HP/ Sandman/ RWBY Crossover
You Get a Lifetime
Rating: M
This story is a Harry Potter / Sandman crossover (Ch 1-3) and HP / RWBY crossover (Ch 4-9). Harry Potter's universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman. RWBY belongs to Monty Oum. There are several other shout-outs and most are listed after the epilogue.
Content rating is between T and M.
Feel free to use my ideas, but do drop me a message so I can read your story too. Comments on errors are welcome.
Harry leaves Britain to work for Death, before retiring to Remnant where he meets and lives with Blake.
Chapter 9: And Then There Was One
It was a tale as old as time, at least human time. The many civilizations of Earth, before and after Harry's own era, lived and breathed the cyclical tale of war. Remnant, which had not fully healed from the last Faunus war, was a battlefield once more.
In Blake's fourth and final year at Beacon, the ultimate plans of Cinder Fall, Roman Torchwick and a few other sponsors came to fruition. Under cover of nightfall, creatures of Grimm were currently thronging the streets of Vale - not just the city of Vale, but the kingdom of Vale. At the same time, Cinder was leading a group of insurgents on a massacre within the castle of the royal family. Huntsmen, Huntresses and upper-level students from all the fighting schools of Vale, along with the police force, were being deployed by the Central Command.
Faunus combatants, including Blake, were despatched to low light areas to slaughter the Grimm. Various groups had already succeeded in plugging the intentional holes in the kingdom's walls that had allowed Grimm to flood into Vale. The Breach in Blake's first year had merely been, on hindsight, a feasibility study by the insurgents. She was now in one of the slums where electricity and backup power had been disrupted, herding away small groups of Grimm at a time to kill them safely. It was a monotonous task for the fourth year student, for whom a practiced, precise balance of Aura application and regeneration meant that this clean-up was a war of attrition she was not losing.
Amidst the bloodshed, Harry took a back seat, speaking only enough to ensure that boredom did not erode his partner's focus, or to infrequently offer suggestions. If mini-Ducky could leave Blake's side, then maybe he could have helped Blake herd the Grimm. If he had an Aura, he could have handled healing her body's muscular strain and clearing her accumulated lactic acid, while she focused on offence to mow down the Grimm more quickly. If he had magic, he could have conjured a Patronus or transfigured animals to gore the soulless beasts. However, these were flights of fancy, and Blake was capable enough. Harry watched Yang, Weiss and Ruby fight far, far away.
Yang met with the variegated Neopolitan for the umpteenth time in her Hunting career and showed her progress when she duelled Neo on equal footing, before slowly overpowering the mute girl. Focused as she was on the fight before her, Yang did not dodge a runaway Aura-piercing bullet from an altercation elsewhere.
Within seconds of Yang's right femur being splintered, Neo's umbrella smashed her other femur, her spine and her neck. As Yang lay battered and unconscious on the ground, Neo commanded a small whirlwind of glass shards to cause countless cuts over her opponent's body, and Yang's Aura began to deplete from trying to heal the numerous wounds.
Breathing heavily, Neo eyed the blonde's still-steaming gauntlets with a malicious glint in her mismatched eyes and decided to take a trophy. She could not figure out how to deactivate the gauntlet mode, or to detach the gauntlets. Shrugging, she reasoned that she could just take both arms now and solve the conundrum later. Neo gripped Yang's limp right arm and began to circle her.
Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, here we go round…
With the first rotation, Yang's wrist dislocated. With the second rotation, her elbow twisted open with a pop. With the third rotation, her shoulder left its socket. All of a sudden, Neo's hands started to bubble and char where they held the gauntlet. In silent horror, Neo flailed frantically as an excruciating wave of necrosis slowly blackened her flesh starting from her palms. Many agonizing minutes later, she was dead.
Still floating in mid-air, Yang's right gauntlet tilted as its stony black eye swept its gaze over her body, which no longer breathed but still pumped blood, weakly. Both gauntlets flared and melted, before flowing into the numerous cuts and burrowing through flesh to coat all her bones, uniting shards and fragments as needed. A golden ring, inset with a matte black stone, reformed on her right index finger. Her body glowed.
Yang breathed again.
Weiss was barely holding her own against Cinder. Myrtenaster was nearly out of Dust, and after it did so, the blade would no longer be able to pierce Cinder's flaming shields. Numerous fights and now a speedy opponent who threw incinerating attacks in unfair quantities took a toll on Weiss, who was now dangerously dehydrated. Vision blurring, she glimpsed her partner's red hood sidle towards Cinder from a blind spot, and took a gamble.
A short round of frenetic parries and thrusts ensued. Keeping her face blank, Weiss opened up a gaping hole in her own defence and winced as Cinder hacked off her leading left arm just below the elbow. Scant milliseconds later, Crescent Rose sliced smoothly through Cinder's slender neck.
