A BtVs / Angel / Harry Potter / Sopranos / Highlander crossover. Minor spoilers up to season 7 of Buffy. Set after Season 7 BtVS, after Season 4 Angel, after Harry Potter graduates, and nowhere in particular in Sopranos / Highlander continuity.

All characters belong to their respective creators / film companies / etc. and are used without permission. This story may only be distributed on a non-profit-making basis.

Work in Progress. If you like this story, check out my other stories on the Fanfiction Net, Twisting the Hellmouth, and Fonts of Wisdom websites.

I'm British, so's my spelling. Live with it.


Bring Me The Head Of Harry Potter

by Marcus L. Rowland

IX

"I must be missing something," said Willow. "I thought that the final battle was about six months ago. You said that Charlie's been dead nearly a year."

"I'm sorry," said Harry, looking grim. "I didn't explain it well, it was the final phase of the war, not the final battle. By then everyone knew that Voldemort was back, and we'd taken out most of the Death Eaters in Britain, but we learned that Voldemort was building up his forces on the Romanian border, the area that used to be called Transylvania. They'd taken over an abandoned castle and the area around it and were recruiting allies; vampires, dark witches, werewolves, giants and so forth."

"F'kn Dracula?" asked Tony.

"He's dead," said Dawn, "My sister killed him a few years ago."

"No loss," said Angel, "Always hated that poser."

"It was his castle," said Harry, "and even with him gone it was unplottable and fairly thoroughly protected, but it happened that a couple of hundred years ago some aurors looking for Dracula worked out how to get past most of the defences. There was no way to get in by magic, but someone came up with the idea of taking a small group in on foot and attacking the place with muggle weapons, spelled to get through the defences."

"What sort of weapons were they carrying?" asked Angel.

"Mortars and a couple of rocket launchers."

"Against a stone castle? Were they out of their minds? You'd barely scrape the moss off the walls."

"I think someone got their ideas from Rambo movies. I only heard about it afterwards. Anyway, the attack was mounted from the dragon reservation in Romania, Charlie was their guide."

"So what went wrong?"

"Nobody's really sure. All that we know is that the bodies were found a few miles from the reservation, long before they should have been in any danger, they'd all been inverted."

"Inverted?" asked Kennedy.

"Turned inside out. It kills you pretty quickly. One of the nastier spells Voldemort came up with towards the end of the war."

"Gakk."

"Anyway, Charlie was definitely killed; his body was identified magically and by his family and several other people once they'd re-inverted what was left of him."

"So wh't'fk was it I gave my f'kn money to?" asked Tony.

"I thought he was paying you," said Willow.

"Well yeah, for the f'kn contract on the kid, but it started out with me changing some of my f'kin money for gold."

"How much?"

"Seventy thousand dollars. The Limey bastard gave me ten thousand of those gold coins, galleons."

"That's not right," said Harry, "That's not the proper exchange rate at all. Should be more like fourteen thousand."

"Huh? He gave me gold value less a five percent handling fee."

"Muggle gold value's got nothing to do with it. The goblins mine plenty, the wizarding world uses it for cauldrons and plumbing fixtures, it's not worth much more than brass. The Galleon is backed by goblin workmanship and magic, not gold. Every coin is hand cast and finished, and enchanted to show it's genuine. I'm not sure how the exchange rate is calculated, but everyone knows that they're worth more to muggles as gold than as coins. But it's illegal to sell them that way, or even melt them down and sell the gold, because they're often contaminated with magic they pick up from the authentication spell and from being handled by wizards."

"Contaminated?" asked Angel.

"It can be very nasty, the Ministry of Magic has a whole section that does nothing but keep our stuff out of muggle hands. Imagine a normal human given magical power and no idea how to use it safely."

"No need to imagine," said Willow. "We've been there. More than once."

"You're saying I've been f'kin conned?" asked Tony.

