DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter is not mine!

AN: The poll for who Harry's mates are will have people dropping off after I post the next chapter so if you haven't voted go to my profile and vote now!

Thank you everyone for your ideas for what kind of snake Ash's familiar should be, but apparently even though basilisks are overdone it still won.

August 20

Somewhere it the Wasatch Mountains

"I hate portkeys!" Ash grumbled as usual he had landed in an ungraceful lump.

Daxton laughed.

"Shut up, you French poof!" Ash exclaimed indignantly.

"Hey!" Corbyn chime in. "That's my mate you're laughing at." His French accent was barely noticable.

"It isn't my fault." Daxton said still chuckling. "He makes it easy."

Corbyn punched Daxton in the stomach and then started laughing. "I'm sorry. You just make it so easy."

Ash smiled, amused at the brothers' antics. "I apologize for interrupting the tease fest, but we are wasting time."

Corbyn offered me his hand and bowed like a gentleman. "Thank you Corbyn." Ash said as he was pulled to his feet.

"Cory, I insist.."

"Cory then."

Daxton started making retching sounds.

Ash stuck his tongue out at him.

"So mature." Dax said.

Ash pointed at the trail they seemed to be at the head of. "I think we are supposed to be going that way."

They had been walking for about an hour when they came across a deep canyon.

Daxton looked down. "Ouch." There was a river raging through some painful looking rocks. "Any bright ideas?"

"It seems to me we have 3 options." Cory said. "We could climb down cross the river and then climb back up."

"That would take to long." Ash replied.

"Or we could build a bridge."

"I don't know about you two, but I have no idea how to build a bridge." Ash responded.

"Then we fly across."

"Brooms?" Ash asked feeling for his shrunken Firebolt the was in his pocket.

"Unless tiny things on your back work." Cory said.

"I hate to burst your bubble, but what do we do when those Stymphalian birds* attack?" Dax questioned.

Ash eyed the stork-like birds. "Their bronze beaks look awfully sharp."

Cory thought for a moment before saying. "One person will cross at a time then and the other two will use magic to protect them from the birds if they attack."

Dax rolled his eyes. "Or we could just cast a freezing charm on them."

Ash decided they were taking too much time and cast the charm. All of the birds nesting in the cliffs froze. "You two just going to stand there and talk or are you coming?" He pulled out his broom and unshrunk it as he talked.

The two vampires realizing that Ash would leave without them if they didn't hurry quickly unshrunk their own brooms.

They kicked off the ground and easily flew over the chasm.

"One challenge down." Ash said as they dismounted on the other side. "I would suggest we fly the whole way, but I imagine if we tried those Rocs flying above us will attack."

Dax glanced at the vicious creatures. "Yeah, let's not try."

As they walked away Ash asked a question that had been bothering him for a while. "Why can't muggles find this place? They hike around here all the time, don't they?"

It was Dax who answered. Hundreds of years ago the founder recognized that problem. To solve it she copied the mountains and removed them. Essentially creating another dimension like the demons and angels have, except it is much smaller."

"Thats cool!" Ash exclaimed. "Why aren't there more places like this?"

Again it was Dax who replied. "No one quite knows how she did it. All attempts to replicate it so far have all ended badly. No one can keep it stable and securely anchored to this dimension.

Cory jumped in. "Many of the experiments have ended in the people inside getting trapped there or disappearing completing."

"Sometimes they just explode." Dax put in.

"The worst case is the Bermuda Triangle." Cory continued. "People go in, but don't always come back out."

"I've always wondered about that." Ash remarked.

AN: The idea of copied and removed land is originally Miranda_Flairgold's but has been borrowed and modified with permission.

If you have anymore ideas for the challenges they will face review and tell me. This chapter would have been longer, but I can't think of anything else.

* man-eating birds from Greek mythology