Magi Ranger

By: Tenstar12

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Power Rangers.

Chapter 11, In Which Zack Totally Escalates the Crap Outta Things

Tommy stalked slowly toward Harry as he backed up, still holding his left hand to his chest in response to the pain. "To think," Tommy mocked with a laugh. "After all the trouble you gave Goldar, I was able to beat you in our first real battle."

Harry winced as a particularly rough step back jarred his injuries. "I'm pretty sure our first real battle was yesterday when I beat you down without you touching me. And if it weren't for that sword of yours this one would probably have gone similarly."

Not paying attention to where he was going, Harry backed into the edge of the paved walkway behind him, which was enough to make him fall to his back. He immediately looked toward the Green Ranger, expecting to see his sword coming down to end his life, but instead noticed that he had frozen in place. The Ranger tilted his head to one side as he steadily gazed at the downed wizard. "Is that so?" Without another word, Tommy took a fighting stance, his visor flashing with an electric green light as he channeled his power into the Sword of Darkness.

Suddenly, Tommy spun in place, turning to face the four Rangers that had regained their feet and were preparing to charge to Harry's rescue. With a grunt of effort, he stabbed the Sword of Darkness into the ground at his feet. The energy held within it lanced out through the earth and toward the Rangers, causing en explosion that knocked them off their feet again and sent them rolling down the steep embankment at the edge of the bluff.

Harry watched with a detached sort of cautious curiosity as Tommy released the Sword, leaving it stuck in the ground before turning back to face him. "Alright, wizard." He began, clenching his right hand in front of his face. "You think you can defeat me in a straight fight, then here's your chance. We've both had advantages over the other in our first two meetings. We each in turn have had the element of surprise which was enough of an advantage to nearly decide the entire battle. Today, I have the Sword of Darkness, a force that you cannot possibly hope to stand against when I wield it."

Harry rolled his eyes as he scooted back a few more inches across the pavement, his tailbone expressing its discomfort from the fall. Tommy continued, his helmeted gaze never leaving Harry. "So instead we shall fight on a more level playing field: your magic against my power, unaugmented by the Sword of Darkness. Get back on your feet, Wizard, and I'll show you why I am Rita's chosen warrior."

Harry, not quite believing he was lucky enough to still be alive, slowly climbed to his feet, his wand tightly clenched in his right hand as his left was used for leverage. "That's surprisingly decent of you." He said in a faux-pleasant tone. "Make me all warm inside, it does."

Tommy's voice practically dripped with venom. "Make no mistake, I plan to destroy you and the Power Rangers one and all. I just want you to understand how completely outmatched you are when you die."

Harry internally scoffed. He certainly hoped that Tommy wasn't normally this cocky and self-absorbed or they may have some serious problems if and when they managed to break Rita's spell. All the same, he found himself unable to really complain about it as this same attitude is the only reason he hadn't been bisected already.

Moving as quickly as his injuries would allow, Harry stepped back from Tommy, putting around ten feet between them, and gave him a short, almost mocking bow. "So it'll be a duel then. Very well." With a wave of his wand Harry conjured up another blank faced silver shield much like the day before and set it to hover over his left forearm. Once his defense was taken care of he raised his wand to point at the Green Ranger. "Whenever you're ready, mate."

Tommy's body tensed before he shot forward, taking two short steps before launching himself into the air with a flying kick. Harry brought his shield forward, easily catching the Ranger's attack on its face, before casting a mild banisher to launch him away. Before his opponent could recover, Harry gave his wand a flick and fire immediately began spewing out, seemingly without end.

Tommy paused for a moment, watching as the flames grew at Harry's feet before gathering into a single long strand with one end anchored on Harry's focus. With a smirk, Harry lashed his wand forward, the flame whip following the motion to strike out at the somewhat shocked Ranger, his instincts the only thing that prevented him from being hit straight on.

Seeing him roll to one side, Harry gave the Green Ranger no time to recover, knowing that if he did so he would lose any and all advantage he managed to gain immediately. He had no illusions of his real chances in a fight against Rita's Ranger. Just as Tommy had said, the only reason he had won so soundly the day before is because the Ranger had been caught completely off guard and Harry kept his momentum going throughout. His only real hope was to follow a similar pattern and hope things worked out.

