horribly difficult to create, but they were so monstrously powerful and so numerous it was amazing. In terms of power and number they were far greater than his own work on High Note, even more then Dr. Strange's house in New York. Steven's wards were much more subtle and intricate, but didn't come close to the power of these. I guess that's the difference between being powered by one ley line, and three of the bloody things.
After a moment the feeling past and he started to move forward again. As Harry got closer to the front door however he paused suddenly right before reaching forward and looked around.
All of sudden he felt as if he was being watched, and he didn't like it at all. The good feelings from before had evaporated the moment he stepped over that last step. He looked down almost hopeful that he would find some kind of incredibly powerful aversion ward or something, but he didn't find anything like that. Despite not seeing a aversion Ward however, he was now that there was something in this Castle, something that was not at all friendly.
Harry stood back a moment and the feeling went away and after a moment he composed himself and summoned up his power, removing the limiters to his aura and ready power muttering under his breath to activate his crisis suit and Magia Erebea. With a flick of a wrist his right hand was now holding the sword of Gryffindor and the fingers in his other hand twitched, ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice.
With his free hand he reached forward and with a burst of magic pushed the doors open despite the fact that they were locked. He raced inside looking around but nothing was there to meet him, and he swiftly close the door behind him, some instinct telling him that leaving it open would be a very Bad Idea. As soon as it was closed he saw why his instincts had said that. There was a massive ward on the door, and it wasn't the kind that would keep people out, it was the kind to keep people in, specifically something DARK.
As he turned back to look around the entry hall of the Castle (not to be confused with the main hall of course), he suddenly felt a chill in the air. Harry frowned angrily, he'd felt this dozens of times before, until he had gained a bit of a reputation with the beings who created it. The first time it had happened to him he'd heard his mother crying at Voldemort in an attempt to save his life, 'screaming not Harry, not Harry'.
Now it was showing him the worst moment in his life. He had heard about the attack on Hermione moments after it had occurred, and demanded that his godfather take him over. He remembered arriving at Hermione's place and finding Dumbledore standing there in front of the brunt out wreckage of the Granger's home. The man had tried to bar his way, but Harry had simply thrown him to the side magically, astonishing the old man with his strength. Inside he found Hermione, her body stripped of clothing, a rictus of agony on her face. The remains of a gang rape had been on her and her mother, who lay beside her, her stomach no longer showing signs of her pregnancy, the fetus inside having been ripped out of her, killing her and the fetus both. Hermione's father lay beside them, and it had been only too easy for Harry to imagine that he had been forced to watch what had happened before Snape, Malfoy and the others killed him.
He shook off the memory as his memory-self began to scream, his magic flaring out wildly. Here and now his magic also flared but very purposefully. His green eyes flared with power, and he raised his offhand shouting "Expecto Praetorian!"
Hermione hadn't been the only one to come up with new and unusual spells, though Harry's particular genius had run into changing or modifying existing spells to get incredibly different effects, specifically combat related spells. An Incendio spell after all was easily blocked or completely negated by other simple charms, but if you narrowed the scope and heightened the heat of the flame (originally that had just been with a different kind of flick of the wrist, but later he could do it just by imagining the effect) it was far too hot to be stopped and would simply burn through anything but the strongest shield and would ignore cold spells.
So it was with the Patronus spell. Harry had thought that love and joy and happiness weren't the only good emotions, there was also a sense of duty, the need to defend others, the different kind of love than came with putting yourself in harm's way to protect others. So he came up with the Expecto Praetorian spell, an offensive magical spell that didn't just try to defend or drive off dementors, it actively searched for and killed them. The summoned spell took the form not of a stag as his normal Petronus did, but as a giant armored Knight complete with sword and shield. It didn't give off as powerful an aura of light as the regular spell, but it made up for it in other ways.
Needless to say this caused the creatures that had boiled out of every doorway and stairwell towards him the moment he entered the castle to pause for a second. They still came on after that which surprised him. It was as if the aura of his knight wasn't doing is much as he had expected, but when the knight swung his sword straight through the first one to enter its range the beings all gaped, or at least gave the impression that they gaped in shock as the being screamed and dissipated with a wail of terror.
