Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Fate/Stay Night
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The dreamer had enough training as a magus to keep small part of his mind lucid during a dream. That part was now concerned that if this dream continued too long he would wet his bed.
The perspective shifted, not to focus on the sound of dripping, but to the ripples forming on a fluidic surface as drops of the same fluid fall upon it.
The drips came with smooth, and almost relentless, regularity and precision. Each drip followed another, in exactly the same size and shape and location. The spacing in time between drips was regulated so that the ripples formed a pattern that lacked the chaos inherit in such a system. It relaxed the dreamer on a deep level, and he realized it was representative of himself.
Suddenly a loud clamor occurred off in this distance outside the field of his perception, but he could perceive a massive ripple, almost a wave, cresting towards his nice orderly ripples of self. The seemed to be growing as it approached the self-ripples and it soon overlapped them and threw their orderly patterns into chaos. As the wave began to intersect with the focal point of the self-ripples, a wire-frame clock appeared to overlay the scene and slowed to nearly, but not quite, stillness, seeming to slow the movement of the entire dream, including the ripples of self, at the same time.
As the clock faded the movement of the chaotic ripples continued in slow motion. In that slow motion he could interpret new patterns in the chaos that followed as his pattern intersected some great event. In the pattern that followed he could sense just a hint of something that seemed somehow better than the previous orderly self.
As the dreamer focused he felt the dream begin to dissolve but before it faded he made out a greater beauty to follow, something more naturally resonant with his inner most spirit than the orderly ripples of self his dream had begun with.
He gained a profound sense that the greatest aspect this interaction was... Choice...
Kiritsugu snapped awake in a rush, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes of the dream,... vision? He glanced over and found his wife, Iri, to still be asleep.
She lay there as beautiful as the first time he layed eyes on her, palest of skin and snow-white hair. She had only been with him four years, truly had only existed as a being for four years, and had already given him a family, however painful that sometimes was. Considering how without personality she was in the beginning and almost all her human contact was with Kiritsugu, a relatively jaded man by human standards, it was truly shocking how full of life and emotion she was. Indeed, she was so different from him. She had an elegance and grace that came from the artificial knowledge implanted during her creation, but as only 4 years old she still had a child-like innocence any other adult with her knowledge would have long lost.
Kiritsugu turned to consider the ceiling as he pondered his dream once more. Having these precognitive experiences was not impossible, he had had a few before in the years since he acquired a piece of the Emiya family crest with the help of his mentor, Natalia. A family's crest was important, not just because it gave a power boost to the head of the family that actually got to implant it, but because it contained a crystallized form of the mysteries that were the focus for the family's research. Most families would focus on one aspect of magecraft to exploit and to delve and they would incorporate that research into their crest so that future family members could progress further and further into their research with each generation. That crest of the Emiya family had only existed for a few generations, but he knew his father had treasured it beyond the relatively small size he had inherited should have indicated. His father, Emiya Noritaka, had been so desperate to explore the depths of that crest that he explored the damnation of vampirism, just to gain more time in which to research the odd affinity for time granted by the Emiya Crest.
Due to the Sealing Designation place on his father, Emiya had only managed to inherit a small fraction of the family crest, a mere 8 circuits out of the 40 his father had. He also had received no notes or training from his father, other than an odd rant overheard by a child. Thus he knew only that the Crest increased his affinity for time magic, giving him occasional visions as insight that were so vague as to be almost useless.
He preferred to predict the future by planning so well that the outcome was assured. He had developed a spell called 'Time Alter' that let him speed up or slow down his personal interaction with time. He had no idea if that was what it should be used for considering the side affects he suffered, but it was all he could get out of it at the moment.
Kiritsugu decided to get up, while he would not dwell on his vision, it only made sense to at least give it some consideration. He did not want to disturb his wife though.
The so-called fifth head of the Emiya family got dressed and headed out onto the veranda. He snorted to himself as the thought crossed his mind. Considering his father was more worried about lengthening his lifespan to conduct research rather than actually accomplishing it, and what research the family did have wasn't accessible to him, he could hardly call himself something as accomplished as the fifth head of a family, despite the fact that most noteworthy families wouldn't have been impressed by even that much. Family's weren't considered notable until they reached seven generations and even that was only acceptable if the generations had accomplished more to advance their mysteries than his father or he had.
