*Ojai, California*
"Josh, I'll pass the knowledge as soon as we are safe, but now we have to run" Harry's words were engraved on his mind, having run from the other side of the plaza to the antique shop, he was winded, despite being able to run twice as much in little time. However, he could still hear what Dee had said about Flamel in their discussion. 'Flamel isn't innocent, how big is his body count exactly?'
Harry opened the door to the antique shop just in time to see Sophie and the Witch's aura fade, "Bad news Nick, Dee caught up, I say we have fifteen minutes tops before he starts sending golems after us."
"I will hold him off" the Witch of Endor said, "Even he cannot win against the wind goddess," If what Harry and Nick had said about her was true, then he was inclined to believe her, "Scathy dear, do make sure you don't take that long to call me."
"Yes grandma," The warrior looked more annoyed than anything, and Josh noticed that she was holding Sophie steady. He quickly relieved her of that, putting Sophie's arm around his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" He asked her quietly, wondering if perhaps he should have insisted that he go first, despite Harry's promise to pass on 'transfiguration' knowledge as soon as Dee was dealt with.
"Yes," She answered just as quietly, "I'm just dizzy, it was like being a hurricane, a breeze, and a current at the same time, but it was amazing all the same"
"Are you sure you want to carry on, we could just go back to Aunt Agnes," He knew the answer, how could he not when it was the same that he would have given were he in her position, but he had to make sure anyway.
"Yes, we can't just back out now, not when we've started already," She was right, neither of them would let themselves be discouraged by the lack of options, they never had, and they wouldn't start now.
"Did you know we're supposed to be the chosen ones?" She asked him, making him raise his eyebrows in surprise and confusion, "Yes, it's supposed to be that you and I have pure gold and silver auras, and that the guy who wrote the codex prophesied that we would either destroy the world or save it."
"The two that are one, the one that is all. There will come a time when the Book is taken,
And the Queen's man is allied with the Crow, Then the Elder will step out of the Shadows, And the immortal must train the mortal. The two that are one must become the one that is all, One to save the world, And another to destroy it," Scathatch said to them, "You two are now in a war, I'm sorry for that."
"I will open the Lay Line in my shop, and collapse it as soon as you are through," Josh was not given any time to think on the prophesy before having to pay complete attention to the Witch, "Children, do not get separated from the alchemist, he will take you to your next teachers, and whatever you do, follow the orders of my granddaughter."
"Come on you two, you're jumping with me," Flamel guided them by the shoulders to a mirror that was shining brightly, a contrast to the darkness that prevailed in the store, "We wave to walk through the mirror, whatever you do, don't stop walking, Harry, Scathatch, we'll see you on the other side."
Josh was hesitant to follow through with the plan, but what choice did he have when he was not prepared to deal with the golems that would crash the store any second now, and so, with a very hesitant heart, he helped his sister through, and kept walking forward.
Harry stared as the twins and Nicholas crossed the mirror, "Do you need time to prepare?" he asked the Witch of Endor, as he refused to call her by whatever name she was going by now.
"No, but help would be appreciated by this blind woman nonetheless," She answered, but raising her hand before he could take out his wand, "I know you are a child of Merlin, the fool thought practicing in the dark ages was a good idea, so I want to see how much his gift has diminished"
"Yeah, I don't feel like showing off when there is an army a few minutes from here," He drew his wand and started to concentrate.
"You are a child of Merlin, you WILL show me how much of his power still runs within his children," The Witch started to glare, so he complied.
It was a difficult thing to transfigure silver, it being a noble metal meant that magic that was not put into it through direct means like runes or as a focus point mean that indirect magic performed on it would take twice as much effort to do it, and nearly three times the magic.
He was, however, Harry Potter, and as little as that carried here in America, it did mean that he was willing to go the extra mile just to make something properly, and a transfiguration-animation combination was no exception. His shoulder tense, he first made nearly a dozen mirrors into a blob of silver, copper, and glass that would not look out of place in a disco club. The second step was making the blob, of a volume as big as himself, into a shape that could fight, and that meant pulling all his knowledge of the human body and using it.
The end result was a knight with glass eyes, hey it had to go somewhere, didn't it, and a very menacing looking mace on one hand. He took a deep breath, rubbed his temples, and prepared himself for the most exhausting part of the process: Animation.
