Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling. This version of Aleister Crowley, along with 1,083,092,867 others, was created by Kamachi Kazuma.
No matter how many time I rewrote this, I wasn't happy.
Chapter 02: Hidden Away by Magic – 魔法隠し。
Final
The fire alarm rang, and so did one of Harry's rudimentary wards he had placed on the refuge's eastern edge, and he knew it was time.
He shot a meaningful look at Sally, and she nodded back at him.
Two voices spoke softly in unison.
"See me not."
"See me not."
Over long sessions in his mind, Elly had told Harry all about the two magicians from his world, named Stiyl Magnus and Kanzaki Kaori. Based on that information, Harry had formulated a plan–at least, a short-term one, to combat the two magicians within the confines of St. Ursula's.
The two children scrambled up to the rooftop, where they looked down on the assembling crowd below: the children forming neat lines, and the adults going around to inspect them.
Among them all, they spotted him: a red-haired man dressed in black, making his way towards the main building, yet somehow unnoticed while in plain sight.
And the other one…yes, Harry saw her too: a woman with a long ponytail, in jeans and a denim jacket, standing off to the side, observing everything. She did not seem to be intent on moving.
"Just the pyromancer," Harry said, and Sally nodded. Going around the corner, she retrieved two plastic bags, both of which contained miscellaneous items, but which mainly contained…twigs.
Twigs, either picked up off the ground, or cut down from low-hanging branches.
It would have to be enough.
"Are you really going to go?" Sally asked uncertainly. Her hand had reached out and sought Harry's own.
Harry, in response, gave Sally's hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. "That was the plan, remember? Go to the corridor and set up the lines. I'll be back quickly."
~~[a]~~
Stiyl Magnus, a fourteen-year-old magician that looked closer to twenty, strode purposefully towards the main building of St. Ursula's. The lit cigarette currently in his mouth, contrary to what his specialization might suggest, was not for any purpose other than to calm his nerves.
Bring back the girl named Sally Perks. She needs to be physically unharmed, but other than that, do what you will. That had been the mission entrusted to him by his superiors, the ambiguous moral nature of which had not been lost on him.
It made him uncertain, hesitant.
But orders were orders. For the greater good, and God's will be done.
He steeled himself.
The girl is just a target. Just an object. It doesn't matter.
On the fingers of his left hand were several rings, and in his pocket were several cards bearing the same runic letter: the upside down lowercase y of Kenaz, the torch.
But in his right hand, now raised, was eight inches of wood from a red oak, and within those eight inches a core of dragon heartstring from a Welsh Green.
Three rune cards were flicked into the air, and with a wave of his wand, fire gathered around them, condensing to the form of three dogs.
"Go, hunting hounds." Stiyl quietly said, and the dogs scattered in various directions.
To his knowledge, any damage to the building would be repaired by the Anglicans later, and the refuge itself would receive a generous donation in the days after for their troubles.
He walked slowly, through a corridor, up a flight of stairs, not really searching in any set pattern, but just spreading his flames in the hope of driving the girl out from where she was presumably hiding.
The equivalent of a sudden twang came to his magical senses, and his head snapped around to face a certain direction.
~~[a]~~
"Aguamenti!" Sally shouted. A jet of water soared out of the end of her perfectly ordinary stick of wood and struck the wolf made out of living fire in the nose, bursting into steam.
So much for the plan. The traps were there, but getting to the safe zone now would be impossible.
And Harry didn't say anything about there being wolves. A giant, but no wolves. She grit her teeth. This is bad.
There were only so many traps they could prepare, both due to the limited time and the fact that they couldn't raise any questions.
And if all of them were wasted on these…
"Aguamenti!" Another jet of water blasted back the dog that had bounded at her, but it was only a temporary solution. "Aguamenti, damn you!"
A third blast of water, and Sally felt the stick give way and crumble to cinders in her hand, scorching her palm. It hurt, but she couldn't stop now.
She took out another stick, and started running.
~~[a]~~
I have her! Stiyl began running up the stairs. Third…no, fourth floor!
But as he turned a corner in the stairwell, a shout came from above him. "Stupefy!"
Another magician? Here?
The jet of red light, shot from almost perfectly vertically above him, narrowly missed his feet, and impacted harmlessly on the stair. Stiyl's head whipped upwards, but the other magician was already gone.
Noisy footsteps echoed in the air.
~~[a]~~
"Stupefy!" Harry aimed once more through the gap, but the angle wasn't right, and the spell missed.