Myrtenaster cracked and fell apart before it even hit the floor. The red and white Huntresses stared at the biggest remaining piece of the Multi-Action Dust Rapier, a fifteen-inch long knobbly rod, shaped almost like a branch or twig but in the blade's native metallic colour. Weiss wrapped the fingers of her remaining hand around the piece, but it crumbled into nonexistence and left only a familiar needle. She wordlessly slipped the needle into her high-heeled boot.
By dawn, the war was over.
Epilogue
Weiss graduated from Beacon Academy but did not Hunt afterward, instead preparing to take over the mantle of the Schnee Dust Company. Timely first aid, appropriate preservation, her Aura and subsequent skilful surgery allowed Weiss to reattach her dominant left arm, but it did not regain its original level of function. Use of her right arm during her left arm's healing process meant that she became somewhat ambidextrous, with incomplete dexterity in both arms, but she got by satisfactorily. Her needle was fashioned into a brooch, which she gave Ruby in place of an engagement ring. She said emphatically that Ruby had won her heart, although Ruby protested that Weiss also had her Dusty hooks on her own. Neither spoke of the needle's violent lineage to others.
Yang underwent a scan, which showed that every bone except for her skull was now coated and infused with metal. She declared that Ember Celica had driven a hard bargain, but she had feared that if her skull became any denser, Ruby might think she was a bimbo. Just for that remark, Ruby hid all of Yang's death metal albums for a month. With extensive physiotherapy, Yang recovered to an athletic level despite her increased mass, and became a combat teacher at Signal Academy. She gave her mysterious ring to Ruby, hoping it would protect the working Huntress.
Blake continued to Hunt for a few years after marrying Yang, before taking a sabbatical. After consulting with Harry, both agreed that there was no chance that Harry would be reincarnated as her child. Both of their souls were stitched to Blake's body firmly, and his eventual fate was to die with her and never be reborn. She told Yang that she would carry their marriage's pregnancy. Harry laughed at her curses and winced at the mutually felt contractions during her labour, then expressed relief when she did not name her sprogs Tweedledum and Tweedledee. When the twins were old enough to attend elementary school, Blake returned to the Hunt.
Team RWBY decided to hold on to the ticks generated by Blake's Semblance. Zwei, tail wagging cheerfully, accepted a tick as well.
One calm and quiet night, at Harry's urging, Blake visited Ruby at her house. It transpired that Ruby had been experiencing occasional oddities during her missions, and Blake would be the first person to whom she described the phenomena in detail.
Sometimes, younger Grimm would swarm her in highly berserk patterns, while older Grimm would stare at her motionlessly as she cut them down.
Her red Aura was marred by a single lime green blotch, which changed in size or shape. Her hood now had a permanent green trim of the same shade.
Among other effects, the weirdest had to be stumbling upon single rose petals, not from her Semblance, inscribed with a variety of emoticons, and hearing laughter when she picked them up. This was almost certainly not Weiss' doing, because she hated emoticons with a passion.
At Harry's suggestion, Blake asked if Ruby knew the story of the Deathly Hallows. Indeed she did, but the version she had heard as a bedtime story and now recounted to Blake was a mosaic of different tales, having mutated through retellings. The cat Faunus told her as much.
"There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely, winding road at twilight."
In time, they reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across…
As one, the bonded pair recited the Story in its original glory, neither missing a word, nor stumbling.
…It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son.
"And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life."
Upon hearing the tale, Ruby understood and believed it on a deep, instinctual level. She pinned on Weiss' brooch over her heart, took Yang's ring off a necklace and slipped it on, and raised her signature hood, whereupon her entire being flickered into invisibility. Crescent Rose rippled into existence in mid-air and unfolded into its scythe form.
"Bee's knees, right?" she whispered in wonder.
FIN
Thank you for reading.
Acknowledgements
Shout-outs:
Alice in Wonderland / American McGee's Alice (Vorpal Cleaver, Jabberwock, Cheshire Cat), Despicable Me (Minion title), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Marvin, Babel fish, Gargleblaster, Vorgons), Sword Art Online (Aincrad, Asuna, rapier skills, context menu)
Minor shout-outs / Seldom mentioned:
Bartender (Eden Hall), Beauty and the Beast (Tale as Old as Time), Calvin and Hobbes (Calvinball), Digimon (Blue Digizoid), Dilbert (Pointy Haired Boss), Dragon Ball (Hyperbolic Time Chamber), Enid Blyton (Five Find-Outers and Dog), Koschei (needle in the Nevermore), Mary Poppins (Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious), Oktoberfest (Eins, zwei, drei, g'suffa, prost!), Soul Eater (stitching and sewing a soul), Ten Little Injuns (And Then There Was One), Touhou Project (Onozuka Komachi), The Last Question (MULTIVAC), Two-Face (marked coin), Type-MOON (NRVNQSR), Wonder Woman (Diana's Lasso of Truth); Atari, Boggle, Scrabble, Bunsen, Roentgen, Conway's Game of Life
