A BtVs / Angel / Harry Potter / Sopranos / Highlander crossover. Minor spoilers up to the end of 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.


Author's note: Yes, Krum somehow got spelled Krom throughout the previous chapter. No, nobody seems to have noticed until I just did. Sorry...


Bring Me The Head Of Harry Potter

by Marcus L. Rowland

XVI

"Okay," Angel said the following evening, "I think we've got all we're going to get here. We've talked to five ghosts, and none of them know more than we knew yesterday morning. Someone did it exactly as Viktor said they did, there's no getting around it."

"So what do we do now," asked Harry.

"Damned if I know. If someone like Willow had been around just afterwards she could have maybe traced the portal, but it's way too late now, damn thing doesn't exist any more and all the traces are gone."

"You know," said Gunn slowly, "that isn't true."

"How do you mean?" asked Willow.

"Who's the leading expert on portals right now?"

"Fred, of course." At Krum's blank look she added "Professor Winifred Berkel-Gunn, Gunn's wife."

"I've heard the name," said Krum, "but I'm not familiar with her work."

"I am," said Gunn, "guess who sat through three rehearsals of her paper the night before this wild goose chase began."

"Fred's much deeper into the theory than I am," explained Willow, "when I handle portals it's mostly at the instinctive and magical level, Fred's down there into multi-dimensional physics and quantum mechanics. She can open them with a computer, without any magic at all, just by calculating the right equation."

"Okay," said Gunn, "so I'm not into the deep theory, but if I'm remembering this right a portal doesn't just go away. It's kinda like a wormhole, like Star Trek or that X-Treme programme, becomes part of the permanent structure of the universe. And the universe is one hell of a lot more complicated than it looks, eleven physical dimensions if I'm remembering it right, all of them mixed up with time."

"So?" asked Krum.

"So part of her paper was about tracing portals; since time and space are mixed up in those extra dimensions you oughta be able to create a portal back through time to another portal before it closed, kinda tap into it. Maybe we could use that somehow, find out where the other end was."

"But..." began Harry.

"Holy crap," said Willow, "why didn't she mention it to me? That doesn't just... Oh boy. It blows causality out the window. You could send messages back through time, change the outcome of events, provided you could find a portal to lock onto. We could even go back to Sunnydale before the Hellmouth was sealed, change things. Save everyone who was killed fighting the First Evil."

"No we couldn't," said Dawn. "I mean we could, but we'd kinda cease to exist, our past would be different so the present us wouldn't be the same and on the whole I sort of like things the way they are. How could you be sure you wouldn't ruin everything, like distracting everyone so much that the earlier version of you got killed or couldn't close the Hellmouth?"

"I know," said Willow, "it's kinda like wishes, sounds good until you have to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Besides, you try tapping into the Hellmouth there's a pretty good chance you'd come out in Hell. Okay, forget that one, no messing with causality. Harry, you were going to say something?"

"Well, it's just that if you start tapping into that portal, aren't you going to get a hundred tons of propane coming out?" There was an awkward silence. Eventually Willow said "That's a good point. We'll need to work on that. Backfires are definitely a bad idea."

"We're wasting time," said Kennedy. "If we're gonna solve this one we'll need Fred, computers, equipment, the whole enchilada."

"You're right," said Angel. "We need to get back to LA. When's the next window for our portkey?"

"Ten, that's mid-day in LA," said Dawn, checking her PDA. "That's in two hours and fifteen minutes."

"Okay, let's get packing."

"What about me and my men?" asked Krum.

"Want to come?"

"Of course."

"The building we'll be porting to is pretty big, but it was never designed for an army. Maybe you and two or three of your men, any more and I'd be worrying about someone materialising in a pillar."

"Very well. Myself, Sergeant Stok, Professor Gödel," he indicated the bearded wizard who had examined Harry, "and Corporal Kuryakin," a tough-looking blonde witch with an eagle owl on her shoulder wearing camouflage robes and carrying the first firearm they'd seen in wizarding territory, an AK47 with grenade launcher attachment. "The others will stay here."

"So does the gun and grenades," said Angel. "There's a child where we're going."

"Very well." He spoke in Russian to Kuryakin, who sullenly handed her weapons to one of the other soldiers and moved her wand from a sheath to her sleeve.

"Paranoid much?" said Dawn. "Come on, guys, this is a hotel we're going to, not a fire-fight. Lighten up a little."

"We'll try," said Krum, "but it won't be easy."

"What about notifying the Department of Magic that you're coming?" asked Willow.

"Did you notify us before you trespassed here?"