Normally this would be easy and only a little taxing, but that was when he was enchanting objects to operate themselves, like his sweeping brooms, and mops, and the brush he used to groom Itzmin, because that wolf could shed like wow.
This was complex animation, beyond 'do this in a cyclic way', this was animating something so that not only would it move as a normal human would, it would recognize threats to the place it was in and it would destroy them. It was going to attack everything that attacked the store.
The glass eyes lit up with a yellow glow, which turned green as it saw the Witch, Harry, and Scathy, and a low groan echoed through the shop.
"Impressive, that looks like one of the statues that he used for help in battle," The Witch waved towards the open Ley Line, "Now, off you go, make sure the children survive through the day."
Harry scowled, shoving a hand on his satchel and retrieving a pepper up potion, walking through the portal just a second after Scathy did.
The Witch of Endor, Zephania, was left with the warrior, "Step outside, they'll be coming soon." The statue groaned and complied, ripping the door from its hinges as it walked through it, so she sighed in exasperation. It was nothing but a brute with a mission.
Lets hope her new chosen is as good as she thinks, the Witch thought, she never was the same after her sister left.
*London, England*
Sirius Black could not be a happier man.
After his exoneration in 1994, thanks to his godson tipping the head of the DMLE on where the presumed dead Peter Pertigrew was, subsequent trial, and final incarceration of a lot of the Death Eaters that went free thanks to their clout, he had tried to go back to a normal life. He very well deserved it, didn't he?
It was not to be, thanks to the spin that the Daily Prophet had put to the story of his trial, he had become as big a celebrity as Harry had, being hailed as a vigilante, for not contacting the DMLE after finding that Petigrew was a Death Eater rather than the Order member everyone thought he was. The hype had died down by the time Harry and his two friends were due to return to Mexico, the hype about why the Boy-Who-Lived, now the Fullmetal-Survivor, silly name considered that only his arm was metal, was not in his birthplace of Britain and instead in what the purebloods considered a backwater colony of the Spanish.
This too had died out in time, replaced with news like the muggleborn rights act of 1995, Dumbledore stepping down from the title of Headmaster of Hogwarts in 1998, being replaced by Minerva McGonagal, the dementor massacre of 2000, where the dementors went mad and had to be put down with some experimental artifacts from the Department of Misteries, and the 2002 election of the youngest minister of magic, Lisa Turpin, to the rage of the remaining supremacists, she was a muggle born.
Since then, Sirius had gone back to the dating scene, trying his hand at the old tricks that made him one of the most wanted wizards at Hogwarts for dating, only to be disapointed as all the women he had considered were either gold diggers, already involved with someone, or just not interested.
This led him to the muggle world.
Apparently Fudge had kept his escape a secret from the muggle government, as not one person had recognized him, and he was glad for that, as it was the perfect chance to work his manly charms on people that did not know what he had been accused for.
With some help from his old friend Remus, who actually knew how to maneuver in the muggle world, he had found himself inside a club, at the ripe old age of thirty six, found himself dating a frustrated nurse that did not like the small amount of praise she got at the hospital she worked for. Three years later, and the two had exchanged vows in front of the priest, with Helen's family, and Sirius' closest friends there.
It was during the honeymoon that he had told Helen that he was in fact a wizard, and proceeded to show her some of his best skills, like the animagus transformation, and his charms work. The shock had driven the woman away for three days, during which he had done nothing stare at the window of their room.
Now the two were a happy couple, and thanks to his talent with relaxation charms Helen enjoyed her work like never before, and he got to smile every time he got home from his work as an auror, knowing that he could expect to be received by his beautiful wife.
Remus had married as well, to his niece Nymphadora, despite all the werewolf's attempts at discouraging her, and he was working at Hogwarts now, as a DADA teacher, as no one on the board of directors opposed to it anymore.
His phone rang, a strange occurrence at this time of the night, so more than a bit curious, he picked it up, "Hello, Sirius, yeah, I think I'm in France, so I may stop by tomorrow," the man blinked in confusion.
"Harry, is that you? Why are there sirens in the background?"
"No time to talk, listen, I'll stop by some time tomorrow, just whatever you do, don't tell anyone."
And the line went dead. "What in Merlin's name was that, kid?" he asked himself, but in the end only managed to shake his head.
