I don't own FT or HP
3rd person POV, following Harry
As Umbridge's tyranny through Hogwarts continued unimpeded, Harry found solace in the sessions in the Room of Requirement with Luna, Neville, Hermione, and Meredy.
Neville had been the first to free his magic, soon followed by Luna, both were now working with Meredy to try and develop a magic that for them. Harry continued to work with Hermione to free her own magic.
"This is impossible, I don't think I'll ever be able to get a hang of this." Hermione complained near the end of yet another session she failed to access her magical core directly.
"I could did it, Neville did it, Luna did it, and so can you Hermione, from what I can tell, you just have slightly smaller reserves than them due to you not growing up in a magic rich environment." Harry tried to assure her and Hermione took a deep breath.
"Ok, one more try Hermione, dig deep and let loose as much magic as you can, you can do this." Harry told her gently as Hermione took a meditative pose one more time and took a deep breath. Hermione pictured a well in her mind, she focused on the water within and tried to pull it up like a geyser.
Hermione was determined, this time she would do it, this time she would do it. She felt her mind latch onto her magic and she pulled, the water in the well shot up with more ferocity than before, it was rising, rising. And it exploded out of the well, outside of her mind, Hermione let off a pulse of pure magic and Harry smiled widely.
"Well done Hermione, well done." Harry told her, Hermione looking up tiredly, matching his wide smile. "That's enough for today Hermione, reaching your magic for the first time can be exhausting, tomorrow we'll start developing a style for you." Harry told her and Hermione gave a tired nod.
The next night the real fun began as the three wizards became mages. Neville and Luna both played to their strength, Herbology and strange creatures respectively. Harry worked with Neville and taught him the basics of maker magic, forming an exotic plant make magic with the various strange plants of the wizarding world.
Meredy helped Luna and Hermione, teaching Luna what she knew about Rustyrose's Arc of Embodiment, and the two of them formed a new magic for the quirky girl, Imagine make magic. Luna could make any strange creature and thing she could imagine, but under the stipulation that it wasn't actually real.
Hermione took to barrier like a fish to water. Meredy told her about the shielding system that the Grimoire Heart's airship had had, and Hermione, in all her brilliance, managed to recreate a personal sized version of the spell and was working with Meredy on adapting the spell to have offensive functions.
Of course, developing magic meant sparring, and Harry and Meredy were harsh teachers.
"Ok you three, one last spar, all three of you in a free-for-all." Harry told his three students, eyeing them carefully. "Meredy and I will make sure nothing goes too far, but we still want you to cut loose." Harry told them and Luna, Neville, and Hermione took up a triangle formation, facing each other down.
"Plant make-Venomous Tentacula!" Neville called, striking up the traditional maker stance, two venus flytrap like heads formed rooted into the ground in front of Neville, forming a defense from the two witches across from him. Both heads shot from their bases towards the witches, but they were both more than ready.
"Fire Barrier"
"Imagine make-blibbering humdingers"
Hermione's barrier not only blocked the charging plantlife, but also burned the plant head, forcing neville to draw back the burned stump to restore the plant.
Luna on the other hand was more aggressive. The blibbering humdingers were multiple orange and purple fairy like creatures with four glossy wings, powerful sharp claws and teeth and a vicious attitude, Luna could summon a swarm of them of just a few as she needed.
The humdingers grabbed the head of the tentacula and flew upwards quickly, uprooting the plant and flying it over and dropping it on Hermione, who was forced to use another fire barrier, giving Luna a chance to strike.
"Imagine make-Crumple Horned Snorkack!" arguably Luna's most vicious spell. The Snorkack was a rhino like creature, with a large smashed in looking horn like a unicorn's and armor over its body. It was shaped like a dog, the size of a horse, and could run fast enough to break through most defenses, meaning that both Hermione and Neville, who both favored standing and weathering blows, and then dishing them right back were at a disadvantage.
"Plant make-Devil's Snare" Neville called off, vines shooting out of the ground him at both the Snorkacks and Luna, binding the creature and crushing it, but Luna herself danced out of the range of the vines and shot off several more snorkacks at both Hermione and Neville.
Neville continued with his devil's snare and held fast against the and created several leaping toadstools to leap at Hermione before they exploded in a noxious gas.
Hermione struggled under the dual faceted assault and continued to put up barriers and fire barriers, but was quickly running out of power. Neville and Luna both knew she had less magic than them, but could come up with genius plans on the fly, as she was about to do.