"Point taken," said Angel. "We'll worry about the legalities when we have to. Let's move it, people."

* * * * *

At precisely noon the group materialised in the disused ballroom of the Hyperion hotel. At once there was a piercing cry of "They're back!" and Cordelia ran forward to hug Angel. Fred arrived a moment later, carrying Alonna, closely followed by Hermione.

"Hermeeonee!" shouted Krum, his eyes lighting up, and he grabbed her hand and shook it vigorously.

"Viktor? What on earth brings you to Los Angeles?"

"You, of course. What else could... Demon!" The last word was shouted as Lorne came into the ballroom, and Krum reached for his wand. Lorne hastily ducked behind a pillar as all four of the Special Forces wizards fired spells in his direction. A huge mirror shattered, and the pillar he was using for cover turned into a tree then crumbled to sawdust. There was an ominous creaking noise from the ceiling.

"Thicken!" said Willow, encasing the wizards in one of her strongest force fields, which also engulfed Hermione and Kennedy.

"Take it easy guys," said Angel, "Lorne's on our side."

"Okay," said Willow, "no shooting spells at the friendly demon. If I let you guys out do you promise not to be so trigger-happy?"

There was a brief pause, then Krum nodded and the other wizards followed his example.

"Release! Now fix things before the damn room collapses!"

All four wizards began to cast spells, to support the ceiling and replace the pillar and mirror. Within a few minutes things were more or less back to normal. It would take Angel a week to notice that the mosaic pattern of the replacement pillar was upside down compared to the others in the ballroom, while the new mirror reflected vampires but not ordinary humans.

"That's better," said Angel. "Okay, it was ten at night when we left, none of you guys have eaten and it's just gone noon here. I think we should grab a bite to eat then get some rest or we'll have the jet-lag from Hell. Anyone got any particular preferences, or should I just send out for a few pizzas?"

"No need," said Professor Gödel, raising his wand. Everyone hastily dodged as four trestle tables materialised, followed by chairs, cloths, silverware and plates, then serving bowls and tureens containing cooked vegetables, savoury lamb stew, salad, and bottles of wine and butterbeer. "I hope this is to everyone's taste?"

"Oh, I think we can rough it," said Kennedy. Everyone sat down to eat.

* * * * *

"Okay," said Fred three days later. "let's see if we can get this sucker to work this time." She clicked an icon on her computer, there was a hum of power as the equipment it was controlling came to life. A tiny spark of white light appeared inside a tank made of armoured glass, with some small ports to allow instruments to be inserted. "Okay, that's where it's supposed to be and it looks pretty stable. We have a portal, not leading anywhere right now. I'll keep it small until we tap into something. Checklist time. Charles, is the camera ready?"

Gunn peered through the viewfinder of a video camera fitted with a bulky image intensifier and a surgical endoscope, a flexible fibre-optic tube a half inch wide and five feet long. He twisted control knobs and the end of the endoscope bent through ninety degrees then turned round like the head of a snake, its lens gleaming in the lights of the Hyperion's ballroom. He said "Most obscene gadget I've seen outside a sex shop," then straightened the tube and waited.

"Dawn, video recorders?"

Dawn stood by a bank of five VHS recorders and monitors. She scanned their displays, then said "All running."

"Willow, containment spell ready?"

"Ready." Her hair was already standing out slightly, as though she were charged with static electricity.

"Hermione, you got the time turner spell ready?"

"Ready."

"Harry, Viktor, got the mobiles ready?" Harry waved his wand and a dozen wasp-like replicas of insects lifted from the table and began to orbit his head. Viktor raised his hand to show her six spider replicants, piled as a neat pyramid in his hand. All of the insects were actually complex robotic units, magically shrunk and animated.

"Okay, everyone with magic, remember not to cast any spells directly into the computer, don't want another explosion. Right, Angel, main switch?"

"Ready." Angel stood ready to cut the power if the portal became dangerously unstable or moved outside the tank, or began to dump propane into the ballroom.

"Cordy, maps?"

Cordelia sat with a pile of paper maps, including the charts generated by Wolfram and Hart, and a laptop running a GPS mapping program. "All ready."

"Everyone else, watch the monitors but be ready to run if anything seems to be going wrong. Okay, I'm gonna start to look for something to connect to in ten seconds... five.. four... three... two... one..." She clicked another icon, looked at the co-ordinates it was displaying, and frowned. "Okay, that's the.. whatever the heck it is... under that mountain in Colorado, their energy density is way too high for us to tap into. Starting the search cycle again. And... nope, Colorado again."

