Yesterday had started out as an ordinary day for Finnall Goldensword. She woke up sore on the floor of a damp, crowded and smelly cave surrounded by ragged armed men and women. They had their normal morning group meeting, discussing the movements of different herds of zombies and other undead in the area, as well as the state of their supplies, which were unfortunately lacking.
Then they had gone hunting. It was one of the few bright spots in their existence, the spirit of the hunt appealing to her elven half. Most days they tracked and destroyed the undead, an endless slog in this Scourge-infested land, but during an actual hunt, they could almost pretend it was still the old days.
Eventually they had found a bear. Growing up in Dalaran, she would never have expected to eat bear meat of all things, but in these days you took what you could get. It wasn't even that bad, really. As long as you cooked it.
While on the way back to the camp, they had come across a strange boy walking down the road. Rather than stand out in the open all day, trying to figure out who he was, she had knocked him out and brought him back to the group's base.
Luckily he didn't seem to annoyed about that, when he came to.
It turned out her initial guess had been correct, and the boy was some sort of apprentice mage from an unknown magical school in a place she had never heard of. Apparently it was on another world, like the Outland where so many of the Alliance's heroes had been lost.
If magic could open that portal, she supposed it was possible for some other magical event to have brought this boy here.
After a discussion about magic, some of which went above her head despite having grown up in Dalaran as the daughter of a sorceress, they had gotten into explaining the state of Azeroth. It had been difficult, and the boy was mostly silent and nodded occasionally during the story.
When it was done, they sat in silence, before the boy told them about his own world. There was a war there too, but between human nations. Armies of millions of men fighting all around the world, while cities were destroyed from above.
It sounded bad, but it wasn't "legions of zombies eating entire kingdoms" bad.
Finally the boy had asked to join their group, saying that since he had no way of getting back to his own world, and barely knew anything about the place, it would be safer staying with the group. He offered to help out, and show the mages in the group some of his knowledge, in exchange for reciprocal training in the local magic. She had seen the eagerness in Narth's face, and the offer was accepted.
Today was another day though. Today, she also woke up uncomfortable thanks to a bit of rock pressing into her back all night, in a cramped cave surrounded by unwashed warriors, but there was something different about today.
Today, Tom would show them his magic. She knew quite a lot more about magic than most non-mages, thanks to her upbringing, so the significance of a less combat-oriented school of magic, as well as the use of wands as a channeling instrument was not lost on her.
God his legs hurt. At least he wasn't starving anymore. Tom woke up slowly, still tired despite the sleep. Not many may have guessed, but he really wasn't a morning person, and much preferred to sleep in when he could.
It took him a few minutes to realise that he wasn't in his comfortable bed in the Slytherin dorms. The cold hard ground below him was a giveaway, and it felt like he had some sort of rock wall behind him as a pillow. He didn't even have a blanket on, just his school robes.
Eventually groaning slightly and opening his eyes, everything came flooding back to him. He wasn't at Hogwarts anymore, he wasn't even in that bloody orphanage, he was in a whole other world. A world full of elves and inferi and demons and green barbarians from outer space. Marvelous.
He was going to be stuck here for probably quite a while, assuming he ever got home; all because of his stupidity in trying to create a Horcrux without the proper amount of research. There had to be some way to find a way back, but he wasn't going to find it sitting on his arse in a cave. He was going to help these people, get their trust, learn their foreign magics and then do whatever it took to create one of those inter-planetary portals.
The members of this little warband, which vaguely reminded him of some old stories he had read about King Arthur's knights, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and Hereward the Wake, were already all awake and active. Huh, actually, thinking of King Arthur, his current situation reminded him of that one muggle story about the time travelling Yank.
Some of the more peasanty-looking ones were doing something to what looked like a skinned bear in the quarter, another was sharpening his sword, and it looked like someone else was bottling what looked like bright red potions from a larger jar.
The potion-maker, the wizard from yesterday who had called himself Narth, turned around when he was done and saw Tom awake "Had a good sleep, kid?" he grinned, while Tom only scowled in response.
A few minutes and a quick breakfast of weirdly fresh bread later, and Tom, Narth and the leader of the group, Finnall, were standing in the corner of the cave, going over how he could help them out with his magic. Since they didn't know what he could do, it was a rather pointless conversation. It wasn't like he would even be honest anyway if he did "tell them what he could do".
"Why don't I just show you what I can do?" he offered, "What problems do you have?"
"Well, supplies are always the main issue, thanks to Narth we should always have enough conjured water, but he can't create enough food to sustain us all, due to the mana costs." uhhhh, that shouldn't be possible at all, should it? And what was mana? Maybe a reference to the theory of finite magical cores, though hadn't that been discredited? Tom made a mental note to ask the mage about the food thing later, as it went against everything he understood about transfiguration.
"Lack of clean bandages and medical supplies is an issue, and there's a dwindling supply of ammunition for our ranged weapons. Gradual damage to melee weapons and armour is forcing us to switch to inferior items as well, though I don't suppose you can help with that."
"If you know some way to make the cave more comfortable, that would be nice." a woman sitting between two stalagmites grumbled. It was a bit cramped, thanks to the outgrowths
"Yes, any protections or anything else you can add to the base would be good. Since you come from another world, you might know some technique that the Scourge's wizards don't. Actually, now that I think of it, are you skilled in healing or alchemy or anything like that?"
"Not really." Tom reluctantly admitted, he had been pretty good at fixing his own injuries as a child, but it was never done consciously, "I'm best with charms, hexes and curses, as well as transfiguration, rituals, runes and potions-making."
