Disclaimer: Don't I wish. I'm too poor to own Harry Potter or Pokémon.

Chapter 12

Onward and Northward

The next morning, I woke up early, around six. I tried to go back to sleep, but just couldn't manage it. I sighed, got up, pulled on my jacket, and went for a walk.

A minute after I walked out of the Pokémon Center doors, I felt a slight weight settle on my head. I looked up just before white and green obscured my vision.

"Morning Sydney," I yawned, pushing her wings off of my eyes.

"Aw, I thought I was gonna surprise you. Why are you up so early?"

"Cause I couldn't go back to sleep."

"Oh. Where are you going?"

"Just for a walk. Nothin' better to do this early."

"I'll come along, then!"

We strolled through the town for a while, watching little kids run around with young Pokémon, their mothers chasing after them, until we arrived at the grey building that I had spotted from the cliffs outside of Hearthome. I walked in curiously.

The building had a solemn but warm feel, like a church that wasn't full of stuffy old people. The stained glass windows were beautiful, intricately created pictures of humans and Pokémon laughing and smiling and just being together. The set on the east side of the building was lit up with the fire of the rising sun, glowing brightly like coloured flames.

"Wow," I whispered, awed. "This building is awesome."

"It's so pretty!"

We stayed for a little while, admiring the windows and the decor inside the building, before we left to go find breakfast. We thought it might be a good idea to bring a meal to the Pokémon Center when we went back, so I found a little café that served breakfast and ordered breakfast sandwiches and some Pokémon food (that was fresh, better than the travel stuff in my bag) to go. As soon as we walked into the room, Jack and Alec's noses twitched at the scent of food. The dog Pokémon was at my feet in an instant. Jack took a little longer to wake up.

"Smells good. When'd you learn to cook?" Jack mumbled sleepily.

I chuckled. "I picked it up from a café. Let's eat, everyone!" I added, waking the rest of the Pokémon.

Breakfast was a success, and after cleaning up the room a bit, making sure we had all our belongings, we were off on the path to Solaceon Town.

Along the grassy path a little ways was a river that apparently intersected the path multiple times. Along the first stretch of river were two wooden bridges, each with a person standing on them. Both bridges looked the same, but I had a feeling that one of them was a dead end.

"Sydney, could you check which of these is the right bridge?" She fluttered off, gliding over first one bridge, then the other.

"The one on the left goes to the ground on the other side of the river!" She reported.

"Thanks Sydney," I replied, starting on the bridge. Halfway through, the little girl standing on the bridge challenged us.

"Let's battle! Go, Flame and Peek!" The girl sent out a little cream-coloured horse with a flaming mane and a tiny light yellow mouse Pokémon. The first one, according to my Pokedex, was a Ponyta, and the second was a Pichu.

"Let's show her what we're made of, Ace!" Jack sent out his Zangoose.

"You're up, Inuise!" I sent out the black dragon, who reared her head up excitedly.

The girl stared at Inuise, awestruck. "Your Dratini is so pretty!"

"Thank you, little one," Inuise said, preening.

"Can I play with her after the battle?"

"Maybe for a little while. Inuise, Twister!"

"Ace, Slash at that Pichu."

"Flame, Peek, watch out!" The Ponyta evaded Inuise's Twister, but Pichu received Ace's claws in its side and went flying. Ace followed after it even though the little mouse wasn't getting up.

"Ace, go for Ponyta! See if you can get it to run into the Twister!"

The frightened Fire-type was on the run from the tornado. When Ace ran in front of the horse, she cried out in fear and tried to avoid Ace.

"Peek, return!" the girl yelled. "Flame, use Slam on that mean Zangoose! Get it out of the way!"

With the twister following closely, the girl's Ponyta threw itself at Ace, knocking her out of the way. Inuise was forced to stop the cyclone before it hit Ace.

"Inuise, Dragon Rage!" I ordered.

"Ace, Fury Swipes!"

"Flame Wheel!" the little girl told her less scared Pokémon. The horse built up the fires on its mane and tail, charging at Ace before a blue-purple fireball from Inuise stopped it its tracks and sent it flying. The flames around its body diminished and faded back into its mane and tail. Ace finished off the little pony with a Fury Swipes attack.

"Flame!" the girl cried, returning it. "You did great."

Inuise slithered up around my shoulders as I walked over to the girl and held out my hand to shake. "Great battle. Your Pokémon did a fantastic job."

"Thanks! Your Pokémon were awesome too!"

I could see her eyes remaining on Inuise, so I pulled her off my shoulders. "Do you want to hold her?" I offered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack shake his head, but I ignored him.

The girl took hold of Inuise carefully. "She's so pretty! Where did you find her?"

"Well, she found me, really."

"Cool." The girl giggled as Inuise slithered up her arm and draped herself over the girl's shoulders.

A few minutes later, I returned Inuise to her Poké ball and Jack and I left with the girl's number in my Pokégear.

"Well, that was fun," I said as we crossed another section of river. "She was really - what's that?"