After dodging a few more lashes of the flaming whip, Tommy took to the air again, leaping at Harry with one fist drawn back. Harry merely flicked his wand upward and flexed the fingers off his left hand. The fire attached to his wand reacted to his will and leapt up all at once even as a levitation spell caught Tommy and stopped him cold. The fire coiled around the airborne Ranger and trapping his arms to his sides as his suit started letting off a near continuous shower of sparks, testifying to the damage the magical flames were dealing.

Tommy's scream of pain and frustration rang out across the bluff, but Harry's face remained focused. He was too busy concentrating on maintaining the fire whip with his wand and nearly constantly refreshing levitation spell from his off-hand as the Ranger's magical protections fought it off. After several seconds maintaining the two spells, Harry felt his wand shudder as the unstable magic in it fluctuated causing the fire whip to fizzle out spontaneously. Deciding to go with it, Harry let the levitation spell fade as well, slumping slightly as his magic relaxed and Tommy fell to the ground.

Drawing himself up as best he could, Harry pointed his wand at the downed Ranger. "I'll ask you one more time: have you had enough?"

Just as the last time Harry asked Green that question while holding him at wandpoint, Harry was interrupted. This time however, it wasn't by the Ranger in question. No, Tommy was too busy recovering from the pain he had been subjected to while held by Harry's spells.

So focused was he on his opponent, Harry didn't even notice the high pitched mumbling sound before the first putty patroller slammed into his shield with a powerful flying kick, sending the magical construct into his left arm and torso rather painfully and knocking him to the ground. The shield had largely stopped any damage, spreading out the force and thus lessening the impact on any one spot, but Harry still felt the shock of pain run all throughout his arm and his already injured chest.

Struggling to climb to his feet, Harry narrowly managed to duck under a swipe from yet another putty that ran up just behind the first one, looking to press their advantage. With a growl, Harry wandlessly banished the putty, while simultaneously sending an Incendio at the first with his wand, igniting the clay construct and causing it to start thrashing around where it lay, apparently in a panic.

Upon regaining his feet, Harry felt his heart sink a bit. There before him, gathered around the slowly recovering Green Ranger were the slightly crouched figures of an even dozen putty patrollers. Worse still, Goldar stood behind them, his arms crossed and a decidedly mocking look in his eyes.

"Did you miss me, Mageling?" the simian taunted smugly.

Harry panted slightly as he wearily eyed Rita's general. "Every day, Goldar. You know my day isn't complete until I've thrown you around a bit. I have so missed our games these last weeks."

Goldar's eyes narrowed at the insult, slight though it was, but any response he was going to make was interrupted by a sudden outburst from the Green Ranger. "What are you doing here?" he demanded fiercely once he finally regained his feet, a slight stumble and a trail of scorch marks spiraling around his suit the only sign of the damage Harry had caused. "I had everything under control."

Goldar shot him an angry look. "Yes, you did. And then you decided to play honor games with the mageling. Because of your foolishness Mistress Rita sent me down to save you and finish the job."

"Your help is not needed." By this time Tommy was right in front of Goldar, staring directly into the golden armored monster's face.

Harry felt rather forgotten for a moment.

A moment that quickly passed as two more putties came up from behind him and yanked on his cloak, pulling him backward, off balance, before they roughly grabbed his arms, holding him in a tight grip even as a third jerked his wand from his grasp, his shield vanishing as well when his concentration was broken. Seeing this, Goldar's look became smug. "You're right. The task is already done so my help is not needed."

Tommy spun around to see Harry being held by the putties and growled, clenching his fists tight in anger. Goldar ignored his reaction as he turned to the Sword of Darkness and easily pulled it free from the ground. Turning back to the Green Ranger, Goldar spoke again. "Now finish the job. Your honor means nothing if it leads you to failing your empress. Slay the mageling so we can move on to the Power Rangers." He held the weapon out to Tommy who took it with what seemed like a bit of hesitation before firmly grasping it the moment his fingers brushed the grip, standing just a bit straighter as the magic of the weapon washed over him once more.

The Green Ranger turned back to Harry, idly swinging his blade in front of him before laughing darkly. "You are correct Goldar. I nearly lost sight of what really matters here: Empress Rita's victory."

