Warnings: Eventual slash (at least one-sided), some messing with canon, doesn't actually contain much of the game, crossover, spoilers through the end of the game, contains viera males (they do exist, according to SquareEnix... and there are only a few mentioned here anyway), lots of narrative.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter novel, concepts, and characters belong to Joanne Kathleen Rowling and associates of whom I am not one. Final Fantasy XII game, concept, plot, characters, and locations belong to SquareEnix and various others who I really don't have the space to name, it suffices to say that I am not among them.

Chapter 2

"It's stupidly complicated," Vaan grumbled 'quietly' to Penelo. Basch tried tuning out the boy – he did not oft complain, but the fact that they had to turn back to hit a switch to advance through the mine seemed to aggravate the boy – but it was difficult when he was marching in the middle of the group with Lady Ashe, acting as her primary protection. Had they not endured worse in the Lhusu Mines, and in the Sandseas? And yet the teen chose to complain about walking back through perhaps thirty meters of the mines to hit a switch.

The paths had been suspiciously clear of fiends, as though someone had gone through as recently as in the past ten minutes killing monsters as they went. Fran had picked up a discarded arrow somewhere along the way and seemed to take a shine to it, but Basch saw no other signs of life.

If one discounted the quiet roar of some tyrant-like monster in a secluded part of the mine. He hadn't liked the look of that section of the area and vowed to keep away from the tyrant as best he could. They were needlessly difficult to fell.

"It's to control the fiends," Larsa imparted his wisdom as only an Imperial could. "By changing the gates, they can trap strong fiends in the mines until Imperial troops can be dispatched to get rid of them. I've heard there are some flan that will attack when switches are pulled sometimes but all the miners are taught the appropriate spells to dispel them. It's really a very efficient system."

"Another bid for power by the Archadian Empire," Ashelia wrinkled her nose in a way unbecoming of her station. However, Basche had noticed she had become in many ways less than the princess than she once was through her long association with the Resistance. She was more like the common people.

That, more than anything, Basch was certain was what would one day make her a great leader of her people. She understood hardship and just how downtrodden her people had become. Assuming she could take back Dalmasca.

They were approaching the gate again, this time open. After Larsa's mention of flan, everyone had their weapons at the ready. Baltheir's gun was cocked, and Fran had strung her bow; Penelo was holding her staff in a defensive position while Vaan looked ready to lash out with his spear at the slightest provocation, and he had a dagger on his belt if there was too little room for the mid-range weapon. Basch and Ashe had both unsheathed their swords, a "just in case" measure that they suspected was anything but.

As they passed through the gate, the group discovered that this was indeed the case. Apparently, when they had flipped the switch several flan had appeared, as Larsa said. Worse, they'd had a minute or two to reproduce.

If any of them had forgotten since the last encounter with the damned gelatinous beasts, they quickly relearned that any variety of flan was nearly impervious to physical attack and that it was a far safer idea to use magic instead. Basch wasn't very good with spells, but he managed.

When dodging an attack from one of the fiends however, he saw Penelo suddenly trip and the spell she was casting was shot at the ceiling instead of at the flan between them. Basch moved to her aide as he was the closest, warding the flan away with a well-placed fire spell, and discovered that she had tripped over a person as he helped her to stand.

Probably the same person who had entered the mines before them; Basch pitied the poor, dead fool and hoped that it wasn't their flipping the switch that got him killed. There was no use in lamenting the death; all they could see of him really was his upper-torso and head, the lower portion covered by the goop of a dead flan not yet dissolved.

It took a bit longer, but eventually they subdued all of the fiends, leaving them finally alone in the dimly lit switch room. While Penelo and Fran cast healing spells on everyone in preparation for when they flipped the switch in case more flan appeared, Basch decided to investigate the... body. It was a little crass, perhaps, but in their quest to free Dalmasca they had to use every advantage, even if that meant stealing a weapon from a corpse. It's not like it was the first time Basch had done or considered doing such a thing.