OOOOOOO
Elsewhere a certain being raised her head, shock and actual, amused joy in 'her' eyes as a soul that she had long since given up ever collecting was suddenly in her grasp. It was a worn, twisted evil thing, as it had been before it had been changed so that it was out of 'her' grasp. Now however it was here, it's un-life ended and her eyes flared blue as they looked beyond the here and now to the where. "Of course," she murmured calmly as always, yet amused and grateful at the same time. "The champion of life going about his duties."
With that Death sat down in a chair and leaned back, eager to watch the show, gleefully counting the souls that had thought themselves beyond her reach now in her power. So enthralled by the show was she that she didn't even notice when her suitor tried to get her attention again, which seemed, later on, to rather have pissed him off.
OOOOOOO
Back with Harry, the embattled wizard had used the moment of indecision in his attackers to charge forward, his own entire being lit up like the giant Knight next to him. He shouted orders as he charged. "Guard my back and my left flank!" And the two of them started to chop their way into the horde of dementors.
The sword of Gryffindor would normally not have been able to kill dementors. After all it was a merely physical weapon, and they were only marginally physical in nature. But Harry had developed the ability to gird himself with the same aura as a Petronus spell, added to an aura of flame. With that it was more than enough to kill them, and his own spells lashed out.
Lightning spells, light spells, fire spells, Earth spells and illusions to draw the dementors away, he used them all. The spells seemed to do the job better than in his old dimension surprisingly. In his old dimension only light, flame and the Expecto spells could hurt dementors, and the first two only if they were incredibly overpowered. Here a dementor struck by a lightning spell would collapse for a moment, but would quickly reform whereas if he killed it with his sword they would not.
That eerie wail of despair rose up all around him as his knight and he went to work, but the dementors kept coming in an unending wave of darkness, eager to rip his soul out and feast.
Harry gestured suddenly, and five more knights appeared. He was still getting used to his power up over the last few years, after all he had never had to use an Expecto spell in the negative zone, nothing there would have been affected by it, but now he was able to summon up five of them and keep powering them as easily as breathing.
He then backed up letting the other knights forward to be the front line forces while he shot out several more powerful spells. Drill of light didn't actually kill the dementors either, though it certainly was able to hurt them and weaken them severely. They seemed to collapse, and were easy meat for his knights who began to stalk forward. He gestured at one of them. "Hold that door over there!" he shouted over the wails and screeches pointing to the first doorway they had come to. From his memories that doorway would lead down to the dungeons, and dementors were still trying to pour out of it. Of course there were trying to pour out of everywhere, and he shook his head angrily. It appeared as if the entire castle was full of the damn things.
Harry turned suddenly hearing a heavy clang, and without thinking summoned up another score of knights when he saw the doors to the main hall open and even more dementors storming out.
With that many knights moving around he had a moment to step back and he noticed suddenly that these dementors looked different from the ones he had known. The ones back in his old dimension were basically formless hoods and cloaks, they didn't even really have hands, just formless black tendrils. Here these things very definitely had hands, dark shadow and smoke hands to be sure, but they seemed much more solid than the dementors in his dimension, and far larger individually too. He shrugged his curiosity off however after all they died the same that was all that mattered to him.
With his knights guarding his back he rushed over to the one he had ordered to guard at first doorway, and began to inscribe a ward there. He had to replace the knight the doorway twice before he finished, but after about twenty minutes he slapped his hand down on the array he had created and shouted "Activate!"
Suddenly a golden dome shot up covering the doorway, forcing the dementors on the other side back, shrieking in pain. He nodded at the knight standing above him to back away. "Go help your fellows at the next door. This ward would block any of the dementors from escaping, and he heard their wailings on the other side of the doorway.
Suddenly he felt a cold slimy hand on him but he swiftly turned bring up his blade underhand slicing the arm of the strangely more solid than usual dementor off before stabbing it in the chest with his still glowing sword. The thing tried to lean forward to give him its deadly kiss still, and he wrenched the blade out and swung it overhand cutting its head off and with that thing finally died. He looked around taking stock of the battle, and noticed that his number of knights had been reduced to twelve, and three more faded as he watched.