"Reflection barrier" Hermione created a mirror like barrier facing the ever moving Luna who was still dancing around avoiding Neville's constant vine attacks.
The barrier made contact with the incoming snorkacks and Hermione angeled the barrier so the snorkacks were aimed at Neville and were now coming at him from two angles and he was struggling to defend himself, even with his tentacula back in action.
"Plant make-mandrake!" Neville called and lobbed the little howling baby plant at Luna, who jumped in surprise when the shrieking plant landed next to her.
That moment of shock was all the mandrake needed to do its job and Luna fell unconscious from the sound, meaning the stream of snorkacks ceased and Neville began his assault on Hermione with his vines and revived tentacula. Hermione had used too much of her remaining magic reflecting the snorkacks and eventually got caught in Neville's vines, holding her fast.
"Win Neville." Harry called, shooting a quick bolt to fry the mandrake, and Meredy went to shake Luna awake.
Once Luna was up again Harry and Meredy went over how everyone did.
"Hermione, good planning as usual, but the most offense you did was redirecting one of Luna's attacks, you need some offensive attacks. Opposite for you Luna, your offense is powerful, but you let Neville surprise you, meaning you couldn't redirect like you like to and you have no natural defense. Neville, you did good, balanced between offense and defense, but you need to be more mobile, try looking into field traps to drop around to catch people off guard, the tank strategy won't work against anyone stranger than you, and I will let you spar with Natsu to prove that point." Meredy said, addressing each of them with a sharp look.
Neville shuddered, he had seen Natsu spar with Harry during the Christmas break and that was not someone he wanted to face especially since all his plants were flammable, that was another problem to address.
"You guys are all doing great though, you'd all be B-rank mages back in Earthland, low B, but still B, which is really good for only using this kind of magic for less than a year." Harry told the three exhausted mages, who grinned before the five made their way from the room and snuck back to their commons rooms.
3rd Person POV shift-Time skip-May
Voldemort held the syringe that Rookwood had presented him carefully. This was the result of months of research by the best and brightest from the Department of Mysteries. Raw compressed magic, harvested from the death veil coded to blood Voldemort had given to Rookwood to swap out with the other blood sample the department had. All the research pointed to a complete success, but there had been no test subjects that survived the process. But Voldemort had confidence in his Horcruxes.
Voldemort sent Rookwood away, the process would most likely be painful and that was not something he wanted his followers to see, he was an image for those weak minded fools, ruining that was not something he wanted. The appearance of strength was just as important as strength itself, it was why Dumbledore remained in power for as long as he had.
Voldemort carefully placed the needle to the inside of his arm and sent the magic energy into his system. At first it felt like was entering his veins, spreading throughout his body. When the cold feeling reached his heart, it turned to fire. Voldemort withheld a scream of pain as he felt waves of fire flow through his bloodstream, taking the godslayer base that was present it Voldemort's bloodstream already and mutating it to something more, something darker.
Voldemort lay on the ground for nearly an hour before the pain subsided and he could stand again. Voldemort could feel the power flowing through him as he looked at his wand carefully. It had always filled him with a rush of power, but now it felt dead, like it was taking power from him instead of giving it to him.
Voldemort cast the wand aside, and flexed his fingers carefully, he could feel the darkness from the veil, could feel the energy the Potter boy let off like candy while he was dueling. The feeling was intoxicating.
Carefully, Voldemort released power from his hand and it became cloaked in a shadowy black aura, flickering like a flame, but freezing like a shadow, the lights in the room seemed to dim when the magic formed.
"Yes, this will do perfectly, and I know just who to test this on." Voldemort said as he felt the wards he had Rookwood place in the Department of Mysteries go off signalling the little intruder, and if Voldemort was a betting man, he would bet it was one of Potter's little group of magically gifted. A perfect test run indeed.
3rd person POV shift
Ultear slipped quietly through the Department of Mysteries, it had been months since she first infiltrated and she had yet to see an increase in defenses, despite the obvious meddling she was doing. The wizards here were truly a stupid people with few exceptions.
Ultear snuck to the testing of advanced magical powers room as the department head called it, they had finished the previous night and were planning on a human test subject the next day, Ultear decided to throw a wrench in their plans.
She snuck to where the syringe was supposed to be kept except it was missing. Ultear tore through the whole work station but found nothing.