However, when Basch turned, he found himself embarrassed for the body. It was a male – not unexpected – but very... bare skinned. It looked like he was wearing only an undergarment and strange strips of armor - perhaps the flan were acidic? - but his hair, wet with flan-goo, covered much of his torso. Despite the length of his hair, Basch could tell just from the face that this person was male.

And alive, if rather unconscious.

With a minute sigh, Basch pulled a phoenix down from his pocket. He had the least of anyone in the group at any given time, since he was usually the least aware of the group as a whole and most often too deep in the thick of things to be able to help his companions much. He opened the small phial and sprinkled the downy feathers of a baby phoenix over the fallen person.

And then he fell backwards on reflex as the previously unconscious man sprung suddenly to his feet. Which brought attention to his ridiculous shoes. They were... much like Fran's. Tall.

The man turned gracefully as Basch quickly stood. He held himself perfectly balanced in the tall shoes, and in them was just equal to Basch's height (Basch was not especially tall, but his height was respectable). Strange green eyes surveyed the group.

"So... you are the humes of whom Jote spoke," he said quietly. His accent was like that of the viera in the wood, untempered by hume speech, unlike Fran's. Green eyes passed behind Basch. "And a viera. You were unmentioned... and I do not know you. One who abandoned the Wood, perhaps? Either I passed you unknowing in the Wood," his voice here took on a skeptical tone, as if such a thing was impossible, "or else I was slow here. No matter, I suppose. You are here to rescue Mjrn, are you not?" Quite suddenly, he smiled. "I will aid you then."

"Wha – hold on a second! Who are you anyway? And why are you half-naked?" Basch by this time had made his way away from the strange stranger and could see the vague redness on Vaan's face as he carefully averted his gaze from the mostly-bare man.

"I am Lejn," came the reply. "And, for a male, I am well covered enough. The Wood does not ask for modesty, that is the prerogative of her residents."

"For a male viera, perhaps," Fran cut in. "But a hume?"

The man just smiled and suddenly cast a cura spell. The wash of energy hit Basch; it was surprisingly more invigorating than those cast by even Penelo. "Forgive me, the down only did so much, and I expect we will again be set upon when we hit the switch to continue on to Mjrn. As to you, Deserter," Lejn's voice became suddenly chill, and Basch knew he was addressing Fran, "I am no ordinary hume. The Wood would not suffer me to walk her verdant path otherwise."


Lejn eyed the seven before him. Three were young, not yet adults, then two he thought were perhaps in their twenties, but it was difficult to tell with humes. They aged at thrice the rate of viera after all, and Lejn had been told he didn't age like a hume, so he could only make a guess. Then there was one who was an older hume, but still in his prime so far as could be told.

Then... there was the viera. She wore armor like a Wood-Warder, and obviously wielded a bow, but Lejn could tell from the musculature of her arms that she was a "Master of Weapons", one of the higher ranked Wood-Warders who could become proficient in any weapon without difficulty. Or rather, that she had been. She had to be in her eighties at the very least, and she would have left before Lejn turned thirteen, at the oldest, so...

She had long since deserted. Lejn doubted the Wood could be more than the faintest whisper to those dull ears.

"You... smell of a Salve-Maker," the deserter said after a moment. She did not avert her gaze from his, apparently unashamed of his appellation for her. "You were truly taken in to the village, then?"

"I was," Lejn acknowledged. He didn't like that viera deserted their home. He didn't like that he had been forced to desert the Wood for Mjrn, but her opportunity to turn back had been taken from her, and he would give her that chance back. He had left of his own will and would accept the consequences of abandoning the Wood, whatever they may be.

A whisper of mist and the Mines told him to hurry.

"Mjrn is further into the cave; or rather, she is near at hand, but if we go that way we face a great Wyrm," Lejn informed the humes before him. "Introductions may be given on the path to her," he reached out a hand and pulled the faintly glowing switch behind him.