As the Green Ranger stalked slowly toward him Harry couldn't help but note the sudden personality change in him. It was almost as if the sword brought out a darker side of him the moment he touched it. Alpha had told them that the Sword possessed a great deal of dark magic, so that could well be the truth.

His thoughts were brought to a halt as he felt the cold tip of the sword come to rest under his chin, feeling the pressure exerted there as Tommy used it to raise his head up higher. Harry scowled reaching down for his magic to fight back only for one of the putties restraining him to fiercely plant its fist into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

The Sword of Darkness was pulled away from him as Harry fell to his knees, gasping for air for a moment before being hauled back to his feet by the two restraining him. "Now, now," Tommy taunted. "We'll have none of that." Once more the Sword of Darkness was used to raise his chin into the air.

As the evil Ranger pulled the sword back behind him to make a beheading strike, Harry heard Goldar start laughing. "Any last words, Wizard?" Tommy asked darkly, the satisfaction palpable in his voice.

Harry's response was cut off by a shout from across the clearing, behind the putties and Goldar.

"MASTODON DINOZORD POWER!"

The shout alone wouldn't have done much, but the accompanying earthquake that followed moments after certainly did the trick.

Tommy stumbled, his attack aborted in an effort to keep himself stable. The putties holding Harry had no such luck though as they quickly tumbled to the ground, pulling Harry down with them. Mere moments after the three hit the ground, there were several flashes of red light followed by sparks as the Green Ranger flew backwards and the two putties released Harry's arms just as Trini and Kimberly ran up next to him with their blade blasters drawn.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Trini asked, kneeling next to him to help him up while Kimberly kept her weapon ready and her eyes trained on the Green Ranger.

With her help, Harry slowly climbed back to his feet. "Cutting it a bit closer than usual aren't we? And I'll be fine in a second." His eyes quickly scanned the closest putties even as he called up his magic. Finding his target, Harry lifted his right hand. "Accio!" The putty had no time to react as Harry's wand was ripped from its grasp and flew the short distance to its owner. "Reducto!" Harry then wasted no time in turning the golem into a pile of rubble as his curse slammed into its torso.

Harry gave a happy sigh and a small smile as he turned to face Trini. "Alright, that's done. Now what's going on?"

Harry's answer came as the constant shaking took on a clearly definable rhythm and a loud trumpeting sound came from nearby.

Harry merely shot Trini and Kimberly a look. "He didn't…"

His question was answered when the unmistakable form of Zack's Mastodon Dinozord rose over the cliff edge with the Black Ranger himself perched atop its head for a moment before dropping down into the cockpit. Goldar and Tommy seemed stunned into immobility but the putties who had noticed the 40 foot tall machine were apparently starting to panic, running around in a random fashion and tripping over themselves and each other more often than not.

"We need to relocate ourselves," Billy said as he ran up from behind Harry and the girls. "Zack can't fully utilize his Zord's combat capabilities while we maintain our current proximity to his targets."

Harry blinked before giving the Blue Ranger a wide eyed look. "You don't have to tell me twice." Without thinking, Harry reached out and grabbed Kimberly's shoulder with his left hand while he hooked a few fingers around Billy's wrist while still holding his wand in his right. With Trini's hand still on his shoulder after helping him stand, Harry twisted slightly, pulling the three with him into a short-range apparition with a loud crack.

The four reappeared with a similar crack fifty yards away and they all dropped to the ground. Harry was wincing as his head immediately began throbbing in pain at his abrupt use of apparition with more passengers than was usually wise while the others were merely suffering from the sensations caused by the form of magical travel.

"Not awesome…" Kimberly moaned as she slowly regained her feet, unsteadily holding her blade blaster up in case it was needed.

"That is a remarkably uncomfortable method of travel…" Billy commented, following Kimberly's example.

Trini merely shot Harry an unseen glare from behind her helmet and lightly smacked his shoulder. "Not cool, Harry."

Any further comments were once more interrupted by the trumpeting of Zack's Zord as it let loose with a blast of cold air on the enemies before it, the excess washing over Harry and the other Rangers moments later. The putties were almost instantly frozen solid, but Goldar and the Green Ranger proved to be a bit more resilient.