The dementors here were obviously much stronger than the ones in his own dimension above and beyond their physical differences, since his one praetorian had been able to standoff over a hundred dementors at one point, and they had fled the instant it had killed a few of them. These on the other hand came on almost desperately. "It's if they're starving." he murmured but he raised both hands this time, and summoned up another two dozen knights sending them forward. He then use the old Expecto Patronum spell and sent five stags forward as well, the feelings they gave off giving strength to his side and weakening his enemies.
Harry took a moment automatically to take stock of his magical core, and shook his head a look still a little bemused that he had so much power nowadays. This much casting would have burnt him out before he left his old dimension, now he barely noticed the strain of keeping so many knights going at once.
He sent another high-level lightning spell forward, which badly weakened the enemies around the next-door way over. "This one leads to the Hufflepuff dormitory as well as the kitchen and a few classrooms on the first floor, or at least it did in my old dimension. I wonder if everything is the same here, or just different enough to be weird." It should be mentioned at this point that Harry was voicing his thoughts aloud more to hear something other than the wailings coming from the dementors. He was not regressing back to the way he was in the Negative Zone, it was just the noise was getting to him and even his own voice was preferable.
It took some ten minutes for him to inscribe the same ward again on the floor before this hallway, but after that time another golden dome appeared blocking the doorway where it exited out into the hall. Of course this one wouldn't do as good a job at blocking new dementors coming forward, since unlike the one down to the Slytherin dormitories and the dungeons there were other entrances that they could use if they were went around. Still it would slow them down, and if he could force the battle to be more one dimensional it would serve him and his conjured troops well.
He glanced up then shook his head, and raised his hands again, summoning more knights to replace the seven he had lost since his last resupply. And I'm still not feeling the strain at all!
Harry moved to the staircase, which he knew would take him up to the second floor. He and his friends had come down from the Ravenclaw dormitory countless times using this very staircase, as had the morons from Gryffindor. "Well," he said smiling a smile that was all teeth while he slammed his hands down to his latest runic array. "I shouldn't call them all morons, can't let Ron and the other boys in my own year turn me against at all the others, and at least Lavender and Parvati were decent people, if not great conversationalists. Wasn't there someone else in their group? Hmm… oh will I can't remember."
He waved airily at the dementors who just slammed into the array on the other side, the first few of them so hard they actually dissipated momentarily and he grinned evilly. "I'm going to kill you all!" Harry said cheerfully, his sharks grin never leaving his face, "Each and every last one of you. I wanted to in my own old dimension, but most of you were smart enough to actually retreat back to Azkaban after a few of you died. And after Voldemort bit the bullet it wasn't worth the effort it would take to fight off the ministries forces to do it. Here though, heh, nothing's stopping me, and I'm going to make you all hurt before I end you."
He looked around again, and his knights had been able to force their way forward, completely blocking off the doorway of the main Hall, though they had taken severe losses. He summoned up twelve more, then raised his hand again and summoned twelve again. Now the thirty strong force milled about for a moment, only six of them able to stand side to side in the doorway but he motioned one to the side and took his place quickly. He took a moment to notice that the roof here had not been made to look like the sky outside, a sad thing in his opinion, and not just because it would have kept the dementors from coming out in so many numbers, but because it was honestly a nice day outside.
He grinned wildly at the oncoming horde of dementors all around and through the dining hall. "Time to let a little daylight in boys. Harry raised his empty hand and shouted "Ark Solarius!" and suddenly it was as if the bright day outside had flown in filling the hall with beams of warmth and light. The dementors fell back screaming in agony their hands of shadow reaching up to the cowls that covered their faces. Harry nodded, stabbing his sword through the nearest one, shouting. "Forward line abreast! Push them back!" The knights charged in, taking up positions in a line sideways across the great hall, forming an impenetrable barrier with the stags behind them. The forced the dementors back across the great hall step by step, their swords rising and falling in a terrible rhythm.