I had spotted an eight-foot-tall crumbling collection of rocks. The top looked as though it had been finished at some point, then knocked over, and there were a few stones missing from the lower parts of the pile.

"I think that's the Hallowed Tower," Jack answered.

"Hallowed what?"

"The Hallowed Tower. Apparently Spiritomb, a Ghost Pokémon, can be found here. You have to put something in the tower before Spiritomb will appear, though."

"Cool." We looked at it for a little while, and I ran my hands along the stones.

I looked over at Jack, suddenly remembering a question I wanted to ask him. "When you told Ace that you didn't like to just catch Pokémon..."

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Do most people prefer to befriend Pokémon, or just catch them?"

"It's pretty evenly divided," he explained. "A lot of people just catch whatever Pokémon they want to, and a lot of them don't like catching Pokémon who they don't think want to come with them. Bit difficult to figure it out usually, but I've got a bit of an advantage here."

I snorted. "Good to know how you see me." As we continued along the path, we met up with a few trainers who wanted to battle. We won against a couple by the river, and a higher who was running past, but we also met up with a farmer girl whose Rapidash and Ponyta were able to totally flatten us, knocking out Alec and Reaper.

We passed by the Pokémon Tower without entering. I wasn't really interested, and Jack seemed reluctant for some unknown reason. I didn't pry.

Having missed the Pokémon Tower, we got into Solaceon at about noon. We immediately dropped our Pokémon at the Center, because beyond Alec and Reaper's knockouts, our other Pokémon had a few wounds themselves. I thought it might be cool to check out the famous ruins while we were in town, so we walked that way, chatting about pointless things like the weather.

When we got to the entrance of the ruins, I felt something weird about them, but I shrugged it off as a natural reaction. The caves probably felt spooky to everyone. We walked inside, and the first thing I noticed was that this cave wasn't as dark as Mount Coronet. Of course, that might have been because we were in the entrance, but I digress. The walls were carved with the shapes of letters with eyes - Unown letters.

"Top left... Top right... Bottom left... Top right... What do these mean?" I looked at our surroundings and noticed multiple stone staircases. "Oh! They must mean the stairs!" I pulled out my sketchbook and drew the layout of the floor, where each staircase was. Jack looked over my shoulder.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Each direction corresponds to which staircase to take to avoid dead ends. This floor, we should take this one." He pointed at the top left stair on my drawing, then in the room. Then he noticed the opposite page in my sketchbook. "What is this?"

"Nothing," I muttered, blushing. The page feature a drawing of him holding Ruby after our practice battle in Eterna. He pulled my sketchbook out of my hands to look at the picture.

"Looks good. Realistic."

"Yeah, I try. Can I have that back now?"

He snapped out of his thoughts. "Yeah." I left the book open to the page that I had written the directions on as we descended the stairs.

Oddly enough, we didn't see any Unown as we explored the ruins, even though the place was supposed to be famous for them. I guess they're all somewhere else.
We made our way to the lower level of the ruins, one staircase from the bottom.

"I think there's something down there, and it's not good news," Jack told me. "I don't think we should go downstairs."

"Relax, there's nothing to be worried about," I told him. "The only thing down there is probably just some Unown."

We walked down the stairs - slowly, as the light had diminished the lower we went. As we reached the bottom, we heard some voices talking quietly. Jack signaled me to be quiet and listen.

"... Haven't found the girl yet, my lord," came a voice with an overly-familiar accent, "but there is a possibility that she may have been killed in the creature's attack."

"Have you confirmed her death, Lucius?" Came a high, cold voice that caused my heart to skip, then beat like a squirrel's when a cat is in front of him. I pulled Jack back up the stairs a little bit and hissed three words into his ear.

"That's Voldemort's voice!"

"Which, the second one?"

"Yeah! The first one's his second-in-command! If he sees me, I'm so screwed..."

"Then let's get out of here."

"Not yet. I want to find out where the others are."

We snuck back into earshot of Malfoy as he said, "Crabbe and Goyle are searching the less populated areas. Macnair and Rodolphus are searching cities in the west, Rowle and Nott in the east."

"And you, Lucius?"

"I wait for her here. If she is still alive, she will come here eventually."

I pulled back to the stairs. "Okay, I've heard enough. Let's get out of here." we ran up the stairs, ignoring the noise we made, until we heard footsteps behind us. I panicked and pulled out my wand.

"Stupefy!" I cried, aiming it haphazardly behind us. Apparently it did the trick, since the next second, we heard a series of thumps as Malfoy fell down the stairs.

"Nice one," Jack told me as we stopped two floors up. Whether or not Malfoy was seriously injured, neither of us were going to check.

"I'm glad it hit him," I sighed. "We'd have been dead if it didn't."

"Probably. What's with his weird accent, by the way?"

"Everyone from that country talks like that. I don't because I didn't grow up there."

Jack nodded. "So... His buddies are in all the towns and stuff. Should we avoid cities?"

"No, just potentially homicidal strangers."