"Can you exclude those co-ordinates from the search?" asked Dawn.

"Maybe." Fred added to the program's parameters. "Hmmm... yes, that's got it, it's just drifting now. No active portals apart from Colorado. Hermione, let's have the time-turner spell now, set the portal cycling into the past."

Hermione flicked her wand with an odd twisting motion and sparkling light streamed into the glass tank. The hum of the machinery seemed to change pitch slightly.

"That's got it.... drifting back nicely. One month... two... three... keep going... that's around the right time... yes! Okay, we're picking up a portal, right general area, right general time. Trying to lock onto it... c'mon... c'mon, darn it... got you. It's a big one, must be at least two feet wide." On her display something that looked like a thin hair was nuzzling against a twisted strand of spaghetti, a symbolic representation of the original portal's path through eleven-dimensional space. "I'm going to have a hard job keeping our opening small here, it wants to be the same width as their portal. Charles, any sign of anything leaking into the tank?"

"Nothing."

"Okay. Dawn, we need an accurate time hack."

"On it." Dawn pushed a thin aerial through a small port in the side of the glass tank and into the portal. "Nothing for the NIST atomic clock in the States or the MSF one in Britain, must be out of range, let's see... yeah, getting a time signal from the DCF transmitter in Germany. You reading it, Fred?"

"Got it. That'd be one-fifteen AM in Hungary, a couple of hours before the attack. Switch to GPS frequencies... okay, I'm getting co-ordinates, so it must already be outside the Dragon Reserve. Cordy, sending the co-ordinates to your computer."

"Got it.." Cordy looked at a map display on the screen, compared it to the paper maps beside the computer. "If I'm getting this right one end of the portal is travelling across Romania towards Hungary at about eighty miles an hour, the other is stationary in Romania."

"Can you narrow down the location of the stationary end?"

"Let's see... Yeah, it's shown as a factory on this map, about ten kilometres from the Dragon Reserve, it has rail and road links. Could be where the propane came from."

"Okay. Charles, I'm going to try to open the portal wide enough for the endoscope. When I do start feeding it in fairly slowly, stop as soon as you see something on your screen, or if the portal seems to be becoming unstable."

Gunn opened a larger hatch in the tank and carefully guided the tube into the portal. "Okay... dark, dark, white light, and... here we go. Looks like some sort of factory."

"Stop the tube there and take a look around."

"Way ahead of you." Sergeant Stok, Corporal Kuryakin and Dawn moved to watch the screen as Gunn carefully closed a clamp to hold the tube in place and panned the end through a circle. "Nothing, just lots of machinery inside a building, lots of valves and gauges, look kinda old and rusty.... okay, that looks like a body on the floor. Another next to it, both wearing robes. I think we have dead wizards here. Around some more and... hello, who are these guys?"

"Death Eaters," said Stok. "Or people pretending to be Death Eaters." On screen three men in silver masks dragged another body to one side then moved towards the portal. "Can they see us?"

"The portal's kinda bright and hard on the eyes," said Gunn, "We ought to be okay if they don't look too closely. There's only a couple of inches of this thing showing."

"Can you zoom in at all?" asked Dawn.

"Nope, fixed focus lens."

They moved another body, and Hermione gulped and said "I think... I think that might be Charlie Weasley they're moving."

"Me too," said Harry.

"Yes," said Krum, "I think you are right."

"Then we've been wrong from the start," said Angel. "It really was Death Eaters that attacked the school. They must have hijacked this operation, maybe changed the target."

"We don't know that," said Krum, "for all we know the school might have been the target from the start, the Death Eaters might be trying to stop it."

"Doesn't look that way," said Willow. "They could close that portal any time they wanted to, just erase the conjuring circle around it."

"Okay," said Fred, "Let's try some bugs. Harry, let's have a wasp for each of those guys, and one for each body. Viktor, send in a couple of spiders, set them to home in on the strongest source of magic that isn't the portal."

"Right," said Harry, tapping some of the wasps with his wand and murmuring to them. Viktor did the same to the spiders, then apparated them into the portal. "Wish I could do that," said Harry, as Krum repeated the process for the wasps.

"It's a knack," said Krum. "Comes in handy sometimes."

"There's still plenty of time," said Fred, "Charles, keep filming for a while, see if we can get anything to help identify them."

A few minutes later the Death Eaters came back into view, guiding a huge steel pipe which seemed to be growing towards the portal. As it reached the edge the rim began to bend down until the portal was completely covered. "Three guesses what they're planning to pump through there," said Kennedy.

"No takers," said Dawn. "Still think they're trying to stop it."