Conserve your energy, Harry. Elly's voice sounded through his head.
He's headed to where Sally is! Harry all but shouted in his mind, but heeded Elly's advice. He sprinted down the stairs, and was about to turn a corner when fire filled his vision.
"Aguamenti!"
Water blasted away fire, turned into steam. Harry blinked, and he registered the silhouette of flame.
Elly–
I know. In Harry's mind, the white-haired witch gripped her hat, and thought furiously to herself. I should have been more prepared. I underestimated the magic of this world, and the differences between worlds.
To Harry, she dispensed quick, curt advice. Try and cut it in half. If there's a core, we can destroy it; if there isn't, then we just need to run.
"Aguamenti! Aguamenti! Diffindo!" Waters splashed onto the hound's side, sending up more clouds of steam, and the Cutting Charm simply passed harmlessly through the fire. The rapid spellcasting caused the makeshift wand to dissolve in Harry's hand, but he simply flicked away the burning embers and reached for another. ""Aguamenti! Aguamenti!"
Harry's water decreased in both velocity and quantity with each cast, and he could feel himself weakening, growing tired. "Ventus!"
The strong gust of wind caused the flames to flicker out for a brief moment, and Harry's eyes snapped onto a single detail: a card, right where the stomach of a normal dog would be.
"Diffindo! Diffindo!"
It wasn't to be that easy. The hound leapt, this way and that, and both spells missed completely, cutting only air.
In last-ditch frustration, Harry decided to fight fire with fire, in the most literal sense. "Incendio!"
His flames overlapped that of the magician's, and for one moment Harry was worried it hadn't worked, when the fire faded away to reveal…nothing.
Letting out a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding, Harry bent over, reaching out to a wall for support, but only for a few moments.
Can't stay here! Got to help Sally!
As he began running, the sprinklers overhead began to work, dousing everything in water.
Unfortunately, Elly thought to herself, recalling past events, I doubt that would be enough for this world's Stiyl Magnus.
~~[a]~~
"Mere sprinklers cannot douse these flames, girl!"
Manually activating the fire-fighting system seemed to have worked. In the back of her mind, Sally realised why they hadn't gone off, even as a certain black-clad magician was hot on her heels.
They work off smoke detectors. Either magical fire doesn't emit smoke, or the magical smoke just works a different way.
"Stupefy!" A red bolt of light narrowly missed her shoulder as she ducked down low at the incantation.
Great, and they can use wizard magic too. Crap. Crap crap crap.
Oh well. If I can't run, I'll just have to go on the attack!
"Stupefy!" She screamed the spell loud, poured magic into it like never before. A blazing crimson bolt burst from the end of her twig, which vaporised in her grip.
The magician simply held up his own left hand, where it crashed into an invisible shield. "Nice try, girl." He grinned. "But a stick is no real substitute for a real wand."
Sally's mind went straight past panic into overdrive. Think, you idiot! She reprimanded herself. What did you read? What do you remember? Use your head!
English mathematics physics chemistry biology literature art history–
What's the fancy quote that Harry always likes to say? 'Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will'?
Gah, that's useless! I already have that!
But if I can just force things to happen–
"See me not!" She slashed her wand at the advancing redheaded magician, and for a moment he stumbled, his eyes widening in surprise.
It worked! Time to run!
~~[a]~~
Stiyl Magnus stumbled. For a moment, Sally Perks had just vanished right in front of him–and of course, now she was physically out of his line of sight.
I can see why Stuart wants this girl so badly. Perfect memory, and the ability to channel magic this well with just intent alone, without a proper spell. Or would it be more accurate to say that she made her own spell?
"Unfortunately, that level of mental interfere won't work on a trained magician," he muttered to the empty, smouldering corridor. "Homenum revelio."
A spell meant to reveal human presence, and he was now close enough that it would give more information than a simple yes or no.
Two human presences. Two floors above him. North.
~~[a]~~
In St Ursula's northern wing, the two children had retreated to their final destination for one of many possible plans.
"Harry!" Sally crashed into him and gave him a tight hug. "You're okay!"
"So are you–your hand!" Harry grabbed Sally's wrist.
With her last two spells, her 'wands' had disintegrated violently under the strain of channelling that much magic, leaving an angry red diagonal slash across her left palm.
"It's fine!" Sally spread out her fingers on her left hand, while grabbing Harry's right with her remaining hand. "It's the same for you, right?"
True to her words, Harry had a similar scar on his own wand hand, slowly carved from the past times he had practiced, and the two pressed their palms together for a moment, marvelling.
