Disclaimer: All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies. All portions of the Pokémon universe/worlds/characters are the property of The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and GAME FREAK Inc. This story is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written for my own enjoyment. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites.
AN: This story has just been edited and updated and it is now self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance.
Chapter 11: Braving Battle
Thursday Evening, October 31, 1991
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Scotland
Only the protective nature of their collars prevented the immediate deaths of the two Pokémon as they darted in and attempted to hamstring the lumbering monster. Since the troll couldn't see what was attacking it, it couldn't accurately counter attack. Harry took this opportunity to forcefully pull his fellow first year to her feet and shove her in the direction of the still open door. When she baulked at having to move past the troll, Harry hit her in the bum with a well placed stinging hex that spurred her into moving.
Unfortunately, her squeal of pain and humiliation drew the troll's attention back to their position, and Harry was soon cut off from his only path of escape. Praying his father would forgive him for being so reckless, Harry ran up to the troll and kicked it in the knee to allow Granger to flee unmolested. He was rewarded for this selfless act by the crushing pressure of the troll's fist wrapping around him as it grabbed hold of him and began squeezing him tightly.
As he struggled to breathe, Harry caught sight of his male eevee attacking the troll's club hand where it dangled near the floor. The Pokémon must have bit down on a nerve, because the troll roared out in pain and swung its fist violently, sending the Pokémon flying.
"Spy Cat, no!" Harry screamed out in anger and fear as he saw his little friend bounce off one of the broken sinks and fall to the floor; afraid that the little male had not survived. He redoubled his efforts to free himself from the ham-fisted beast that had picked him up. His arms were securely trapped against his sides though, and he was unable to even use his wand to create a distraction. As he struggled he caught a single glimpse of Lucy's horrified face staring up at him from where she lay just behind the troll. She'd been knocked out briefly after getting hit by the creature and had apparently only just regained consciousness.
Harry was soon fighting just to keep from blacking out over a lack of oxygen as he couldn't breathe very well since the troll was crushing his chest, along with the rest of his body (the overpowering stench of the beast didn't help maters either). Down on the floor, he could hear the nervous whines of Dilly as she tried to give Spy Cat a Helping Hand. Right at that moment, a beam of moonlight bathed the bathroom in pale light. A second, brighter light grew into being from where Harry had last seen his male eevee.
Harry felt a thread of hope fill him as he gasped desperately at the air the moment he realized that Spy Cat was evolving; his faithful little friend still lived. Frantic, Harry resorted to biting the fingers that held him, only to gag over the foul taste of the troll's thick skin. His efforts predictably (and thankfully) drew the attention of the troll away from the vulnerable transforming eevee since the evolutionary process seemed to have temporarily negated the spells that usually kept the Pokémon hidden from view.
Regrettably that wasn't exactly in Harry's best interest as the troll brought him right up to its face, looking for all the world like it was going to eat him. He was saved this time by the intervention of Dilemma, who had once more bitten the troll's ankle in an effort to ham string the monster. Shortly after that, Spy Cat, now fully evolved into the moonlight form of umbreon, used a confuse ray to disorient the troll.
This caused the troll to stumble drunkenly and drop Harry from a height of about six feet when it tried to steady itself against the wall. The rough landing knocked what little air Harry had left his lungs out and nearly had him unconscious as he heard and felt several bones snap. It was only his need to make certain his Pokémon friends were not harmed that allowed him to push the encroaching darkness back long enough to croak out, "Good job, Spy Cat."
He then clenched his jaw around the spike of pain as felt Dilemma grab hold of his robes at the back of his neck and dragging him out of immediate danger inch by agonizing inch, only to be hindered when the troll stepped on the edge of Harry's robes. Knowing he couldn't hold onto his consciousness forever in his current condition, Harry frantically tried to recall which attacks umbreon could use that might be effective against the rampaging troll.
