28/05/2015

I only just found this ficlet. I think I was studying my first degree when I wrote it. I don't know if I will continue it or not.

27/10/2007

The Slayers, Harry Potter and any of those characters do not belong to me. I am just playing with them for a bit. I MAKE NO PROFIT FROM THIS!

G is for H

by Zuzanny

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How do you explain something to another person when you can't explain it to your self? Gourry didn't know how to tell Lina that the reason he had been in the area when they first met was because he could sense her magic and it had been the first time since he woke up that he had felt magic so strong. For a brief moment his scattered memory had collected before dissipating, and he knew that the magic user could help him. So he searched and searched until he came upon... someone.

He had been disappointed when he found the little girl amongst the bandits and not the magic user, but... perhaps... was she was still a student? Again memory gathered before being lost. But it had gathered, and that was important, and it happened around Her.

He knew she needed to be protected, that her presence brought his mind together- how ever briefly, but didn't know how to tell her that. So he stuck by her as her guardian, enduring her "affectionate" abuse and name calling while his mind scattered like the wind. He needed to stay. He needed... something...

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Zelgadis, the beige dressed swordsman made of blue stone with wire hair, pulled him aside one day while they were travelling from place to place (Gourry just wandered. No place was familiar to him on a map. The countries all confused him.). "I've been meaning to ask you something." Zel said quietly, observing the two girls nattering to each other ahead of them. "Is there a reason why you don't use your magic? Apart from the sword of light, I mean."

Gourry gave him a baffled look, then smiled good-naturedly. "That's funny. You know I can't use magic!" And he left Zel standing there looking even more confused than he was. Gourry paused and looked back. "Why would you even ask me something like that?"

Zel kept pace with him as they continued walking. "I can sense it."

"Sense what?"

"Your magic. It's... incredible, yet... hidden. I'm surprised Lina hasn't said something."

Gourry shook his head no. "Why would she do that?"

"Actually," Zel said wryly. "no, I'm not surprised. She is so focussed on establishing herself as the most powerful that she completely misses it when true power is right in front of her."

"Zel, what are you talking about?"

"There sure are a whole lot of coincidences around you, Gourry. Ever wonder why the Hellmaster chose your as his knight? There was more to it than the fact you are a great swordsman."

"Uh, no. Not really."

"What about why you can call the light from your sword. That takes magic."

"I thought it was because it has been in our family for generations."

Zel hadn't realised that. "How about why The Lord of Nightmares let you take Lina back with out destroying the world?"

"Ah, yes. THAT I did kind of wonder about."

"I think it would be worth investigating further."

"Investigating what?"

Zel sighed, then grabbed a firm hold of Gourry's arm to stop him from walking further. "I'm not the only one who has noticed. I know Xellos has too. I'd bet you're the real reason he's hanging around."

"Zel. I really don't know what your are talking about."

"I believe your magic has been bound. I don't know how or why, but it has. I want to find out for sure."

Gourry blinked down at Zel, for a moment his mind clearing. "You're a chimera." Gourry said softly, as though he had never realised it before. Zel flinched, but then saw the vagueness settle back over Gourry's eyes, and immediately called upon his shamanistic vision to examine the energies around Gourry.

"Yes, I am." Zel replied, seeing a smoky green substance swirling around Gourry's head, heart and wrists. "And your magic is not the only thing that is bound. Do you remember pissing anyone off when you were younger? Enough for someone to curse you?"

Gourry tilted his head to the side. "Nope."

Zel sighed. "No, I guess you couldn't, not by the state of this curse." He continued to observe the green swirling energies, watching as at times it almost faded only to flare back twice as bright, only to begin the fading cycle again. "I'm going to try something." Zel warned before casting the strongest Flow Break he could.

Gourry threw his head back and screamed, his back arched and toes barely touching the ground as the curse broke and memories from another life flooded his mind. Images of horrors and fighting and flying through incredibly tall towered buildings flashed through his mind, while he continued to scream and stare blindly into the air in front of him.

Zelgadis watched in a kind of horrified fascination as black bled into Gourry's hair, starting from roots to tips, and a darker colour also bled into his eyes which left him with a crystal green colour instead of the sky blue they had been. Lina and Amelia came running back, yelling Gourry's name frantically and demanding to know what was going on.