"No," said Krum.

"Let's take a look at the other end," said Fred. "Charles, pull out the camera, then I'll try to reverse the connection..."

* * * * *

"That's it," Angel said two hours later, as Fred closed the portal and powered down her equipment. "About what we thought. That carpet had some holes, looked like it had been through a firefight. My guess is that the Death Eaters knew what was going down and attacked by broom soon after they took off, one unit taking out the guys on the carpet while the others went for the propane refinery. They switched the raid from wherever it was originally headed to the school, bombed the place, then switched back to their brooms and dumped the carpet and the end of the portal into the fire once the school was burning. Do we have anything on their identities?"

"Not yet," said Fred, "We need to see what we get from the bugs."

"When will they get here?"

"If everything worked as planned they'll have already made their way back. I told them to go to room 530, the last time anyone was in there was when we had the wake for Faith."

"I'll go take a look," said Willow, heading for the stairs. She came back a few minutes later with a spider and two wasps. "They've been there a few months, I think. Guess the others didn't make it."

"Are you saying that we didn't need to do any of this?" asked Harry, "we could have just gone upstairs and got them?"

"Ummm... We'll have to try that some time. I'm not sure I want to think about it right now."

"Better not," said Fred, "I'm kinda dubious about creating unnecessary time paradoxes. Might destroy the universe or split it into two time lines."

"Dumbledore always warned me about that," said Hermione, "he was a little vague on what exactly might happen, but I don't think it was good."

"Okay, let's not then. Harry, Viktor, can you get these back to their original forms?"

"No problem," said Harry, gesturing with his wand, "Finite Incantatum". Krum echoed him. Three instrument packages, each about the size of a paperback book, appeared in place of the bugs. Fred removed DAT tape cartridges from all of them and tiny hypodermic syringes from the 'wasps'.

"Okay, looks like we have blood from both wasps. Let's see what we got on tape." She put the first cassette into a DAT video player and began to watch; it showed a wasp's-eye view as it flew from the portal towards one of the Death Eaters, landed on him, and inserted a fine needle to take a small blood sample. A huge hand slowly moved towards the bug, which easily flitted free to evade it. It flew off a few feet, circled its victim, then gently landed on his cloak. They all knew that it was programmed to take the colour of its surroundings, so within seconds it would be effectively invisible.

"What's on the data track?" asked Kennedy.

"Just the GPS co-ordinates for the factory so far."

"Can you fast forward this?" asked Dawn, "That's a four hour tape, gonna be a little boring if we watch every second."

"Okay, but watch out for any change." On screen they could see apparently random views of the factory as the Death Eater moved around, unfortunately it was looking backwards so they couldn't see precisely what was going on.

Fred set the playback to x5, then x10, then x20. After a few minutes she said "This would be when they released the gas, but all of the action is out of view, can't see a damn thing. I'll slow it to x5 now. About three minutes later the picture suddenly jumped to a bright swirl of colour then went dark. "Let's take that back and go through at quarter speed.... okay, just here they must have used a portkey, whoever it is was standing inside.. uh, what do you make of this, Harry?" She hit the 'Pause' key.

"Looks a bit of a dump, really. Typical sort of wizarding place... no, there's Dark Arts stuff going on there, that's a Hand of Glory... wait a second, I do know it, it's Borgin & Burkes shop in Knockturn Alley. I was there once, messed up the first time I used Floo powder."

"I know it too," said Willow, "Giles and I went there once looking for some books."

"Okay. No GPS, so inside another unmappable area, no surprise there. I'll take it forward frame by frame. Keep an eye open for people coming into view."

They watched as, with excruciating slowness, the cloak was taken off and thrown into a cupboard. All that they saw of its wearer was a large hand with hairy knuckles. "Could be Borgin," said Harry, "I think he had hands like that. He was killed in the final battle so it doesn't help us much."

"Never met the guy," said Willow, "Giles spoke to Burke."

Fred fast forwarded, but the rest of the tape showed only darkness. "Okay, the wasp would have got out the next time the cupboard was opened, flown a random course until it started to pick up GPS signals, then headed back here."

"How about the blood?" asked Hermione.

"It's magically preserved," said Willow, "it could still be used for DNA matching but you'd need a lot more evidence to get a warrant. Unless the Aurors work a lot differently to the ordinary police."

"Not that different, there are so many ways to fake evidence with magic that you pretty much have to have a couple of dozen eye witnesses, even then they'd be checking that people's memories hadn't been tampered with."