"Paralyze him with Mean Look and then attack with Pursuit," Harry encouraged as loudly as he could as he finally recalled the list of attacks umbreon could use. He groaned when Mean Look failed but smiled briefly as Spy Cat's Pursuit made the troll stumble forward. It was at that point that his world slowly began to go dark once more, a sure sign that he was losing his battle of wills against his injuries. "Dodge… dodge… Faint Attack…" were the last things Harry called out as he sank into unconsciousness.
September 1991 to October 1991
Potter Property, Northern Highlands
Scotland
Since the day he had watched Harry get on the train, Ash had spent his time working side by side with the hired construction workers building the cottage in the Highlands when he wasn't cleaning up the London Townhouse. His willingness to work alongside the goblins, wizards, and squibs that were working on the home had earned him the grudging respect of the goblins; mostly because he readily helped with the manual labor since very little magic was used to put up the basic foundations and skeleton frames of the walls. While magic could have easily been used to build the house completely, magical constructs tended to degrade over time causing buildings constructed that way to collapse. So, even though magic could have cut the time it would take to finish the cottage in half, it wasn't used except to strengthen the structure as it grew.
On the days when he wasn't helping the crews, Ash spent time training Harry's Pokémon out of view of the workers with the help of the Pokémon he'd brought with him. He did this for two reasons; one, all of the Pokémon needed regular exercise to stay fit and two, Harry's pining Pokémon needed the distraction. Ash had discovered the latter reason on the morning of the second day Harry had been gone, when for some reason Dancer and Trickster stirred up a ruckus and overturned several crates of building material for the house.
He hadn't known the cause for their early morning frenzy until he received Harry's next letter two days later. Apparently, about the time the Pokémon began acting up, Harry had been mixed up in a small scuffle with a more advanced student. It immediately reminded Ash of the time when Harry had been attacked by his history teacher in Viridian City, when Dancer had gone berserk while they were out in the field pulling data off the field equipment. Ash made a mental note to pay more attention to the Pokémon's behavior from that point forward and made an effort to help them burn off their excess energy in order to prevent them from acting up more often. In this way, Harry's Pokémon could be used as a kind of meter regarding Harry's health.
Since that day, the Pokémon had been fairly mellow almost to the point of moping as the days stretched into weeks. Ash felt horrible for the pining creatures as he turned his thoughts to those Pokémon of his own that he'd left behind in his world with his mother. He wondered if they were feeling as sad and awful as Harry's were. All through the years he'd spent capturing and battling with his Pokémon he'd rarely given much thought to those individuals that weren't in his possession; he'd known Professor Oak was caring for them and left it at that.
It wasn't that he neglected them; he just assumed they were safe and happy where they were. And in about sixty percent of the cases he probably would have been correct. It was those other forty percent that were now weighing heavily on Ash's conscience though, as he recalled individual Pokémon he'd spent considerable time with; Pokémon such as Treecko (who'd eventually gone on to evolve into Sceptile), Chikorita (who'd transformed into Meganium), and Cyndaquil, (now Typhlosion). Ash felt guilty about deciding to leave those Pokémon behind, even though at the time he chose which ones would come with him he'd thought he'd be more limited by a lack of free space for them.
These thoughts were heavy on his mind when he woke up on Halloween morning to take the Pokémon out for a quick jog around the construction sight before the day's crew arrived. He then spent the rest of the morning working on the frame for the south wall of the cottage with a pair of fierce looking goblins. Around lunch time, when he took a break to spend some time with the critters, he noticed that Trickster was staring off to the south and pacing in agitation. Ash made note of the ninetales's unease as he fixed up a large platter of berries for the rest of the Pokémon. When Harry's first Pokémon laid down facing south with a petulant whine, Ash assumed the normally mischievous Pokémon was just missing the boy. He wouldn't know how wrong he was about that until later that night.
After lunch, he returned to the construction sight and dove right back into the work, putting Trickster's behavior out of his mind for the time being. Around sunset (shortly after six o'clock that night), the goblins set out a horde of yellow fairy lights so they could finish putting up the final wall of the outer frame before quitting for the night (goblins didn't seem to know the meaning of the words quitting time and therefore rarely ever stopped working before they'd finished their set goal for the day regardless of how long they'd been working or what time of day it was). Ash was had just decided to stick around to help start cleaning up for the day when he heard a familiar long, low, mournful howl coming from somewhere near the caves.