"I cast a Flow Break on him." Zel explained. Lina just gave him this blank look, and dryly asked, "Why?"

"Because he had a curse on him!" Zel hissed while Amelia sobbed "Poor Mister Gourry!" Over and over.

Suddenly Gourry's screaming stopped and he dropped limply to the ground. They all closed in on him, and Lina prodded him with her foot urgently.

Gourry's now green eyes opened slowly, and he gazed up into Lina's red ones.

"Gourry?" She asked slowly.

He blinked, sighed, then sat up to look around. "My name's not Gourry." He said softly with an accent that none of them had heard before (and had Lina reeling back with Horror wondering if he were now possessed.).

Zel knelt beside him. "What is your name?" he asked.

"Harry." Gourry looked like he might have said more, but stopped and looked down at his hands instead.

"Where are you from, Harry?" Zel asked.

"I don't know. Not here. It was a country called... Angrand I think, but I can't see it on any of the maps."

"I've never heard of that." Lina exchanged with Amelia, who had likewise never heard of the place.

"How are you feeling now?" Zel ignored their responses to continue his gentle questioning.

"It's strange. I can actually THINK again. I remember being Gourry, and I can remember being me as well, but now I can actually think."

"Is Gourry still in there?" Lina piped in.

'Harry' smiled at her slightly. "I'm still me, Lina. But now I can actually understand all our conversations about magic."

"You look... different." Amelia squeaked.

"And here you were always saying that appearances are not important." 'Harry' smirked at the princess.

Lina kept peering at him with this odd sort of squint. "You can REMEMBER our conversations?" She asked him sceptically.

"Yep, and now I can understand them. Before it was like someone had put a blindfold on me and then you were trying to describe the colours of the world to me in a different language."

Lina tilted her head to the side. "But not now?"

"No, now I can see the world again. I can understand your magical theory, even if the history is still unfamiliar to me. We weren't taught anything about the type of Dark Lords we usually deal with or Mozuku at school." Then he frowned again and looked back at his hands.

"What's wrong?" Zel asked, noticing that the now green eyes kept wandering downwards,

"I think... I think They snapped my wand."

"Who did?" Zel asked, exchanging glances with Lina.

"The Death Eaters."

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"Do you think he's gone mad?" Amelia later whispered while she walked behind the two men along with Lina. "I don't know of anyone needing a wand to perform magic."

"I... don't know." Lina admitted quietly, watching that long now-black hair swish while Garry- no, Harry walked. "I don't know how I could have missed him having a curse like that on him for so long. I mean, I-" She shut her mouth before finishing that sentence and stared with determination out into the scrub around them, ignoring Amelia's rather pointed and somewhat smug look. Lina took a deep breath, and changed her tack. "Here I am supposed to be a sorcery genius. How could I MISS this? Me! Miss this?! Yet ZEL, and who knows who else, saw straight through it!"

Amelia shrugged, her eyes down to her shoes as she walked. "You weren't the only one, Miss Lina. I missed it as well. Maybe that was part of the curse?"

"Hmmm..." Lina frowned.

"I wonder what happened, who "Harry" was, and why he was cursed?"

"And where his "Angrand" is?" Lina added. "Could be another world, I suppose. We sure have already had enough of them to know it is possible. I wonder why they all end up here though?"

"Maybe L-Samma thinks it's a great sort of joke?"

Lina snorted. "That wouldn't surprise me either."

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They stayed at an Inn in the next town they came across, and come dinner time it was the first time ever that Gourry-Harry did not compete with Lina for all the food. He stared at he dishes as they came to the table with a different sort of interest, a sort of puzzlement. He prodded them with his chopsticks, which he also found interesting. He spun the chopsticks around his fingers expertly, but frowned at them. "I never used chopsticks for eating before being Gourry." He said. "Only knives, forks and spoons." He then held one chopstick between his fingers and stared intently at it, like he was trying to read tiny writing.

"What is it?" Zel asked, since Lina was too busy shovelling food into her stomach to be able to speak.

"I was just thinking. Why is it that a wand is so important anyway? Before I knew I was a wizard I could make things happen, and I didn't have a wand then. You and Lina and Amelia and pretty much every magic user there is don't use wands, so why do I?"

To be continued?