Ahem. Elly called, and Harry jumped. Not the time for that. Tell Sally that the Anglicans are likely to be able to–
"-cast wizard magic?" Sally interrupted as Harry spoke. "Yeah. The redhead shot a Stupefy at me just now."
"And he can conjure these dogs of flame." Harry explained how he had defeated one, and his brown-haired companion nodded in understanding. "Sorry," he said. "I should have known that it wouldn't be so simple."
"It's fine." Sally gave him a gentle nudge. "We'll get out of this. Together."
"Since when were you this calm about the whole thing?" It was a reversal of her attitude for the past few days.
"Since I realised I could actually do magic." Her left fingers curled up into a determined fist, the memory of her spellcasting fresh in her mind. "That I can actually fight. And I know things. And you're here. It'll be fine."
"Let's hope so." Harry said grimly. From a small bracket nailed to the wall, Harry hefted a fire extinguisher, and set it down by his side.
~~[a]~~
As Stiyl rounded a corner, his foot scuffed against the bottom of the wall, smudging a line drawn in chalk. A bang like a firecracker sounded in his left ear, and he winced. What appeared to be a normal posted notice on the wall disintegrated.
Unknown to him, this was yet another brainchild of the existence that had formerly been Aleister Crowley, reverse-engineered from the knowledge gained from the fragmented remains of Tom Riddle's memory, and adapted by herself to require a minimal amount of magic to set up.
More than ten of these minor pranks had been set up in the single path that led to the dead end where the two children now waited, and they were doing a good job of driving the British magician to a state of intense frustration.
But it's over now. Stiyl looked down the corridor, where both Harry and Sally were staring at him defiantly. His eyes scanned the scene. A straight line path. One door at the end, likely to be filled with their trump cards…or what they think their trump cards are.
He advanced forward. "You seem to be focused intently at this spot over here." Stiyl stopped walking-a mere step away from where Harry and Sally had laid their trap. "More fishing line? I see you only have so many ideas. Diffindo!"
The taut tripwire that had been stretched out over the corridor's width at ankle height was severed, and its tension whipped it up into the air. The redheaded magician followed it upwards with his eyes, then cast another spell. "Reducto!"
The ceiling board was blasted away, and the two full buckets of water that had been painstakingly levitated into the space above crashed onto the ground. "A dual approach? Clever, but not clever enough."
Harry's arm went up to his side, an unconscious protective moment, as if he could guard Sally from what was coming next.
"Childish things like that aren't enough to stop a magician like me!" Stiyl shouted, and raised his wand. More flames, a wall of fire, shot from it towards the children at the corridor's end.
Harry pulled on the fire extinguisher, and a burst of white foam and mist blasted towards the fiery construct, enveloping the corridor. The fire vanished.
The fire vanished?
"A fire extinguisher, huh? Ventus." Stiyl's voice cut through the mist, before his spell dispelled it, wiping it away. "Again, unfortunately, magical flames cannot be so easily erased." With a downward slash, a long blade of flame extended from the end of his wand.
I nearly let my emotions overrun me. I cannot accidentally damage the girl, but this should be good enough to intimidate her, and stop the boy.
The magician took another step forward. Then another.
Three steps.
Harry stared defiantly into his eyes, stared down his enemy, not willing to look away.
And on the fourth–
Stiyl's foot landed on the ground, and a shudder ran through his body.
"Now!" Harry ducked down and to the right, and charged.
Hidden, buried right below the floorboard that Stiyl Magus had just stepped on, was a single word.
Yod-Samech-Vav-Dalet. Four letters of Hebrew that spelled out Yesod, the ninth sphere, written with a marker on printer paper.
The ninth sphere, that corresponded to the foundation upon which God built the world. That corresponded to magic, the bridge and the vehicle between the divine and the material.
The foundations of Stiyl's magic trembled, and his flames flickered, disrupted.
Elsewhere in the building, there was the sound of several muffled explosions, as various minor spells that Stiyl employed became destabilized.
In the doorway behind Harry, Sally raised her twig/wand, and screamed. "Stupefy!"
The red-haired magician seemed to come to his senses, and he dodged the spell with a tilt of his body, but even as he raised his wand again–
What? Something's disrupting my–
–he found himself unable to cast, and Harry was upon him, sparks scattering from his fingers in tiny numbers.
Spiritual Tripping! "Frying Pan!" The shout telegraphed his attack, but he needed all the willpower, all the force he could muster.