Dropping the bag of nails and hammer he'd been holding, Ash took off at a dead run to find out what had disturbed Trickster. He was barely halfway to the cave and could see the agitated ninetales crouching low to the ground as it growled and barked at some unseen foe. Suddenly, he jumped up high into the air and gave off a second grief-stricken howl before he gave a flick of his nine tails and disappeared.
"Teleport? Ninetales can't learn Teleport! He should not have been able to do that," Ash muttered as he stumbled to a stop and stared at the spot the normally playful Pokémon had recently occupied. He was knocked out of his stupor, literally, by a wildly panicking Dancer as the fire pony danced fretfully back and forth practically on top of him (the rest of Harry's Pokémon agitated as well though they weren't trying to trample Ash). "Harry!" Ash groaned out in sudden understanding as Trickster's behavior suddenly made sense.
Without even sparing a thought for the goblins and wizards currently watching him curiously, Ash climbed to his feet and activated the permanent portkey that traveled between the Highland property and the steps of Gringotts in Diagon Alley. Somehow, Dancer had grabbed hold of the silver chain before the device activated and the two of them landed awkwardly on the marble steps. With no regards to the witches and wizards exiting the bank, Ash and the agitated Pokémon barged up the stairs in a headlong rush. Once inside the lobby, the older man was devastated to find that the building was mostly deserted, with the odd goblin or wizard merely finishing up their final bits of business before closing time.
"Please! Someone, anyone! I need to get to Hogwarts immediately – it's an emergency," Ash cried out frantically as he tore through the lobby in the direction he knew the private offices and conference rooms laid. "My son is in trouble and I have to reach him before it's too late."
Ash had just about reached the doors leading to the inner rooms when he felt an iron grip grab hold of his shoulder. Spinning around due to the sudden loss of forward momentum, he was shocked to find a rather stately (if somewhat frail looking) old man restraining him.
"You spoke of un cas d'urgence, oui?" the man queried intently. "At Hogwarts? Can you explain, please?"
Thursday Evening, October 31, 1991
Gringotts Bank, Diagon Alley
London, England
Nicholas and Perenelle had arranged to meet with the goblins on a night when they knew Dumbledore would be far too occupied with his students to bother investigating any whispers of their presence on English soil for the first time in over a hundred years. The soonest possible date for this to occur just happened to be Halloween night. Oh, they could have conceivably shown up at Gringotts on the first night of term, during the Welcoming Feast, but there hadn't been enough time to gather everything they would need to take with them and make traveling arrangements to get to Gringotts and back before Dumbledore was notified of their presence. As urgent as the situation seemed to be in their hearts, they knew they needed to plan this meeting carefully.
It was times like these that Nicolas wished his animagus form could fly like his wife's peregrine form; unfortunately foxes don't have wings, not even wily old ones that have access to magic. So travel plans were made in the muggle world, under one of their numerous aliases, for them to travel by boat across the channel during the afternoon on the thirty first of October. They also arranged for a muggle taxi to pick them up once they arrived, as they wished to avoid using magic if at all possible, to prevent their presence from being noticed on the off chance that the Ministry was monitoring the sensors in the London area for their specific signatures (under Dumbledore's orders). Their precautions may have been bordering on the edge of paranoia but they didn't live to see their six hundredth and something birthday last year by relying on shoddy planning or reckless bumbling.
Once in London they could prevail upon the hospitality of the goblins if need arose for them to spend the night there, or simply apparate home from the coast once they finished their business. There was no risk in leaving the country magically, especially when just crossing over the channel, as the English were far more concerned with who was entering their small country rather than who was leaving.
When the day of their appointment had finally arrived, the two of them had donned their slightly outdated muggle clothes and set off with a determined air. Everything went smoothly, between customs and the speed of the trip across the short body of water, right up until they stepped down off the boat on the English side of the divide. First, the taxi they had requested to meet them was late. Apparently the driver assigned to pick them up had been mugged by his previous customer and had been unable to finish his rounds for the day.