Harry was surprised to see only one long table in the center of the dining hall rather than the traditional four of his old dimension, but it certainly made it easier for his troops and he slammed it forward out of their way hitting the far wall, dissipating two dementors for a moment before they reformed.
He counted at least seven or eight-hundred dementors packed in the hall by this point, all of them scrabbling and clawing at one another to try and get at him. But the line of knights was resolute and Harry stepped back, taking his slightly more natural position as an artillery piece, shooting spells over the heads of his knights to land among the dementors. His spells didn't kill any of them, only light lines spells could and after he had developed the praetorian spell he hadn't bothered coming up with another offensive light space spell other than his aura one. However his spells did their work by weakening the dementor horde severely making it far easier for his knights to storm forward. Not one of them went down now, and they drove all the way across the great hall taking up position in front of the two small doorways there.
These led to other stairwells leading up to the second floor and further to the rest of the school. The one on his left eventually led all the way up to the Astronomy tower, while the one on the right led up to what had been the divination room.
Once he slapped more wards down on those two doorways he looked around nodding approvingly. "Alright," he said and then canceled out half of the knights and the stags, funneling the power he had been using to sustain him into the remaining half. He could just have easily kept them all going, but he had already cancelled them out before he realized he didn't have to. "Need to spend some time working out with my magic, get a grip on how strong I really am these days."
For now however he put that thought on the back burner to address the remaining knights around him. "Ahem, anyway, six of you stay here. The rest of you follow me." With that he marched back out to the main hall, and situated the knights in groups around the other entrances, then took two of them to the first doorway, leading down to the slithering dorms.
Here he paused for a moment struck by a sudden thought then reached down and summoned up to rock golems, then pushing the two summoned knights into them in a fashion, mixing the two spells. The result was slightly shorter knights made out of stone except for their swords and a faint aura of light just covering their rocklike skin. It would make them much slower, but they would be much more durable, which in the enclosed space of the hallway would be far more useful than speed. "At least I hope so, still worth an experiment huh gents?"
The two stone knights nodded as if they understood and Harry chuckled a bit. Hermione had always said that the amount of independence his summoned Patronus showed was unusual, but Harry had never taken her digs on his sanity personally.
"We're going to do this the easy way, clear this place out level by level, starting with the basement and the dungeons." Both of the rock knights both nodded, and he dissipated the ward blocking the doorway, blasting back the Dementors who had still been crowding around the other side of it.
The two rock knights strode forward, and he backed away letting them forge ahead work while he kept on firing spells between them weakening that Dementors.
His expectation of his new spell proved correct, they were much slower and he frowned after a moment. They could take more damage than the regular Praetorian spell alone would allow, but they weren't killing as many of the dementors as he had hoped. The shadow creatures were learning to dodge the glowing swords of white light, and the aura around the rest of their body wasn't strong enough to allow them to punch or use their shield to kill the things. "Ah well, in that case I suppose I have only one course of action. More Power!"
With a grin Harry slapped one hand on the back of one of the knights, and the aura of white light around it blossomed to cover him with armor four inches thick. He did the same thing to the second one, and the now reinvigorated Praetorian knights moved forward slowly but surely, crushing and driving the dementors before them.
Moments later he arrived at the stairwell leading down to the dungeons, out from which dozens of dementors tried to fight their way through his strengthened knights. It availed them naught since simply fed more power into his knights while they moved down the stairway.
Here Harry began to notice some changes in the architecture. In his old dimension there had been a sort of sliminess to everything in the dungeon, though whether or not that had been caused by the reputation of Slytherin house and the fact that most of them lived up to that reputation for the past few generations or something else they never figured out. Here it was actually clean, cold and clammy of course, but that could only be expected. There was dust everywhere (the dementors apparently didn't actually touch the ground so didn't move the dust) but there was no sign of habitation here, and that confirmed that whatever happened to wizard-kind in this universe had happened a long time ago. He also saw his first portrait at the bottom of the stairwell, but it was empty of any person there, and he wondered if the occupant had fled elsewhere or what.