Several hours of sitting on the veranda in the fresh and crisp, very crisp seeing as it was late October in a mountainous forest, left Emiya Kiritsugu longing for a smoke, it had been years after all. Here he was, one of the world's deadliest assassins boring himself out his mind by considering a drippy faucet dream. He was known as the Magus Killer for his capacity to combine brutally efficient mundane methods with mystical techniques. It ensured he could take out almost anyone as the security of the non-magical was vulnerable to his magic and the Magi of the world seemed even more vulnerable to non-mystical means. It had even earned him this psuedo family with a wife and daughter with the noble Einzbern family, but here he was leaning out the balcony of the Einzbern mansion wishing the smokes available nearby were even worth trying to sneak.
Just as he was about to go back in and check on Iri, he saw the eighth head of the Einzbern family, Jubstachteit von Einzbern, or as Emiya knew him, old man Acht, walk out unto the balcony as well. In this case, eight was pretty noteworthy as each head of the Einzbern had ruled for at least a hundred years. Emiya didn' t know the exact number, but he suspected Jubstachteit was closer to two hundred by now.
The two men stared out over the autumn mountain scape, the riots of yellows, oranges, and reds in the distance, interlaced heavily with evergreen, and a mystically preserved green mansion's grounds nearby.
"You're bored," flatly stated the patriarch of the family to which he had tied himself.
"Hmm? What gave me away?"
The old bas- ... Man just gave a soft snort put a small box on the rail, the sound it made as it landed let you know it was very heavy. "Deliver that," he commanded with glint in his eye.
Emiya glanced at the box and recognized the patterns, "Alchemically prepared metals, quite high quality. Who can afford the best the Einzbern family has to offer?" asked the Magus Killer, not letting his curiosity show on his face.
"No one, of course, you are trading this for a similar package of alchemically enriched clay from a family that specializes in crafting such," informed the head Einzbern Magus.
Kiritsugu questioned sardonically, "And how does this relieve my boredom?"
"I thought that allowing you to begin preparations nine years before the war would be a good way to help you create advantages and gain your full strength for the upcoming Heaven's Feel Ritual. While I have seen your planning and am pleased at the advantages you have created for my families position in the war I have become concerned about you increasing your strength. Rather than growing stronger, instead it seems to have slowed your progress these last four years, and I fear if I do nothing you will become useless by the time the war starts."
"I probably am a little rusty, but how does making simple deliveries help?" asked Emiya.
"Because your contact, Charlus Potter, is an old acquaintance of mine, I have known him for nearly 100 years, and these last few years are the longest that we have ever been out of contact." The Einzbern Head continued, "I fear he is lost. Investigate, help if you can, trade if you find things well, and report your findings back to me."
The eighth head of the Einzbern then left Kiritsugu to his own devices.
"Looks like I have a mission to England. I'll have to remember to pick up a souvenir for Ilya," mused Kiritsugu before setting about his plans.
Later...
Getting off the plane in London was as hectic as always, despite being a Tuesday. He truly despised London, such a cold a dreary place. The structure of the city was chaotic and hard to find your way around. Worst of all of course was that it was the headquarters of the Clocktower. A major part of the Mage Association and the ones that generally hated him the most. Thus London contained the greatest number of people who wanted him dead per capita.
Such is the price of earning a title like Magus Killer he supposed.
He made his way through the streets of the town, the dull cloudy sky did nothing to distract him from the large number of people who seemed to dress like the most out-of-date Clocktower mages he had ever seen. They all seemed terribly exuberant considering the weather and how off putting they were to the other Londoners.
A quick spell to grant himself thermal vision, he preferred to use goggles or a scope but the spell was easier to conceal, and he saw that the oddly dressed people had the slightly higher than normal body temperatures of a magus using minor spells.
'Wonder what's got the locals wandering around so, it's not like the Mage Association to allow this sort of thing,' Kiritsugu thought to himself.
He chalked up the mystery as something to solve later if he had more time and avoid the disturbing magi in the meantime. He moved out towards the outskirts of town towards the village where the Potter Mansion was supposed to lie.
Despite his keen eyes he missed the numerous owls that we're swooping about unnaturally.
It was just around lunchtime when he got to the village nearest the Potter home and decided to stop for a bite to eat. In the small, cozy diner he saw a group of the oddly dressed mages talking about something they probably shouldn't have in public.
..."So it was old Charlus's grandson?" asked a particularly geriatric looking magus. This immediately caught Emiya's attention considering he was here to find a 'Charlus.' The next oldest looking replied, "Yep, would have done the old man proud if he were still with us, too bad about James and his wife though, I wonder who will take care of the tyke now?"