When they didn't list any more problems, he figured it was about time to start showing off. First things first, he was going to help with the supply issue. With all of the warriors not out on patrol or a raid watching him, he stepped over to a handful of wooden crates and barrels in a corner, which wouldn't have looked out of place at the Hogs Head in Hogsmeade.
There was a bit of food there, and though he couldn't transfigure something else into actual edible food (yet!), there was an easy to get around that. Tom simply stepped up to the barrel and cast enlargements charm on each of the visible pieces of meat and bread, one after another. "Megala." he waved his wand in the familiar motion, and the items grew in size. He heard a gasp behind him, but didn't turn around, and continued casting until all of the visible food was enlarged and spilling out of the container.
He could have used the more well known engorgement charm, but that only increased the size of the object, by swelling and stretching it, with the drawback that the larger object still had the same mass. The enlargement charm would actually create more food. Why that was allowed, but magic wouldn't let you transfigure anything into food, he didn't understand. It did make sense really that there would be a way to actually conjure food, it was probably just that nobody on Earth had figured it out, or the knowledge was locked up in some family grimoire.
When that was all done, he turned around and saw the men and elves all staring at him. Narth had a thoughtful look, and was the first to speak. "Do all of your spells require an incantation? I noticed some movement with the wand, but the magic wasn't actually released until you said the word."
"Silent casting is a not uncommon ability, but it is easier to cast a spell like this, since this is how we're taught. Same story with wandless magic. Technically, it's all just about intent, so it's possible to do without, but most wizards just do what's easiest."
"Can you use that spell on anything?"
"Sure." Tom kind of liked talking about magic, actually. He had considered becoming a teacher even, focusing probably on the subject of DADA or charms. Not that Dumbledore would ever let him, he would definitely talk Headmaster Dippet into blocking his application. "It literally just scales up any object in size, but there's no loss of quality or stretching or anything. That said, it's not a good idea to use it on anything alive."
In another barrel next to the food, were a pile of what he recognised as arrows leaning on the rim. There was quite a bit of space in there, and hadn't they said they were running out? He waved his wand at the pile and cast the doubling charm, "Geminio."
A woman laughed when the barrel was soon full, and someone slapped Tom on the back. "What was next again?" he asked nobody in particular; it was quite nice having a whole group of people watching on in appropriate awe. His dormmates always had interrupted with their terrible jokes or half-formed thoughts. After the arrows, Tom then duplicated a pile of bandages, before being presented with a row of potions.
"Sorry, can't do anything with the potions, the magic could interfere with the effects." he explained, and Narth the mage shrugged, as he had been expecting that answer.
Next was a pile of broken or damaged equipment. He saw a helmet badly dented in, as if struck by a troll's club; a quick "reparo" later and the thing was good as new, and even shinier. Plate armor full of arrow holes, chainmail torn apart by some inhumanly strong hands, swords bent like straws, he was able to fix all of it quite easily.
Apparently the reparo spell was another field of magic completely unknown on this world, and the rest of the warriors quickly surrounded and almost forced him to cast the spells one at a time on all of their equipment, returning it all to pristine quality, before he could continue through the cave.
He had the idea to start scourgifying everything, including the rather smelly cave-dwellers. One burly warrior only grunted as he felt the magic hit him, while the smell (or lack thereof) quickly becomes apparent to the rest. "Oh thank the Light! I think you're my new favourite mage, Tom." a ginger man with a rather vicious scar said.
The Dalaranian wizard behind him grumbled something.
Pausing now, and looking around the cave, he saw that the supply issue had been seen to for now, and the warriors weapons, equipment and hygiene were much better off than they had been before. "Hmmm..."
There were already natural light sources, tiny cracks in the rocks which provided enough light during the day, and acted as a vent when torches were lit during the night. He decided to conjure a few magelights throughout the cave, to spare the smoke.
Next was the cave itself. "Watch this." he told the local wizard, or "mage" as they called them, "This is called Transfiguration."
He wished he knew the spacial enlargement charms, rather than just the object enlargement one, but they were strictly controlled by the ministry and technically illegal. Abraxas had promised to lend him a book about them from his family library after the next holiday.
He could, at least, make things more comfortable.
He started at the back of the cave, and worked his way forwards to the entrance of the cave, transfiguring each of the stalagmites and stalactites, as well as a few rocky outcrops and uneven spots into a nice and smooth surface. With the obstacles removed, the place immediately had about twice as much usable space.
Prolonged transfiguration like this was exhausting usually, but on this magic rich world, he barely felt a strain, and continued beyond smoothing out the surface of the cave. Using a modified transfiguration spell to turn sections of the rock to air (slowly, making sure to stabilise the rest of the cave and stop the roof falling in), he then evened the cave out, turning it from a rough, winding shape into a long, rectangular room.
When that was done, he noticed that everyone else was now gathered behind him, at the cave's entrance, just watching as the shape of the cave changed bit by bit. "How about some lessons in this transfiguration thing later, huh kid?" Narth mumbled.
He would trade basic transfiguration knowledge for anything about portals or magical transportation, as well as some of the local combat magic, as that was what they focused on here. It would come in handy if he ended up helping on their raids, and when he eventually returned home - he could be the first real battlemage in centuries, and nobody would have any knowledge of the spells so there couldn't be any prepared defenses.
Finally, he transfigured the top inch of the cave floor from a hard rock to a soft carpet identical to that in the Slytherin dorms, and as a finishing touch, transfigured a few rocks into comfortable beds.
"That's better."