They forged on, and Harry had to replace only one of his knights once when they were ambushed when they came to the first classroom and several larger than normal dementors came out of the classroom before he could order the knights to look out. That was a hairy time, with the dementors closing in from both in front of and to his side, their cold shadowy hands reaching for him, but Harry had summoned up a stag with one hand while using the sword as a medium to power flame and lightning spells, which pushed them back long enough for him to summon more of his Praetorians who cut into the horde of dementors with a will.
Harry himself killed the last one that had boiled out of the classroom, the things shadowy fingers scrapping his face and actually leaving several shallow cuts on his check. A quick Episkey however closed them and he nodded at the knights. "Push on ahead of me, I'll join you all soon." He concentrated for a brief moment and one of the knights suddenly found itself joined to a new stone golem, then powered up further. With a nod it moved to the front of the column, joining its fellow which had stood threw the entire fight, halting the tide of dementors and keeping it from becoming a flood before Harry could summon up more help.
With his back, or the front of the campaign depending on how you looked at it, secure Harry took a moment to look around the classroom. He looked around and despite the number of shelves, there was nothing else here. There were no desks, no seats, no cauldrons, no blackboard, nothing. "Actually, that makes sense doesn't it? Steven mentioned how potions were never that big a deal in this dimension, so that would be true even for wand wizards. And given a choice of a dungeon or a regular classroom obviously you would choose something that had actual windows." Despite this logic, Harry was getting a little worried here.
Moving to rejoin his advancing force of constructs Harry was again surprised when they came to the entrance to the Slytherin dormitory. In his old dimension that entrance wouldn't have been marked out by anything, instead it would have been hidden to look like another section of the wall. Here it had an actual doorway, and he shrugged and went inside following the remaining knights, which had been diminished down to four, with two of them being the stone reinforced ones. There were far fewer dementors now, most of them having come forward to die already but there were still some of them coming down the boys and girls side of the dormitory and he shrugged summoning more Praetorian knights up the girls side as he forged up the boys side with two more, leaving the two rock knights behind to guard the entrance just in case.
With every step he took however that uneasy feeling grew. Even when it was almost empty over Christmas break, Hogwarts gave off a feeling of having been lived in regardless of where you were within it. This section didn't give an impression of having been lived in at all, ever. While his knights forged their way along the long hallway leading off into the dormitories for the different years he looked inside each and didn't see anything. There was no furniture, nothing but an empty room. It was as if this place had been built, but people haven't gotten around to getting furniture or anything to finish it. The Slytherin common room behind him had the same issue, no chairs or tables, a giant fireplace but it didn't even look as if it had ever been used.
"What the hell happened here?" he muttered sending off a spell that weakened the last dementor in the hallway. One of his knights sliced into it swiftly, and he nodded. "Well done. Head back down and help your fellows in the girl's side." The two knights nodded and passed him and he surreptitiously pulsed some more power into the pair of them.
Once they were gone he took a moment to send out a few spells designed to find hidden entrances, passages and anything else that was hidden. All of them came back negative and he shook his head.
He had only been in the Slytherin dormitories a few times, mostly with Daphne and her lover Tracy, admittedly to help warn other Slytherins off Daphne's younger sister. But he had been in the boy's side with Blaise a few times and there had been several hidden entranceways. Some of them just connected one year's room to another, but one could only get them open by using parseltongue. The one he remembered most vividly led to a secret entrance to the Chamber of Secrets via a moving ladder. He went over to the seventh your dorm room and entered then walked over to the wall that he remembered hid the entrance to that one, and spoke in parceltongue. "Speak to me, and open to a true heir of Slytherin."
Nothing happened. Harry tried a few more times, some other passwords that he remembered from other different entrances, even one that had been in English but that he now spoke in parseltongue, yet none of them worked. He finally gave up with a shrugged. "So this place is Hogwarts but not Hogwarts," he muttered while he made his way back along the corridor. "People didn't live here long enough to break it in, let alone to make hidden entrances and other things. But that doesn't answer the question of why the hell the dementors were trapped here."
Back in the sitting room he found three of his knights, and supposed the remainder must have been taken out when they were cleaning out the girl's side. The two stone golems stood where they had been at the entrance, unmoving. "No more enemies?" he asked.