The oldest look like he might have responded but the younger ones interrupted with talk about how things would be different now and they started discussing there plans for the future and Emiya learned nothing else.
'Hmm, so both my contact and the one likely to be his son and heir are gone already,' pondered Emiya. 'Well, I'll check the mansion anyway, and then make sure the boy is being taken care of.'
The assassin walked up to the mansion that everyone non-magical seemed to ignore. It was a nice place, not on the level of the Einzbern, but better than the territory of some of the other magi families for which he had worked. Lots of statues, especially gargoyles, 'Probably guardians of some type,' he thought to himself.
He spent an hour analyzing the bounded fields in the place. None were very high quality but there were a lot of them. Acht had mentioned that they had little in the way of magic circuits, they concentrated on Alchemy, which did not require magical circuits as opposed to modern thaumatuergy. As the foremost Alchemists, the Einzbern had some respect for them. With less raw power in each spell they seem to have gone with many weak spells, with each generation adding a few layers so defenses grew with time.
Most of his analysis was deciding it wasn't a trap. Beyond anything else, slipping through bounded fields was really his specialty, so he shut down only one of the dozens of minor fields and corrupted two others and was in within minutes. It was actually harder for him than other fields he encountered as it took some time to figure outit he interactions between the various fields.
A normal magus would have taken hours or even days, as they would have to collapse all the fields, the hour he spent was to make sure it wasn't a trap, not to figure out how to get by it. The only fields that were hard to penetrate we're those that had dozens of fields where each was made to be strong and designed to support each other rather than simply exist near each other. So far only the Einzbern had the best, and he had been teaching them how to spot the weaknesses and remove them.
As he got in the door without triggering any statuary guards, he was immediately accosted by a small goblin-like creature.
"Who are you to enter the House of Potter!" shrieked the little thing, its head and flopping ears shaking around and pointing a hand at Kiritsugu as if to release a burst of power.
'Terrific,' Emiya thought, 'Guardian creatures of some type, surviving the master's death.' The Magus Killer kept one hand on a gun in his coat but decided to try and talk his way out.
"I am a representative of Jubstachteit von Einzbern, acquaintance of Charlus Potter, who sent me to investigate after so long without word," Emiya said,trying to be reasonable.
The little creature immediately seemed ready to ignore him, "I know of no Jub.. Jub, ache...".
"But I have," an older version of the same creature appeared walking down the hall with a crooked looking wooden can, upon which he seemed to be relying on heavily.
"Calm down Dixie, we have a guest, one who our master would have traded with if do not miss my guess as to the contents of that box."
Kiritsugu shifted the box of precious alchemical metals in his hand. "Yeah," Emiya acknowledged, "if things had been alright I was supposed to trade this for some of the Potter's special clay."
"No reason not to do so anyway," the old beast said before clicking his fingers. This immediately caused the other, Dixie, to pop away with a crack. Seconds later it popped back with another box almost as ornate as the one from the Einzbern.
"Master Charlus had prepared a batch or two before his passing," the older goblin creature explained, "with Master James gone, no one is likely to use this before its powers begin to fade. The metal of the Einzbern will last for decades, hopefully young Master Harry will be back before it fades as well."
A thought occurred to Kiritsugu. "Will you lot be okay without a master until Harry returns?"
A wry, sad grin appeared on the face of the elder, while Dixie was just plain sad. "Actually no, we never formally bonded with Master Harry. With the death of Master James the clock has started ticking. Ten, maybe fifteen years for a few of us, and we will all be dead."
Dixie burst in, "And the House will fall into disarray! Poor, poor Master Harry! The condition he will find his home in by the time he inherits!"
Emiya pondered the situation for a moment, while Dixie settled down. "OldAcht asked me to help if I could, so I will stick around until Harry's guardianship is decided. I can make sure they know to bring him here before too much time passes. Besides, how will he learn the Alchemy that the Einzbern respect so much without coming and reviewing the family library?"
"Hmm, a valid point," the old creature once more clicked his fingers and a couple books appeared in his hands. "Training in Alchemy should start early if he is to uphold the name of Potter. These tomes are not terribly valuable in case you turn out untrustworthy, but should be enough to get Harry through until he turns eleven and the start of Hogwarts."
Emiya took the tomes, probably generic primers by the standard of the Einzbern, but would be of value to any family without the history of Alchemy behind them."Hogwarts, what's that?"