He knew better now than to attack these blue fiends with his arrows, and wisely saved them in favor of magic. Normally he might worry about running low on energy, but the Mines were thick with Mist. And, moreover, low level spells – the kind that had no "wash" effect that would hit more than just the one intended target – barely registered for him. Dyjs had told him when he was young that he was best suited for the use of magicks, which he most certainly was and had eventually discovered that there was a direct correlation between his ability to use magic and his endurance... but only in the negative sense. As his magic depleted so did his endurance, but increasing his magic only helped his endurance if he healed himself.

Still, the more negative part of that was negligible in a place with as much concentrated Mist as the Mines, or even in the Feywood.

When the fiends were subdued, they moved onward and Lejn was indeed subjected to introductions, though he had no taste for them. These humes were important to him only in so much as they would help in rescuing Mjrn and no further. At one point he cast a water spell on himself to wash away the lingering guts from the flan from his hair – it also served to make them shut up for a moment.

The youngest hume was called Larsa, from the Empire of Archadia, the youngest son of the ruler in fact (not that Lejn cared). His hair was dark and his clothes too fanciful to be practical, but he did well enough with his sword. The next two youngest were a blond boy and girl, Vaan and Penelo respectively. He respected that they didn't have to be there, but not that they were so... useless. Vaan was short tempered and kept telling him to put some clothes on, and while he seemed adaptable in combat it lessened his effectiveness in each area. Too little focus in any one area to be truly skilled. Penelo was very calm and kind, but next to useless in combat which made her place in the venture questionable, though she seemed an able magician.

After the young ones there were the two of middling age, still fresh to adulthood in Lejn's eyes. The female was the princess of her realm – again, Lejn didn't care – on some grand quest that would probably get her killed. The other was male with short hair and fancy yet utilitarian clothing. His weapon, however, was loud and hurt Lejn's ears. He'd never heard anything so loud!

Of the humes, the eldest was called Basch, also a blond, who was scarred and wise. He knew much of the fiends they fought – mostly how to fell them – and Lejn could tell that he wielded a blade naturally. Really, he was the only hume that didn't annoy Lejn, because he knew when to be quiet and had seemed to accept that the viera-raised hume wasn't about to clothe himself in their manner. He obviously had faults but... it was likely humes simply became more tolerable with age.

Lejn tried not to pay attention. He had grown among female viera and supposed that he was immune to the regular lust of humes. However, he hadn't met many males for he did not attend the meeting of mates, being a hume, and there had been no other cause for a visitation from the males in his memory. He had seen them here and there, always from a distance, but now he thought, just perhaps, that this lack of interaction made him curious as to what males were like outside himself.

He could hold no interest in a viera by the Wood's mandate, but he found the humes interesting in their brash manner.

All such thoughts came to a pause – to be resumed later – when the viera introduced herself. Fran. Lejn knew that name, the name of Jote and Mjrn's sister who left years before Lejn's arrival in the Wood. She was the one who had stood up against her older sister's rule and, with her words, started the slow emigration of viera from their homeland. Before Fran, viera truly never left, but in the past fifty years there was at least one a year; five had left since spring just past, all bound for human lands. Lejn had lamented the leaving of Ktjn, one of his childhood playmates and a fellow student of Dyjs.

Her identity did not change his opinion of her, however. Fran, as a viera, held the unconditional acceptance of the Wood; even now the Wood would likely welcome her if she renounced her years with the humes. But Lejn... he was not supposed to leave the Wood until it told him so, and at that time he knew he would not be allowed back. When the Wood sent him away to defend her in a way that it seemed only he could, she would not open her bows to him any longer.

Perhaps that was because Lejn could hear the other lands that the viera seemed deaf to. Or perhaps the Wood wanted him to take a human lover. Maybe the Wood cared for him, or she could be ambivalent to all but his use in defending her when the time came.