The knights shook their heads and Harry nodded. "Continue to guard the entrance here I'll be back in a moment." The knights all nodded again and moved to the entrance to join their more durable fellows, and Harry went to the entrance to the girl's side, absently noting they didn't have an anti-male ward on them like in his dimension. Of course those could be bypassed if you were inventive and devious enough, but each dorm room had their own as well, and those could not be bypassed without collusion from the girls within.
Searching the girl side he found nothing yet again and he shook his head before doing the same search he had done on the boys side, and coming up with the same answer. "So Slytherin house as a whole was planned, but never truly existed here."
He shook his head one more time, then led his conjured troops back up to the entrance hall and then to the doorway that led off along this first level. He looked around at them, frowning and summoning more stone golems to merge with his Praetorian knights, nodding after he had six of them, ten regular Praetorians, and one Patronusstag. "Ok you lot, this one's going to be a bit more difficult, because it leaves off into the rest of the castle at two points, well if its like the Hogwarts we knew. It also has several classrooms along the way, so watch out for ambushes."
The light constructs all nodded and he reached down, cancelling the runic array.
Swiftly three of the regular Praetorian knights clambered forward, slicing into Dementors that had again bunched up on the other side. Once the press had been cleared slightly the remaining two knights fell back in a move that had him raise one eyebrow in surprise to allow two of the stone knight to take their place.
The dementors seemed to have learned their lesson however, and Harry's predication was proven a little too accurate. Only a few times did the shadowy creatures attack the front of his column, and even then it was only to pin his frontline in place. Most of them tried to attack from behind hiding themselves in the classrooms along the way. But Harry's troops were up to the task of clearing out the rooms one after another while he sent two of the stone knights and the stag ahead while he helped clear out the classrooms.
He had to conjure up more Praetorian knights several times, the enclosed space of the classroom and the numbers of the dementors taking a toll. The stone knights kept the corridor clear, their durability more than a match for the numbers of the dementors with their backs guarded by their less armored fellows.
In this manner they came to the first stairway, and he threw up another ward there for a moment then followed on to the next classroom. Eventually this section of the castle was cleared with two more runic arrays on the staircases leading up to the second floor.
Harry nodded grimly and looked at his troops, now down to three regular knights and his four stone knights after the last room was cleared. He conjured up another twenty knights with a wave of his hand. "Alright groups of twelve, two stone knight with ten regular Praetorians per stairway just in case." His troops nodded and split up as he directed while he summoned twelve more. "You lot head back to the dining hall, again I don't think there's trouble, but I want to make sure." The new group nodded and turned around and he summoned up two golems then two more Praetorians, mixing them together to create two more stone knights. "You two, come with me."
Now that he had time to look around Harry again noticed several differences. Where before the entrance to the kitchen would have been through a hidden doorway leading down a short and rather cramped stairwell behind a picture of fruit (there was some memory there about needing to tickle something, a peach maybe, but Harry couldn't remember it had been so long) but here it was just a doorway leading onto a regular stairway leading down.
"One of you in front, the other behind just in case," he ordered the two stone knights. With that the trio made their way down the stairs, but despite Harry's worries they met no resistance.
The kitchen they came out into looked much the same, though it appeared that the larder and the wine cellar were all interconnected rather than separate here. The sight of the empty hearth and the small table set in the center of the room brought back some fond memories of the times Harry had come down here with his friends. The first time had been with Hermione to talk to the house elves about their treatment when she was trying to see if they were slaves or not.
Luckily he had been able to talk her out of that, and it had been a remarkably good date spot for Hermione and later on when his friend set him up with girls to try and get him over her death. Luna in particular was fun, since she had somehow smuggled in some bear and fed it to the elves, then talked them into trying to do a conga line around the kitchen singing 'for he's a jolly good fellow' several times. He stood there for a moment smiling fondly at the happy memories for a few minutes then shook his head and moved on.
He moved down the hallway towards where the Hufflepuff entrance had been somewhat cleverly hidden behind a mountain of barrels. Here however again it was just a doorway, and the frowned thoughtfully then entered with his two stone knights on either side of him.