A gong reverberated through the burning hallway at the impact, but somehow the magician was still on his feet–
"Stupefy! Ah!" A second scream from behind him, and Harry sensed the spell and dodged. The bright red stunner crashed into Stiyl's face, and the man, no, the teenager fell, unconscious.
The flaming sword winked out in a more permanent fashion.
"Sally!" Harry turned in worry, but the girl had already come up beside him.
"It's fine." The burn on her left hand was becoming even more severe. "I just dealt with this, remember?"
"You didn't scream that time." Harry fretted. He had already snatched up Stiyl's wand, and with a loud crack and a wrench of his hands, he folded it in two and tossed the pieces to the side.
"Because it's starting to hurt, idiot. Also, I think we could have used that." Sally remarked. The words were belligerent, but there was a slight tremor in her voice that mimicked the nervous trembling of her body.
"Too dangerous. What if he set it up to curse anyone that wasn't him that used it?" Harry shot back. He rifled through the magician's clothes, but he didn't find anything else he could use.
Harry, you need to keep moving. Elly sent a warning. It might be safer to hide in here, in the short run, but sooner or later, Kanzaki Kaori–the Asian woman–will be coming. And get Sally to erase the magician's memories.
"I know." Harry said aloud. Sally made a noise of inquiry, and Harry simply said "It's Elly. She says we need to keep moving. And that you should erase his memories." Harry indicated Stiyl with his hand.
"I know it's her, but you talking to yourself like that still freaks me out slightly. Obliviate." She pointed her next twig at the magician. "Serves you right for coming after me." She blew a raspberry at his unconscious form.
Magicians have mental failsafes. I doubt that'll erase any more than the past hour, and perhaps not even fully, given how Sally isn't even a proper witch yet. Elly remarked, and Harry conveyed.
"Would be fun to see an adult babbling like a baby, though." Sally replied. "Where to now, omniscient one?"
"Outside."
~~[a]~~
"I know it's not the right time for this, but you were really cool back there." Sally's remark came as they ran through smouldering corridors, the back entrance as their destination.
A grimace came to Harry's face. "I wasn't trying to be. Maybe Elly rubbed off on me, or something. I just…I just hate this. All of it. I don't want to have to run."
"I know that too, you idiot. Don't you think I didn't feel the same?" The brown-haired, green-eyed girl said, her voice wavering. "I was happy here with you. I just want you to be around forever." She became more subdued. "We should have just ran earlier."
"But we hoped it didn't have to come to this."
"Yeah." Sally slipped her scarred hand into Harry's own, left into right, and together, they emerged into the sunlight–
To only be faced with despair.
A tall Japanese woman, her black hair in a ponytail. An asymmetric pair of jeans, and a plain white t-shirt.
On her hip was a sword longer than Harry was tall.
The bangs on her forehead fell past her eyebrows, obscuring her eyes.
"I'll be the bait," Harry whispered. "It's you they're after, so you absolutely can't go in front. If she just grabs you and leaves–"
"Stop worrying, you stupidhead idiot." Sally ground out the words, which were getting harsher as the situation grew more dire. "I know. Let me just support you."
"Step back, boy."The woman's words were curt. "It is only the girl we want. If you leave, you will be unharmed."
"But not her," Harry said, stepping forwards. "Why are you doing this, Kanzaki Kaori?"
The woman's eyes opened in surprise. The unasked question was clear to all present.
How did he know my name?
"Kidnapping a young girl. Is this really what your faith teaches you? To trample over the will of the individual?"
There was no other plan, now that the Saint of the Far East had spotted them. She, would could cross a country in the time they took to walk a mile. She, that would have been strong enough to defeat them in a single blow.
The consequences of revealing knowledge gained from a parallel world were cast aside, replaced by the need to survive in the present. And even that, too, paled in comparison to the emotions Harry was now feeling.
He didn't need to try to persuade. He could speak from his heart.
Despite the fact that she could have defeated them right there and then, and despite the fact that it was very much against protocol, Kanzaki opened her mouth to reply. "It is the will of God. And it is for the greater good." She sighed. "I will tell you where I am from, boy. I am from–"
"Necessarius, the Zeroth Parish." Harry eyes were hewn emeralds. "The Church of Necessary Evil."
What?
"When I lay dying, an angel rescued me. They told me what would happen, and who would come, to misuse the word of God for their own ends." Harry's half-truth, but truth nonetheless, was spit out as a challenge.
Within Harry's mind, Elly simply knelt to the ground and prayed. Nothing else would help them now.
