Dumbledore, for his part, paused and got a puzzled look on his face.

"Witch?" he asked, his lips twitching slightly, "You call yourself The Witch?"

"Yes, that is what it translates to, but I prefer the word 'Noita,' personally," I replied, smiling. It was only partially an act even. "It is a title I more than earned, and I daresay I will use it proudly!"

"Yes, well…" Dumbledore said, before tactfully deciding to change the subject, "I'm glad to see you've found my wayward charge, Mr. Noita. I trust Harry is in good health?"

"Better even," I said, giving the kid a small squeeze which he returned, which I very carefully did not allow myself to melt from. "Those dastardly people, treating Harry Potter the way they did, it was unconscionable! I just had to rescue him once I became aware of the situation!"

By this point a bit of a crowd had been attracted to the spectacle I was raising by my act, something which did not go unnoticed by Dumbledore, who hid it well, but I could feel the strain of dismay he felt. With my words overheard, the speed of gossip would soon carry it across the British Isles that I'd rescued Harry Potter, making his previous accommodations untenable even if he did somehow miraculously pry Harry from my cold dead fingers and put him back with the Dursleys. Toss in me abusing the More Love perk as I was to get the people to believe me in the same vein they would believe Lockhart, and I had to try very hard not to grin like a shark.

It was made easier by the fact that Harry was currently attempting to burrow himself into my robes to try and get away from all the stares and whispers of the crowd surrounding us, which were even now talking about Harry and blowing out of proportion the scene I must have rescued him from. I gave him a small squeeze and while the deathgrip he had on my robes didn't abate, he did at least stop trying to burrow into me. I'd count my wins where I could.

Turning my attention back to Dumbledore, I gestured to him magnanimously. "Would you like to accompany us, Headmaster? I was just on my way to seeing about filing the custody papers at the Ministry and could certainly use your help as a guide. After all, who better to be protecting Harry than The Noita?"

It was a rhetorical question with absolutely no backing whatsoever, but thanks to More Love and the power of rumor, it would soon be iron clad in public opinion that there was no better place for Harry to be, which would definitely filter to the Ministry before we got there, which would definitely suit me just fine.

Dumbledore himself seemed to be struggling with the idea before he seemed to come to some internal decision and relaxed. "Yes, that sounds like a perfect idea. I was just on my way to the Ministry so it would be no trouble to accompany you."

An obvious bit of fiction, but only obvious to myself. I'd bet at least half my gold the man had been trying to track Harry the instant the wards around the Dursley house fell and had finally caught up to us when that snafu in the bank happened.

I nodded, "Great! If you would do the honors?"

Dumbledore nodded when I stepped up to him so that he could sidealong apparate us. It was a bit of a calculated risk on my part, but with me turning More Love on him up a notch, at the moment he would sooner figure out how to have my babies than do something that could minorly inconvenience me let alone actually piss me off.

The instant I felt the magic warp space around us to move us through the magical equivalent of a straw the size of a speck, I felt my perception slow. Much like with the white portal, I could actually feel what was happening.

The magic Dumbledore was weaving around us was would likely make reality cry as it twisted and bent space in ways that nearly made me wince in sympathy. To put it in layman's terms, Albus was attempting to shrink the concept of the space around us, or more specifically the space that is us, and fit it through a small magical tube that shrank the intervening distance between two points, without actually crossing the distance inbetween, then unshrink us on the other side.

It was as barbaric as it was brilliant, concept wise. The execution leaved much to be desired however. I could actually feel Dumbledore's magic and how much of it he was using to do this, and it seemed to take a lot of shortcuts to use as little magic as possible. For instance, the small magical tube.

Co-opting the spell was fairly easy that point. I turned the lot of us invisible to make it seem like we'd disapparated normally, but in reality, I widened the tube so that it was person sized, allowing us to be shunted through without the shrinking. Granted, doing so raised the magic cost to something that would have used a quarter of Dumbledore's magic reserves in one shot, but with the added bonus of no crack of displaced air and no discomfort from the intervening travel at all, I'd say it was worth it.

Besides, I didn't have to worry about magic cost as much. My own well of Mana is as seemingly unending as ever, and it's also supplemented by the mana reservoirs of my wands on top of that. Not that I've ever needed to tap into my wand's mana cores at all to cast spells through them. My own mana pool has always dwarfed the mana reservoirs in the wands by a ridiculously large margin, allowing me to cast the spells in the wands using my own magic rather than that of the wand. It allowed me to effectively ignore the mana cost and mana recharge rate of my wands, beyond the total capacity of the reservoir as it served as a hardcap for the spells. I could only channel the magic through the reservoir after all, so if the spell cost exceeded the reservoir capacity, it just wouldn't work.