Here he found a major difference from the Hogwarts he knew to this one. After all, the Hufflepuff dormitories had been set up much the same as the others with boys one side and girls on the other. Here there were no doorways, and he frowned thoughtfully. It looked just like a little dead-end, with the now normal lack of furniture around, as if they had gotten this far in their construction and had stopped but that didn't make sense. The castle on the outside look the same, so the Hufflepuff dormitories had to be here or else the outer wall of the castle would've stopped halfway along the length of its eastern side.
Harry strode forward, and then felt a war active somewhere he, nut the feeling it gave off was unlike any he had ever felt before. "It, it almost feels like the way the entrance to the chamber of secrets felt but not quite…" On a whim he stood back and began to intone in parceltongue. "I who am wizard command you, reveal yourself to me!" He shook his head slightly and spoke normally. "I have no idea where that came from."
Despite his disgust at the egotistical nature of them the words seem to have struck something, and a shiver began in the air along the far wall. Harry backed up, signaling to his two stone knights to stand on either side of him just in case. For a moment nothing happened, then with a final flicker the far wall was suddenly not a wall but a doorway.
"Clever, using the sound of parseltongue to open it, or at least I hope so. I really would not like to think that wizards here were so full of themselves is to make those words the password wherever the hell they came to me." Harry opened the door signaling the knights to go in force and they did so, with him following on their heels.
Suddenly he stopped however gaping at what he had found. The boys dorm should have been up a flight of stairs taking you technically to the second floor, with the girls dorm directly below them, forming an outer portion of the rectangle that was the largest portion of the castle, enclosing a garden in its center. Here the dorms were gone, replaced by a two-story tall hallway filled end to end with tiny little houses jutting out every which way from the rock of the hallway. They stuck out at odd angles along the walls, they hung down from the ceiling, jutted out from the corners, even stood up along the floor, with a small path leading between them. None of them were the same, they were all painted in an incredibly garish mixture of colors, and the architecture differed hugely from one to another as well. The closest one looked normal, but the one sticking out of the wall looked like a tree house, while one hanging from the ceiling looked like a tiny replica of the castle.
"They almost look like," he muttered and then on a whim looked into one and shook his head in shock. Inside were several house elves, so close together they seemed to be sharing the same bed. Harry couldn't tell if they were boy or girl obviously, but he remembered suddenly that house elves were very communal creatures, so living this close together was probably the way they wanted to live. "If all of these houses house three house elves…" he looked around and counted then shook his head. "That's a lot of house elves."
He remembered suddenly that Hogwarts had run with about 200 house elves at a time, though there was barely enough work to go around during his time as a student there. Two generations before his however that would've seemed a bare minimum with the number of students at the time.
Harry looked around wondering why they were in stasis and how they had defended themselves against Dementors, which were among the rare beasts that house elf magic didn't work on. He noticed a small Rune on the nearest house and nodded to himself. "Stasis runes so that's why they're asleep but how do they protect themselves?"
He turned and looked around the doorway, finding his answer in a strangely intricate ward by the door, with normal Grecian runes worked around and in between strange squiggly marks, which looked a bit like hieroglyphs but not quite, almost snakelike…. "Parseltongue wards," he whispered in shock.
That runic language had been a myth in his home dimension, he'd never even found a book that more than mentioned that the possibility of them. Here however he found a powerful example of them and he marveled at the intricacy. For one thing it was part illusion, taping the ley lines for its power, but it didn't seem to be wasn't connected to the hearthstone of the giant castle. These were separate, but still able to feed off the ley lines. They also seemed to be more anti-dementor than anything else, reminding him strongly of the ward on the main door into the castle. Nothing with fell intent could pass them. They were the most comprehensive anti-Dark wards he had ever seen and he laughed at the irony of them using a language that most light wizards had thought was a sign of evil.
"I'm going to have to study this in detail later," he said to himself. "I want to know what the hell it means and what the hell the parseltongue parts do. It can't just be to deactivate the illusion portion, there's too many of them for that, they must be integral to the rest of the array somehow." He shook his head trying to figure out a runic language from this small of an example would probably be impossible, but it wouldn't hurt to try.