"Definitely. Charlie's dead, and there's no way that anyone really working for Gringrotts would let you have our money, so whoever it was you were dealing with was some sort of imposter. Better hope that they gave you real gold, at least."

"T'fuk you say?"

"Watch." Harry looked around the room, picked up a coffee cup, muttered "Aurum" and flicked his wand. The cup filled with gold galleons, and Harry's hand sagged a little under the sudden weight. He handed it to Tony. "That's magical gold. Wouldn't fool a wizard for long, but it'll pass all the normal muggle tests until the spell wears off in a few hours. It's one of the oldest tricks in the wizarding book, much easier than genuine transmutation or transfiguration. Bloody leprechauns can do it, and they're about as bright as chimps."

"Crap" said Tony, stirring the coins with a finger.

"What now?" asked Willow. "I think we've got as much as we need from mister Soprano, I think it's time we got him back. And the other guy, Furio. I'll need a few minutes to work on their memories and make them forget about killing Harry..."

"Hey, you f'kin said Furio was dead!"

"I lied," said Angel. "He's locked up downstairs."

"Anyway, t'fuk with that. If someone's conned me I want f'kin payback. An' I want to see wha't'fuk's happened to my f'kin money."

"What do you think, Harry? You're the client here."

"I think we might need him, or at least his memories, and we may need him to get into his vault and see what's really there. There's bound to be more questions we want to ask as we get into this, it'd be a shame if he couldn't answer them. Provided he isn't trying to kill me, of course."

"T'fuk with that," said Tony, "no pay, no hit, an' it sounds like there's no pay."

"And no retaliation for this little interview?" asked Angel. "That really would be a very bad idea, so far you've only seen me and my friends in a good mood."

"No f'kin harm done."

"Where do we go from here?" asked Willow.

"London," said Angel, "but there are some practical problems for me if we go right now, it's already morning there. Harry, are there windows in the place that the portkey takes us?"

"No, the walls are solid stone. The goblins have old-fashioned ideas about bank security."

"Convenient."

Dawn looked at the world clock on a PDA, then said "What hours does the bank keep? I don't like the idea of Angel being trapped in there if we have to go somewhere else during the day."

"I don't think they ever close," said Harry.

"Then maybe it'd be a better idea to wait until noon tomorrow, our time, we'd get there just after sunset in London."

"That's a plan," said Angel. "Mister Soprano, I'll get your boy Furio up here, maybe you two need to talk. I can offer you a room here for the night, it isn't fancy but it's habitable."

"What about my wife?" "She thinks you had an argument and went off, I doubt she'll worry much overnight, but if you're worried you can always call her. I expect she's still on her way home though. Willow, how long do you think we can get away with this?"

"I'm pretty sure we're okay so far, the counter-spells I set up before we ah.. borrowed Mister Soprano haven't been touched, so it looks like the DOM didn't spot what we were up to. If they had we'd be knee-deep in aurors by now."

"DOM?" asked Tony.

"Department of Magic, reporting to the Secretary of State for Wizarding Affairs, she reports to the President. They try to run the magic world in this country, try to keep things under control."

"T'fuk you say. What'f'ks an auror?"

"Magical cop. They won't be interested in you so long as you stay out of our business, but you want to watch out, you wouldn't stand a chance if they went after you. You crossed the line when you tried to have Harry killed, that could have bought them down on you, fortunately nobody was hurt. Not permanently, anyway."

Angel came back with Furio, who said "Hey, you said someone had been shot."

"I was," said Dawn. "I got better."

Furio crossed himself. Tony said "You another f'kin vampire?"

"No. I just live right."

"More f'kin magic."

"Something like that."

* * * * *

"The tall dark guy is some sort of monster," Furio said in Italian. "I think he's a vampire."

"Yeah?" said Tony, throwing a sheet onto one of the beds in the room Angel had found. "Tell me about it. What t'fuk's the idea of telling them I'm your boss?"

"He pretty much knew anyway, he was gonna tear my throat out if I didn't confirm it."