"That's why it was so hard to get people to believe Voldemort was back," said Harry, "when I was the only witness it was easier to believe I was lying or out of my mind and faked the evidence myself."

"Okay, let's try wasp number two then," said Fred, "I think it's one of the ones we sent to the carpet. We should have numbered them." She put it in the player and it popped out again, a red light flashing on the controls. Fred took a closer look and swore. "There's nothing here, the tape's jammed right at the start. Looks like one of the rollers was defective. So we've got a blood sample but no idea who it comes from or when it was taken."

"Wonderful," said Angel.

"We didn't even get a picture of anything useful through the portal," said Gunn, "seeing as the portal was under the carpet, and the riders were on top."

"What about the spider?" asked Dawn.

"It's from the carpet. We we told it to climb round to the top of the carpet and hitch a ride on someone, let's see what we got."

They watched the screen as the spider did exactly that, coming over the edge of the carpet to reveal two riders and a bundle of supplies. Fred froze the tape. "Recognise anyone?"

"The bloke nearer the camera," said Harry. "White hair, Death Eater mask, looks like he's laughing his head off. Bet you a galleon to a sickle it's Lucius Malfoy."

"I think you're right," said Hermione, "but I don't know the other one at all."

"Me neither."

The spider patiently crawled towards Malfoy, or whoever it was, climbed onto his cloak, then as programmed began to scan its surroundings with its camera. Unlike the wasps it had a mobile head and covered a much wider field of view.

"Okay," said Fred, freezing the playback again, "We've got a good look at this guy on the broom. Ring any bells with anyone?"

"The broom's a Firebolt Enduro 02," said Harry, "got a touring saddle and panniers so it's definitely not for Quidditch."

"Why not?" asked Angel.

"It'd be like using a big touring motorbike on a rough dirt road," said Hermione. "You could do it, but it'd skid all over the place. A small light trail bike is better."

"What about the rider?"

"I'm not sure," said Harry, "I've an idea I've seen him on a broom somewhere, there's something about the way he's riding it. Maybe someone I've played against."

"Someone else from Hogwarts?" asked Willow.

"Maybe. Why?"

"You said your school's team went to Durmstrang. Could it be someone else from the team?"

"I suppose," said Harry, not liking the idea, then thought for a second. "Wait a minute. Can you work out how big he is?"

"Big?" asked Dawn, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

"I mean his height."

"If you can tell me the size of something in the picture," said Willow.

"The handle of an Enduro 02 is a hundred and forty centimetres long," said Krum, "The bristles would be another fifty to sixty centimetres depending on how it was tuned."

"Let's see," said Willow, capturing the picture to one of the computers and opening a photographic analysis program. "Hmm... based on the length of the stick he's six feet five or six. That's about one point nine five metres, Viktor."

"Could be Marcus Flint," said Harry. "He was a Slytherin, there were rumours he was a Death Eater, but nothing was ever proved. He left school three years ago."

"Could he have played in an inter-school match in a previous year?" asked Angel.

"No, ours was the first in nearly thirty years."

"Damn. Okay, unknown but might be Flint.

"I have seen Flint play," said Krum, "the riding position is right, but many others ride like that. I would hesitate to accept this as evidence."

"Okay, let's see if there's anything else on the tape," said Fred, fast forwarding again. After a few seconds the broom flew out of view. The tape continued with an hour and a half of flight, then an aerial view of the destruction of Durmstrang, a confused view of flames and violent motion as the carpet was rocked by the explosion. Then the Death Eater the spider was riding climbed onto a broom, leaving the carpet suspended in mid-air and ablaze, falling towards the ruins of Durmstrang. The broom flew on for several miles, then landed in woods. The screen showed confusing glimpses of three other Death Eaters, then as before switched abruptly to an interior view.

"Portkey again," said Harry. This time the camera showed a palatial-looking hall. "I've seen that place before.... Bloody hell." The wearer of the cloak turned, and a blonde woman with a haughty expression reached for it. "That's Narcissa Malfoy, and the place is Malfoy Hall. I've seen pictures in the Daily Prophet." She hung it on a coat rack, and the spider still had a view of its surroundings. A few feet away a white-haired man removed a silver mask to reveal a pale pointed face. "Lucius Malfoy" whispered Hermione.

"It was him the spider was riding," said Willow. "He's definitely one of the ones that attacked the school."

"He was acquitted of Death Eater activities," said Harry, "Wolfram and Hart defended him."

"Well, whatever he was tried for," said Kennedy, "He was as guilty as hell at Durmstrang. All we have to do now is prove it, and work out what the Ministry of Magic was trying to hide and why."

TBC