"At least you can joke about it. I don't really want to die anytime soon, thanks." We exited the ruins and stepped into the sunlight. "Anything else you want to do while we're here, or are you finished getting us killed?"

"Very droll. I actually wanted to check out the Pokémon Daycare."

"Planning on ditching Sydney?"

"Planning on running a comedy club? You could be the main attraction!"

"Nope, a circus. Want to work in the Freak Tent?" I glared at him. He offered a smirk in return.

"... I think you win this round. But I'll win the next one!"

"That remains to be seen," he answered sagely, smirking triumphantly as we entered the Pokémon Center.

After we picked up our Pokémon, we dropped by the Daycare. There were all kinds of Pokémon there, all owned by other trainers - practically everything from Abra to Zubat was on the Daycare's huge plot of land. There always also a large nursery area for the many Pokémon eggs that were occasionally laid in the Daycare. That was where I got my next Pokémon.

In the nursery, the old man and woman who ran the Daycare had found an egg that didn't come from any of the trainers' Pokemon. They had offered the egg to some of the trainers who came by the Daycare, since they couldn't keep it - some policy or something - but none of them wanted it. As a result, they offered the egg to me, and I took it.

"We don't know what it'll hatch into, but I'm sure it'll be a help to you on your journey. Make sure to keep it safe," the old man wheedled with a grin.

"Of course I will," I assured them, tucking it carefully into my bag and wrapping it in my extra sweater. "Thank you!"

We left Solaceon Town at about two in the afternoon, planning on traveling at least part of the route to Celestic Town before sundown. The first part of the trail was overgrown with grass up to my knees; it was slow going, since we had nothing to thin out the grass with.

Just over a little hill, we spotted a Staravia tending its nest in a nearby tree. Actually, the Flying-type noticed us first; we inadvertently passed too close to its tree, and it attacked us. Ruby managed to hold it off long enough for us to escape, albeit with minor scrapes and bruises.

About an hour past that, during which it started raining, and we got lost and turned around multiple times, we came upon a little log cabin that looked warm and inviting. We went in and found a little café that was serving Moomoo Milk. Jack and I ordered a bottle for each of us, and a bottle for each of our Pokémon. They also served dinner, so Jack got a Traveling Trainer Combo Platter (I never figured out what was on it, because Jack was all over it as soon as the plate landed on the table) and I got a large plate of pancakes.

"Pancakes for dinner?" Jack asked around his mouthful.

"Why not? You've got... whatever that stuff is," I replied once I had swallowed.

He shrugged. "Guess so."

We paid for our meals and left the café around seven. We had decided to travel until around nine, then make camp and get to bed. Almost as soon as we passed the café - maybe a couple of minutes or so past it - the way ahead of us became shrouded in mist.

"Let's just keep walking for a while," Jack decided. "Might as well get somewhere."

"Like lost," Sydney grumbled, but I followed him anyway.

Just before we stopped to camp, Jack accidentally stepped wrong, and tripped, landing in a Linoone's burrow. For the second time that day, we got attacked by an angry Pokémon, and Ruby and Sydney had to bail us out. We escaped by climbing a tree and waiting until it was gone.

"Seriously, what is it with us and Pokemon's homes?"

"Don't really know, don't really care. As long as we're safe, it doesn't matter." Jack pulled out a Potion and healed Ruby, while I borrowed an Oran berry, roasted it on a stick, and handed it to a significantly less hurt Sydney.

Across the campfire, Jack gave me a look. "So that guy in the Solaceon Ruins... He's with that Voldemort guy?"

"Lucius Malfoy," I spat the name as though it was poison, "is Voldemort's right hand, pretty much. He basically licks Voldemort's boots clean for him."

"Nothing worse than an evil suck-up," Jack remarked flippantly.

"Not much more pathetic," I agreed, a half smile on my face. Something made my bag move a second later. "Huh?"

I opened it and picked up my egg. The egg shifted a little when I put my hands on it.

"It's going to hatch soon," Jack predicted. "Maybe even tomorrow."

"That would be cool. Wonder what's in it?" I mused. "Guess we'll find out tomorrow. Night, Jack." I entered my tent with my Pokémon in tow.

"Goodnight," he called.

A/N: That's that! Wow, I've been updating quickly lately. Hope it keeps up. Our two heroes are on the way to Celestic Town, where they'll meet Evey's dad and maybe find out the truth behind her mysterious hybrid status. Sooo... Before we confirm it, any theories?

Guest (on chapter three): You're a little late on the poll, but I'll consider putting in an Aipom for you.

On that subject, how about a little poll? What, of these, do we want from the egg? Poll will be on my profile, too. I'm closing the poll on Thursday, so that's February 14. I'm single, so I have nothing to do but work on Valentine's Day, haha.

Charmander

Absol

Farfetch'd

Growlithe

Riolu

Seviper

Gible

Starly

Please review and vote! Thanks to my reviewers this chapter, and for all past chapters too. I'm proud of the response this story has gotten! I'm glad you're all enjoying it.