Eventually they came upon another switch and fought off more of the gelatinous fiends that Lejn decided he hated only a little less than the brown quadruped from the Planes. After a round of healing they continued on.

This was it. Lejn knew immediately, because this was where the voices of the Mines was at its most disgruntled. Armored men staggered and fell, and the Mist was thick. He didn't hear what was said, only saw Mjrn staggering as if she had had too much Vision Dust and was in that terrible place between Sight and blindness. But it was also as though she was drunk on Mist, feral and simple.

She bounded off into the place the Mines had told him was the dwelling of the Wyrm. He could not tell the fool humes though, and could not turn back on his own. As he had thought previously, one lone hume was not enough to take down a great Wyrm, but perhaps six humes and a viera who might as well be a hume... yes, perhaps that would be enough. These humes were strong in battle, able to fight skillfully and fell foes that Lejn might be wary of. Perhaps it was the Mist talking, but he was suddenly looking forward to the battle to come.

He ran in their wake, tempering his speed that he not be the first sighted, but excited regardless. He had seen the strength of these humes, and thought that he was a fool to go against the Wood. She trusted these humes to save Mjrn, and so should he.

Not that he liked them, but... Mist sang in his blood, and he was ready to do his utmost in rescuing Mjrn.


The battle had been difficult, Lejn could say this without issue. The Wyrm – a Ringwyrm, a Tiamat – had been even larger than Lejn had expected. It was the strongest fiend that the Mines had fostered in the part, the only level where humes still walked, and Lejn knew that he couldn't have dreamed of fighting it alone. Perhaps he was, for the moment, stronger than any individual in this group, but together they were certainly stronger than him.

Throughout the fight Lejn didn't bother wasting arrows, instead giving his bow and arrows to Fran whose equipment was not so finely honed as his own, though near it. He had only his dagger and magicks, the former he didn't use at all making him even more maneuverable. He wasn't physically strong, he never had been. But he was dexterous and had a greater supply of Mist-reception Power than any of these by far – which the Mist in the Mines was constantly refueling – and his magic was stronger. He had once tried to be physically strong, but Dyjs had hit him and told him to focus on his strengths.

Which, really, was very good advice. His area effect spells were especially effective here, after all, when the fiend was too large for any of the effect to hit anything but it, and he could fire off healing spells whenever any of his temporary companions were in need of it.

In all likelihood, the atypical hume realized, these people might have been able to kill the wyrm without his help. They would have had even more trouble with it of course but they were certainly stronger than Lejn had expected. The fiends outside the arena-like cavern must have been as much of child's play for them as him.

The Mines hummed idly, a little miffed that its great beast was felled, but it seemed resigned. It understood the reason besides. It was brother to the Wood, after all, and knew better than to keep her children from her.

The Wyrm fell after a lengthy battle; Lejn was still full to the brim with adrenaline, and the Mist was replenishing what power he had lost.

Mjrn appeared again, and Lejn made ready to follow if she fled. Instead, something blue and foul, a magicite of some sort, fell from her hand, shattering on contact with the ground. Lejn didn't need the Mines to tell him to keep far from… that. A strange shade, made of Mist and a curious armor, separated itself from Mjrn, and she collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

Lejn sucked in a harsh breath. "Mjrn…" He dashed forward only a little behind the Deserter who kneeled beside her sister.

"That thing inside her," Vaan's voice was quiet (for once), but Lejn heard him easily. "What was it?"

"I would also like to know…" Lejn trailed off as he saw his friend's eyes open. She, however, paid him no mind, her gaze glued on Fran, as if enraptured. Grateful that her sister had come for her. Lejn could expect no less. Mjrn was never so cold as Jote, and she had attempted to leave the Wood in pursuit of the middle sibling.

"Is it you?" Mjrn asked. Fran nodded, and Mjrn seemed to relax. She was unconscious again.