"Looking for this, I'm afraid to say you're just a little late." A cold voice said behind Ultear, throwing an empty syringe at her feet.
Ultear spun around and saw a man who could only be Voldemort. He was bald, pale and had no nose, just like Harry said. The only difference was his eyes, they were a pitch black instead of a bloody red.
"Shame, I don't suppose you just dumped it down a sink did you?" Ultear asked, sending a distress signal through Meredy's link.
"What a waste it would have been if I had, that single vial more than tripled my strength. It made my wand obsolete, it gave me power." Voldemort boasted as he stared down Ultear.
"From my own studies, wands temporarily boost your magical core before you become reliant on them, turning them into a crutch. "Ultear said, readying her maker magic, Zeref's wand tucked away in her pocket.
"That is interesting, I shall have to implement that in my new regime when I rule this country, but for now, let's see what party trick you have." Voldemort finished with a sneer and raised his hand, a wave of dark energy unlike anything Ultear had ever felt tore across the room. Ultear tried to negate it with her Arc of Time, but found it unaffected, only just managing to roll out of the way when that failed.
"Well, that's certainly new." Ultear said and quickly increased the pulses to Meredy, she doubted this would be a fight she could win alone, not if her time magic had no effect on Voldemort.
"Yes it is indeed, and now you fall." Voldemort shot forward, his arms cloaked in dark energy as he struck, his fighting form was basic, but when Ultear made to block a strike with an ice covered arm, the shadows devoured the magic from her ice and it fell apart uselessly.
"Well, that's interesting." Ultear said, sending a few ice spears at Voldemort to confirm her theory. Voldemort simply flicked his wrist and blocked the assault with a shield of darkness, the spears flying into it like it wasn't there, but never coming out the other side.
Voldemort could basically create a black hole for magic, wonderful. It reminded Ultear of Harry's theory on the killing curse. Zeref had influenced the creation of the spell and from what she had seen from the notes left by the department workers, they made use of the veil, another creation of Zeref to power their magic enhancement experiments.
Connecting that to Harry's theory, the veil was an unstable portal between worlds. It had once held the power to transport to Earthland, but had lost power when Zeref left and wasn't powering it anymore. The killing curse took large amounts of magic from both the caster and killed the target, but if the caster didn't have enough, the magic of the target would be sent to the veil, powering it. The goblet had since drained what power the veil had built up to get them here, meaning they could get home, they just needed the goblet to target their world, of course, there was a much more pressing problem at the moment.
Ultear flipped backwards and threw a handful of seeds at the charging Voldemort, charging them with her Arc of Time, and the seeds grew extremely fast, effectively shooting full grown trees at Voldemort.
Voldemort twisted in place and vanished with a soft crack, reappearing behind Ultear and sending crescent arcs of his veil magic at her. It was only a reflexive shield, held together by time magic that saved Ultear from taking the hit.
"You'll have to try harder than that to hit me pants snake, Fast Forward!" Ultear called and a wave of her crystal orbs shot forward. Voldemort simply popped away again, but the orbs redirected and when he reappeared, he was blasted back, several of his ribs breaking on impact.
Ultear gave a viscous as the Dark Lord lay in a crumpled heap, while he was powerful, he clearly had no experience with his new skills, leaving him defenseless to her when she started using actual spells. As Ultear turned to leave, she missed Voldemort's head rising, his eyes glowing black and shooting lasers at her.
Ultear gave a shriek of pain and went flying across the room as she was struck in the back. Ultear felt her magic rapidly leaving her as she got up slowly and faced Voldemort, who was rising slowly.
"It seems you too have fallen before me. I think it's time to shed the secrecy." Voldemort gloated and pressed his finger to his left forearm. Ultear tried to stop him but she felt sluggish, her magic was being drained away, she could feel it, and if it left completely, she was dead. Ultear took a deep breath and muttered under her breathe.
"Freeze." And with that, Ultear turned completely to stone.
And scene, the end of the fifth year approaches and with it, the end of the time spent in the Harry Potter world. I have plans for GMG arc, but I think that will be the end of the story after that, not sure though, might go all the way through Alvarez.
So I know I will get some flak for having Ultear loose, Voldemort basically had a counter for her maker magic and time magic. While he was inexperienced with it, being so used to wand magic, he used Ultear's over confidence to land a game ending hit. I also needed a reason for Harry to go to the Ministry, and this was it.
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Happy Reading -Centurion Africanus