"More is at stake than you know, boy. The knowledge of millions." Even as she spoke, her voice was uncertain; it was as if she was repeating the words to herself, trying to reaffirm her own convictions. "There are things more important than one girl."
"Aren't you supposed to be a Saint?" Harry shouted desperately. "Aren't you supposed to save those who can't be saved? What are you doing, trying to steal someone's life away? Damming someone?"
Kanzaki closed her eyes.
The words had hit home. And, more than that, she could not bear to look at the two children before her. "I'm sorry, boy."
"Stupefy!" Harry screamed, and she slid Shichiten Shichitou out of its sheath, deflecting the spell automatically, almost absentmindedly.
For the greater good. She grit her teeth. A single life here and now, for the ability to protect hundreds of thousands more innocent lives in the future, should the grimoire library be properly instituted…
A terrible weight seemed to press down on her shoulders, and she released Nanasen. Steel wires bit into the ground around Harry with an ear-rending screech, the screams of the metal grinding into his ears.
"Stupefy!" Harry screamed once more, and again the spell deflected with an angling of her sword. Wood turned to ash in his hand.
"Stop!" she cried. "I don't want to have to hurt you as well."
"Then leave this place." The boy said, with a lot more contempt than should be possible for a ten-year-old. "Leave us alone! Leave Sally alone!"
"She's going to a place where she can help many more people!"
"I don't care!" Harry yelled back. In the end, even if Sally's memories wouldn't have to be erased, even if the practice of creating a grimoire library was a thousand times more merciful, he still would have fought all the same.
Because he was just a boy who didn't want to lose his first and best friend. Against that, no code of morality or goodness could stand resistant.
"Stupefy!" From behind Harry, Sally found an angle and shot her own spell, the strongest that she knew.
It was also deflected.
Wires once more carved a line into the earth, halting Sally from where she had been trying to circle around, to flank the saint–-as if it could have helped.
Kanzaki made a decision in her heart, and began to stride forwards.
For the greater good. To save many more later, in all the small, indirect ways…
She saw, once again, the Archbishop in her pink-beige habit, lecturing her on how the current Index was growing old, on why there was a need to find a new one; Stiyl's expression, as uncertain as her own, thinking about what it actually meant, to carry out that order…
"STUPEFY!" Harry roared. His last twig turned to ash in his palm as the spellbolt left it, a blaze, a blur of red-
-but Kanzaki was faster. Much faster. She easily evaded, a step to the left, and kept on walking forward.
"Harry!" Sally's anguished scream came from the side, and suddenly the Saint was a blur.
But it was not over yet.
She'll come right at me. Harry raised his left hand, five outstretched fingers, and drew magic from within himself, cast the most powerful spell he knew, a spell stolen from the memories of the murderer of his parents, the one that Elly said he had an affinity for, because of his scar-
"FULMINIS!" Lightning crashed into Kanzaki as she materialized in front of him, and Harry nearly fell to his knees, nearly blacked out from the expenditure of energy. But he already knew it wouldn't be enough, and he forced himself to look past the descending hand of the Saint, into the Saint's eyes, wide from shock-
Spiritual Tripping: Frying Pan. He formed the image in his mind: wide, cast-iron, burning hot, and swung it up, up, where he connected with the Saint's face.
It produced a sound like a shovel hitting wet concrete, dull and ineffective.
Kanzaki only smiled sadly, and tapped the hilt of her sword on Harry's head.
The boy went down immediately.
"Harry! HARRY!" Sally looked from her fallen friend, to the woman in front of her. "You! You're a monster! I'll never forgive you!"
Both Stiyl and her had been told. Told that the girl named Sally Perks was blessed with a perfect memory, and that there could be no other replacement.
In her own mind's eye she saw herself, also blessed as a child, blessed with being born a saint, chosen to be the Supreme Pontiff of the Amakusa since birth. And she remembered the suffering that others around her had been subject to.
She had ran from the Amakusa to the Anglicans–
–and yet it seemed no different, sometimes.
Was all manner of blessing simply a curse subjected upon others?
The look upon Sally's face would probably haunt her for years.
"I know." With those final words, Kanzaki's hand descended on Sally's forehead.
And so it was that what remained of Harry and Sally's childhoods came to an end.
Yes, it's basically OT1 with a bit of a mixup. You didn't seriously think an untrained child would win against a saint, did you?
"To be spirited away" = "to be hidden away by the gods" in Japanese.
Only suffering lies ahead.
Review please!