"I will carry her," Lejn offered. Not out of spite – he would be civil to Mjrn's sister, for now – but simply because while the others would need their weapons to fight off any fiends, Lejn had his magic and he was confident that he had enough to last between this place and the Village. Perhaps, if the Wood still liked him, she would make paths for them to return to Eruyt by that would be free of fiends. Maybe the Wood would not like that he had heard the voices of her brothers, the Plane and the Mines, but he could hope that she wouldn't mind.

No one contested him, and Lejn lifted Mjrn. He was not especially strong, never had been and never would be, but Mjrn was light and easy to carry. He followed behind the group, who were still adept in dispatching any hostile fiends despite any weariness from their long hours in the Mines.

Upon seeing the Mouth of the Mines, Lejn recalled just how large the sky was, and how he had been unable to keep calm under the vast blue - orangish, now, with the hour. He hesitated, but conceded that he would need to leave the Mines to return Mjrn to the Wood. The Mines mentioned, in passing, a passage deep in the Mines, where the fiends were very strong and humes no longer walked, that had a passage into the FeyWood – Lejn dismissed this out of hand. If the fiends were strong, he could not go that way, and the FeyWood had a greater concentration of Mist than here, which might not do well for Mjrn's health.

"Hopefully our chocobos stayed put," Baltheir spoke as Lejn resumed his walk. "If not, the journey back won't be a pleasant one." The viera-raised hume could not help but agree. The Plane's voice was just on the edge of his hearing, wild and ready to fight. It did not discriminate, and it seemed heedless of Lejn's sensitivity.

Yes, the journey would be most unpleasant should they not have… whatever it was Baltheir said. Lejn assumed it was something that would make the journey easier.

Then they were outside and Lejn was careful to avert his gaze from the sky. He could feel how far away the cliff walls were, but the presence of the humes held back the feeling somewhat, as did the still unconscious viera in his arms. However, this side of the chasm was no longer uninhabited; six of the large avians from the plateau were walking about aimlessly, though they were yellow rather than red or black, and seemed more… docile. The ones above had a vicious look about but these seemed perfectly content to walk about and didn't react when they were approached by the humes.

"We've only got six chocobos," Penelo explained quietly, "so we'll have to double up a couple of them. Fran will probably want her sister to be with her. Lejn, do you mind who you ride with?"

Lejn opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. He felt a little ill under that blue gaze, and did not wish to speak, not right now. And he didn't care who he rode with, so long as they got back to the jungle quickly. Would these humes understand how the sky made him feel? He doubted it. They had all grown outside the jungle, and Lejn had never heard of such a thing before… but, then, how many viera in the Wood had actually been under the sky without trees to block it? It was rare that viera left the Wood and were allowed to return.

Lejn clutched his friend just a little closer and kept his eyes glued to the hume in front of him. Baltheir, he thought by the vest.

They got on the great birds, and Lejn was made to ride one with the eldest of these humes, Basch. Vaan had claimed discomfort at the idea of riding with him and at him riding with any of the females; Basch volunteered after that point, presumably to prevent any arguments on the matter.

Lejn didn't even know what these truly were, never mind how to ride one, and had to take great care not to fall off as the birds darted up the steep incline that he surely could not have gone up while carrying Mjrn as he had initially planned. He also had to take great care not to dig his finger nails into the hume's flesh; while his nails were not so durable as a viera's, they were still grown longer than any of the humes. It would surely hurt, if he lost his control.

Lejn decided quickly that he did not like these birds, either. He much preferred walking.

Thankfully they were soon on the plateau, then in the stony area between the Plane and the Wood. They dismounted the birds, Lejn took Mjrn in his arms again, and they were in the Wood.

Song filled his ears, and Lejn staggered under it. The Wood was annoyed at his disobedience but pleased that he had managed to arrive back safely with her daughters. The last surprised Lejn, that the Wood still counted Fran among her children, but the Wood loved the viera and even one so long deserted was her child regardless of time away.

The wind stirred, and Mjrn woke again.