"What about loyalty until death, whatever happened to that?"

"It wouldn't have been death, he was talking about making me into another f'kin vampire so I'd be his slave."

"Oh.. He can do that?"

"I've seen the monster movies, for all I know he can do all that Dracula shit."

"Well... Okay, I guess I'll let it go. Next time don't get caught. 'Specially by f'kin monsters. Whad'ya know about the others?"

"The boy, the one I was supposed to kill, he's some sort of wizard. Don't know what the brown-haired girl is. The hitter I used said he was sure she was dead, if she came back from that..."

"What about the rest?"

"The black-haired woman's some sort of freak, she picked me up one-handed. A couple of times the vampire called her 'slayer'..."

"And?"

"There's an old legend I heard when I was a kid about women who kill vampires, they call them Slayers. They're supposed to be that strong."

"So why t'fuk isn't she killing the f'ker?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen the others before. They kept me in the f'kin cellar."

"Find out all you can, and play along. I wanna know what we're dealing with, and who the rest of them are. Once I've found out what's happened to my money I'm gonna have a few scores to settle..."

Two floors below Angel stopped listening and said "Okay, Soprano's planning to stab us in the back as soon as he knows what's happened to his money. No big surprise there. Everyone stay on your toes, and try to remember that they're both dangerous men."

"More dangerous than you might think," said Dawn.

"How do you mean?" asked Harry.

"I need to make a call, I want someone's advice. Angel, I'll need to use the phone with the scrambler."

* * * * *

Dawn dialled a Boston number, and hoped it wasn't too late for the elderly lady on the other end. After a few rings she picked up. "Mrs. L., this is Dawn. Can you scramble please?"

"Dawn? Lorn's friend?

"Yes."

"I'm scrambling." There was a brief warble as the phones synchronised their signals, then the slightly metallic tones of a scrambled call.

"I have a problem, I could do with some advice."

"Headhunters?"

"No. Ran into someone today, he's either a pre-immortal or already immortal, I think immortal. Whichever he is, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know."

"People usually know if they've died, Dawn."

"Not always, could have been in a car crash or something, thought he had a miraculous escape."

"You know what to do; find out if he's immortal, if he is tell him what he needs to know to survive. If not, try to make sure he gets some training... That's not the problem though, is it?"

"No."

"What then."

"He's a monster. A gangster, a multiple murderer, he's just tried to kill a friend of mine. There's sort of a truce at present, but I think eventually he'll be coming after us again. If he ever gets into the Game I'm pretty sure he'll be a headhunter, probably start by coming after me."

"He knows what you are?"

"He's learned enough to guess if he ever knows the score."

"Dawn... some immortals, some of the best of us, began as soldiers, mercenaries, thieves and murderers. Enough time, and the knowledge that you'll have that time, changes your perspective. You're young, you have no idea what things were like for many of us. You think of me as a cute old lady, I can assure you that you wouldn't have liked me as I was in my youth, in the eighteenth century when I lived by my wits. It's probably fortunate for the world that I became old before I was killed, as it was I've always had to think my way out of difficulties, or outlast them, rather than fighting."

"So what am I supposed to do... train him the way you trained me? Teach him to fence, tell him all of the little tricks that'll help him survive? Hope that if it comes to it I'll be able to take his quickening, absorb a life like that without going mad or being corrupted?"

"Ideally yes. But there's no urgency. You could wait to see how things turn out before you tell him, for example."

"That's probably best. I'd better go, it must be getting late there."

"That's all right dear, I don't need much sleep. Let me know how it goes."

"I will. Good night."

"Good night dear."

* * * * *

"Well?" asked Angel.

"Well what?"

"Which one is it?"

"You listened?"

"I'm a vampire, Dawn, it's difficult not to."

"Um... okay, let's just say that if Tony Soprano is killed, it might be a good idea to incinerate his corpse or cut his head off to make sure he stays that way. Good night."

TBC