I've always kind of wondered what would it be like, if I did have to rely on the wand's own ability to hold and recharge its own mana stores to cast spells. I'd probably have been far more limited in my spell usage really. I'd attempted to try and calculate how much mana I had available once, before I realized that the wands didn't even cause a noticeable, measurable, drop in my own reservoirs. Not even when I loaded and fired my most costly spells at tick rate did I feel a drop. My only conclusion is that my magicka is somehow infinite, or close enough to not matter.

The same can be said for here. I could feel a noticeable measurable drop in Dumbledore's magic reserves, allowing me to get a feel for it and determine that, in magical terms, Dumbledore's magical power is equivalent to a wand with roughly 3000 mana in it, with a recharge rate of about 700. Impressive. Or well, at least interesting anyway. Having the equivalent of a mana reservoir of a top tier natural wand is kind of impressive, but considering I abused perks until my personal crafted wands had reservoirs of 7000 and only didn't bother to go higher because none of the spell strings I used even touched half of the capacity, well…

But I digress. Knowing Dumbledore's equivalent mana stats gives me a ballpark estimate of what the average wizard is capable of, including Harry and Voldemort, considering Dumbledore is supposed to be one of the strongest mages currently alive. Knowing that, I can't fault the magical world for using the shortcuts they did in apparition to make it useable to the common mage. What would use up a quarter of Dumbledore's reserves with my tweaked version would likely wipe out the average wizard entirely if I had to guess, and unlike a wand that hits zero will just recharge, mana exhaustion is supposed to be able to potentially kill people here.

Appearing within the atrium of the Ministry of Magic, I glanced over at Dumbledore and couldn't help but grin at the gobsmacked expression on his face. Apparition is one of the few wandless magics any mage can master, so it stands to reason he felt exactly what I did, and judging from his expression, blew his mind about it so bad he's not even bothering to hide it.

More importantly my mind was busy as I asked Dumbledore to lead on to the relevant departments in order to transfer Harry to my custody. The white portal was one thing, but this… Apparition would allow me to bend space around myself without the tunnel to allow for short range line of sight teleportation, without the need of a wand.

The implications of that highly suggests that the more I get a feel for spells of this world, I'll likely be able to cast these spells myself so long as I remember how they feel and recast them with my own mana. I'm sure using a local wand will probably make the casting more potent, but the idea of being able to cast any magic at any time without being confined to using my wands is kind of blowing my mind.

The closest I've come to that would be the small uses of the perks HE had given me control over and I'd used after I got here, but even that was limited to specific effects. Powerful effects to be sure, but still limited. This would allow me a freedom of expression with my magic that was making me a bit light headed with the implications.

I am going to have so much fun here…

Going through the Ministry was a whirlwind of paperwork and government officials nearly tripping over themselves to accommodate us. After all, how often do you have Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter together, along with lil ol me and my More Love cheat hack? I'd feel a bit bad at how much I'm cheating, but magic itself is cheating. As for the moral implications of using More Love to get what I want… Meh, I'll stop making myself so artificially charismatic and loveable in the eyes of these people as soon as I no longer have to defend a small vulnerable child in my care from them. A child that they would happily destroy if given half a chance.

Besides, I've done far worse to the Hiisi, slaughtering them all while they're dumbstruck in adoration of me until it got boring and I just started ignoring them. I'd say that makes me a monster, but I have memories of my own countless deaths at their hands to consider. Is it monstrous to kill monsters? Probably. Do I care? A little. Otherwise I wouldn't have stopped killing them.

I paused mentally to consider that thought. I'd never really… considered the moralistic implications of what I'd done before. Honestly it was just kill or be killed, so I defended myself…

That line… struck a chord with me suddenly. It sounded familiar…

…That aside, I was just defending myself. At least at first. It wasn't all that long before I'd gotten strong enough that it was more me slaughtering them than the other way around. Then I made them love me. After a point, I'd slaughtered enough that I just didn't care about it much anymore. I did stop, but that was because I'd exhausted my need for revenge and now it was just an obstacle I didn't even need to bother with anymore.

By the end, I'd been simply going through the motions, not even really paying attention as I went through world after parallel world, firing my wand practically on autopilot as I travelled through each world and collected gold, perks, and spells, gaining and losing elemental essences, destroying the moon, turning worlds into gold, sometimes poisoned gold for the hell of it, making and moving stars…

When did that all become so routine that I never even noticed it anymore?

I couldn't say…

Time… had lost all meaning…

Shaking my head, I shuddered slightly and returned my attention to the here and now. Harry needed me and I have a whole new world to explore. And maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll even leave it a little bit better than it was before.