A chuckle from the old creature, "You really are from far away aren't you? Hogwarts is the school most higher class magical families in Britain send their children to. It starts at eleven, and lasts seven years. Anyway, get those books to Harry and have his guardians make sure he learns the material well before starting Hogwarts. If he has the Potter aptitude, unlike his father, this will get him started and he can research more at Hogwarts or come here and pick up some intermediate books to study himself." The old beast seemed to ponder a moment before another click of fingers produced a compass device. "This will track the nearest of Potter blood, which, at this point, can only be Harry. Take it and find him."
"I will, I hope to see you again someday old man," Emiya said with more respect than he usually showed old Acht.
A snort from the old beast, "Shoo, off with you child. As we cannot leave until a new Master binds us, we depend on you to save us and the honor of the House of Potter."
'Damn that old thing knows how to push the guilt button.' the Magus Killer thought as he saluted jauntily and headed out to find the young Master Harry.
Hours of tracking later...
Kiritsugu approached the location indicating where Harry should appear. He had spent time tracking him but he was apparently moving at roughly vehicular speeds across the country.
Emiya had put in a call to one of the minor contacts in the bureaucracy he had and discovered that Lily Potter used to be Lily Evans. Lilly Evans had a sister who had married a Vernon Dursley.
Getting the address of Number 4 Privet Drive was child's play. After confirming Harry was indeed moving in the correct direction he decided to stake out the joint, using the scope and shotgun mike on his Walther rifle to look for trouble, such as followers of this Dark Lord looking for revenge.
When he heard a soft crack up the street he almost shot the magus that appeared.
When the cat turned into a female magus his jaw dropped, that was some serious power these two were showing.
When he overheard the story he had to resist letting his teeth grind.
He was in more than a little disbelief when the gigantic man on a flying motorcycle appear. To take a baby cross country in that. He wouldn't let Iri call him irresponsible with Illya ever again.
But the worst, the worst of all, was when that old codger put the baby on the stoop with a letter and walked away. Emiya was about to put a bullet in him and damn the consequences.
"Good luck, Harry," he heard the odd looking man murmur before he turn on his heel, swished his cloak and disappeared with a small crack.
"Damn," he swore softly.
He briefly reinforced himself and jumped down from the roof he was on.
A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet drive as Kiritsugu ghosted near where the small boy named Harry lay. Without waking, the boy rolled over and clutched a letter beside him.
The assassin pondered the boy, what he overheard after arriving, and his current situation.
A powerful being using the worst of magic to terrorize and kill and yet somehow failed to finish this child. To lose his parents and be raised by non-magicals, he supposed simply because he would be considered a legend from day one with his peers. Scarred forever by the power that killed his parents. A child with a family legacy that would go unfulfilled if raised as this Dumbledore person planned.
Emiya Kiritsugu remembered the young man, a mere boy really, whose father was a monster who committed the most heinous of acts in pursuit of his Mysteries. A boy who helped to kill his own father for those crimes and went on to become an assassin to remove others like him and save as many people of the world as possible.
The Magus Killer watched the door of the home for a few minutes and decided. He picked up the child who was already a Legendary Magus Killer of his own right and promised, "I will save you."
He moved on, leaving no evidence behind that either Magus Killer was ever there.
Indeed, he had an appointment with a fuzzy, old goblin to make if he was to keep his promises.
His last thought as he made his way back to the Potter House was, 'I wonder if Ilya will consider a little brother as a suitable souvenir.'...
In Dumbledore's office the next morning
Dumbledore immediately went to the silver monitoring devices he had set up to track Harry Potter and analyze the wards. While they showed he was in fine health, Dumbledore was growing concerned that the ones indicating the special blood wards he had set up, the ones that would reflect the power of his mother's sacrifice as long as Harry was loved by and considered himself at home with a blood relative. He knew Petunia had jealousy issues regarding her sister Lily, but surely she would come to quickly love her baby nephew. Dumbledore was sure in the strength of his ward and more sure in the strength of love, so it must be the monitoring devices. Yes, the connection must not have set up properly.
Oh well, it would have been nice to monitor young Harry in this way, but between his faith in both himself and in the power of love, he had no reason to fret unduly.
Author Notes
First story I am posting is a crossover of Potterverse and Nasuverse. Both Magi and Wizarding folk exist in the world but remain as hidden from each other as they are from muggles. Kiritsugu Emiya happens to be close enough to observe the abandoning of Harry and chooses to save and adopt him, instead of Shirou later on.
Revision on 03-23-13: one reviewer made the valid comment that Kiritsugu should be more reserved and I decided to redo some things to make it so.