"Lejn?" she asked quietly, and the hume in question swiftly lowered her to her feet. In a moment she caught her balance. "Where is Fran? I saw –" then she stopped, because Fran was in her field of vision, and Lejn knew better than to keep the sisters apart now. The Wood still yearned for Fran, she was not reviled for her leaving, no matter how Lejn might wish to look down upon her.

Soon after, Mjrn explained why she left, and Lejn lamented his own deafness. She had come to him some days before, asking him to help discover why so many humes were traversing the Wood, but he had refused; only when the Wood whispered of her danger had he braved it. The Wood had told him not to leave in both instances, but the second time he ignored her in favor of his friend. He did not regret this.

There was talk of the blue magicite Mjrn had carried, that which Lejn knew he should avoid at all costs. Penelo, it seemed, carried a stone of like power. It pulled at Lejn, but somehow he thought it was different from the other. No specter haunted it. He took a step back regardless.

"We should return to the village before nightfall," Lejn spoke when silence reigned over the assembled group. "It is Lente's Tear you are after, isn't it? That you might go to the Mountain." Lejn had never been far enough East to see more than the shadow of the Mountain. "The Wood has made one for you and given it to Jote in return for rescuing Mjrn. Come."

Just as he said, Jote gave them the Tear. Lejn sat on a bench and drowned himself in Wood-song. He had heard the voice of the Plane and of the Mines now, but neither were beautiful or loving like the Wood. And yet he knew he would be forced to leave this one day, his home; he would hear other songs.

Just a while more, he pleaded silently. I just want this a little longer.

"You live with the females," Fran observed. Lejn opened one eye to her; the Wood told him of her approach, and that her humes were setting up camp on the platform Jote was allowing them for the night. She didn't say it, but Lejn knew it was because of the Wyrm they would face before leaving; she wasn't so cruel as to send her sister, a Deserter though she was, at a second wyrm in one day without proper rest.

A lamp was hung over the bench Lejn had curled up on, illuminating that section of the public platform – his personal one was several trees over – allowing him to identify how cautious the viera's gaze was.

"I do; I have since I was small, barely walking-age," Lejn admitted. "I heard the Wood even then, and she put me in the care of Dyjs."

"I knew Dyjs, once," Fran's voice was quiet. She sat beside him, which was strange in its own way, but Lejn hummed his acknowledgment. It was Dyjs who had told him Mjrn and Jote had another sister at all. "Is she still..." she paused.

"A taskmaster? More so now, I think, yes," allowed the hume. "But she is my mother in a way the Wood cannot be."

Fran understood.

"I will not go with you, it is not my time to leave the Wood," he continued after a moment. "But the Wood says I will leave soon. Perhaps our paths will again cross at that time. I think... that is destined. There is something important among you. Something about you all that makes the Wood sing louder."

Fran said nothing in response to this; Lejn suspected she couldn't. That night more than one hume slept cradled in the loving boughs of the Wood, and when morning came Lejn watched the strange group leave. There was something about them...

If they returned by way of the Wood, Lejn knew without a doubt he would travel with them. He only wished that time would be long in coming.

Author's Note: I want to point out that the game plot does not cover the entirety of the story. There's a reason why I actually bothered to have it be Harry Potter who gets dropped with the viera. I could have done Aerith (which would have been pretty cool and probably would make more sense... she was actually my original idea, but I wasn't sure what kind of plot she could have), or Naruto, or any other number of characters. Just keep in mind that I specifically used Harry.

I hadn't intended to update this for a while – especially since I STILL haven't updated Founding Father – but I got started and couldn't stop. Ehheh ^^"

Some sections are quoted from the game. Script source from GameFAQs (type FFXII script and it's the third link - it was the only one my school didn't have blocked). And yes, I'm aware the conversation with Mjrn doesn't take place in the middle of the Wood, but Lejn would insist she be taken straight to the village in case there was something wrong with her, unlike the party, who were content to sit about in the Mines to converse with her.

Thanks to Araceil for betaing :3