Then, when the replacement finally arrived the man sped off going the wrong way – apparently he'd misheard their destination and thought for some reason the Flamels wanted to visit the King's College on the other side of the Thames. By the time they got him to turn around and take them to Charing Cross Road, they were already running nearly two hours behind schedule. The seemingly endless delays were setting both of them on edge as the longer they were in England the greater the chance of Dumbledore discovering their presence.
It wasn't that the Flamels were personally afraid of Dumbledore; either one of them was more than a match for the younger upstart. No, the Flamels were terrified of what the manipulative old man would do to their grandson should he learn of their meeting with the goblins. Especially, if he had even the slightest suspicion of their duplicity regarding the 'Philosopher's Stone' that they had allowed him to blackmail them into giving him. The entire situation frustrated them to no end, mainly because someone of Dumbledore's caliber had hoodwinked their family into betraying itself which ultimately led to their downfall. So as long as Dumbledore held all the aces, they would have to bide their time and dance around him. The moment the cards were in their favor though, all bets were off and right now they were but a hairbreadth away from obtaining one of the cards they desperately needed; the name of their missing grandson.
Upon arriving at their destination (finally), the two of them exited the taxi cab and gave the driver only half the amount on the meter. When the driver complained, Nicholas heatedly pointed out that they were now over two hours late for an urgent appointment due to the mistakes that had been made either by the company or by the driver, Nicholas added that he'd be calling the main office to complain the moment he returned home. This was enough incentive for the driver to back off and grumblingly accept the reduced fare (which in actuality was the exact amount the Flamels would have owed if they'd arrived on time without any detours).
Nicholas and Perenelle didn't wait around at that point, knowing the cabby might still try to involve the police in order to receive the bloated fare. Moving quickly, the pair of them ducked into the Leaky Cauldron with their hoods up and hurried through the pub in the hopes that the goblins wouldn't be too irritated over their tardiness, otherwise they may have to wait until the end of the school year to reschedule the meeting during the Hogwarts' End of Term Feast.
They'd barely walked through the doors of the bank and headed in the direction of the closest unoccupied teller, when a frantic man burst into the lobby raving about an emergency at Hogwarts and practically begging for the goblins to help him. His plea for help indicated the man was either a squib or a muggle and the fact that he approached the goblins as opposed to the English Ministry of Magic for help was intriguing. The fact that the goblins didn't run the man out of the bank at spear point indicated the man either had lots of money or someone the man was related to had lots of money.
If not for his mention of the school, Nicholas might have paid the man no mind as he needed to take care of his own business. However, because Hogwarts was mentioned, he felt the need to learn more of the emergency the man was talking about; his thoughts on the fraudulent stone. So, he changed his course to waylay the man before he vanished into the warren of conference rooms and offices beyond the lobby. Once he had hold of the man, to prevent him from disappearing, Nicholas immediately demanded, "You spoke of un cas d'urgence, oui? At Hogwarts? Can you explain… please?"
Translations: French to English
un cas d'urgence = an emergency
oui = yes
AN: This was actually a frustrating chapter to write originally; I didn't want either Harry or the eevee to be too strong because eevee are the weaker than their evolutionary counterparts. Ash's reaction was a bit over the top too but in my mind he once again sees Harry as he was in those first few years; a scared little boy that needs his protection. I actually toned down his original reaction quite a bit… The next chapter will have the post battle fall out at Hogwarts and the reactions of the staff and the students directly involved (aside from Harry since he is, at this point, unconscious).
I'd like to once again thank everyone who has reviewed or placed this story on their favorites, alerts, or in their communities. ~ Jenn
02-05-13: This chapter has just been edited to correct a few minor punctuation errors, a grammatical error or two, clean up of a few sentences in order to smooth out a few awkward areas, break a few paragraphs down so as to improve readability, and had the date and place stamps added to the top of each section to allow for easier tracking of the timeline.