The two warriors of evil stood their ground, Goldar now holding his sword in front of him as the focus for some kind of magical barrier that served to block most of the Zord's attack while Tommy planted the Sword of Darkness into the ground again to anchor himself in place, his golden armor glinting with light as he weathered the onslaught. Once the airflow calmed, the two wasted no time in returning the favor. They immediately crossed their weapons and combining their energies before launching a bolt of dark magic directly at the Mastodon Dinozord.

The massive mammoth didn't even seem to shake as the attack hit, barely letting off any sparks from the contact point, before the twin tusks began glowing, gathering energy for yet another attack. Mere moments later, two bolts of electricity arced out from the tips of the tusks, raking across the ground and heading for Goldar and Tommy, who managed to teleport out of sight just before taking the hit.

The small-ish explosion that followed was enough to shatter the putty-cicles that had been left behind by the Zord's first attack though and the robot let out another trumpet of victory. Moments later, it vanished in a flash of black/purple light, leaving Zack to drop to the ground at the edge of the bluff in a crouch. Standing quickly, he ran towards where the others were still standing, panting heavily upon arrival. "Is everybody ok?"

Harry looked over at the silently staring Trini, Kimberly, and Billy before nodding to Zack himself. "We seem to be alright, though I'm not sure what's up with the silent treatment…"

Billy shook his head before speaking. "It'll have to wait until we're back at the Command Center, Harry. We don't have time to explain now."

Kimberly nodded her agreement. "Yeah, let's get out of here before Rita decides to send more putties."

Seeing the others nod in agreement, Harry sighed softly before twisting on the spot. Apparating out just as the others were teleported by Alpha.

-MR-

The silence in the Command Center lasted mere seconds after the Rangers demorphed before Kimberly spoke. "I can't believe you did that, Zack."

The Black Ranger quickly rounded on her, raising his voice slightly. "Well it's not like I had much choice you know. We were getting creamed out there!"

"Yeah," Trini followed up slowly. "But you know that you took things farther than we normally do."

"And what else could I do?!" Zack was definitely shouting now, his eyes wide as he did so. "Tommy and Goldar were about to kill Harry! He was too far away for us to do anything else!"

Billy stepped up to act as the peacekeeper. "We're not complaining about the results. We're merely concerned about the methods you used to achieve them."

Harry decided to step in at this point. "I certainly don't see any issue with what he did. Would one of you care to explain why you feel that summoning his Zord to save my arse is a bad thing?"

The Rangers turned to look at Harry before exchanging sheepish glances, apparently having forgotten he was there. Finally, Zack spoke. "When we first became Rangers, Zordon had us swear to three oaths."

Kimberly spoke next. "One of those oaths was to never escalate a battle unless Rita forces us to."

"So, what, you're worried that Zack took things too far?" Harry asked, still confused. "You think that doing what he did to save me, and probably all of us if we're honest, broke that oath?"

Billy, Kimberly, and Trini exchanged a few uneasy looks as a slight look of panic overtook Zack's face, as if the real scope of things was only just hitting him. "Zordon said that if we didn't follow the oaths we took that the Power would abandon us." Kimberly said slowly with her head down.

Harry gave each of the Rangers a blank look before turning to Alpha. "Do you have any thoughts on this, Alpha?"

The robot seemed to start, as if surprised it was being addressed. Finally, Alpha turned to face the others, leaning forward slightly as it did. "You are still a Power Ranger, Zack. The computers would have registered it if you had been stripped of your status as the Black Ranger even in their damaged state and you would have not been allowed in the Command Center. Since you are here, you are fine. I do feel that Zordon would caution you against repeating your actions though. The Zords are only meant for battling against totally insurmountable odds such as when fighting against Rita's giant monsters."

The smile that lit up Zack's face at Alpha's announcement was only matched by the palpable relief let off by the other three Rangers. Their friend would stay a Ranger after his potentially questionable actions of the day. The Rangers seemed perfectly willing to forget about the event now, but Harry simply couldn't.

While the Rangers busied themselves with various tasks around the Command Center, even if they were just watching and trying to learn as Billy and Alpha worked on the last few damaged consoles, Harry found himself wandering toward his room, lost in thought. Upon entering, he discarded his cloak and sat at his desk, idly performing some first aid charms to help heal his bruised and beaten body as he thought.

Having heard one of the oaths that Zordon had called for the Rangers to make in order to fight Rita, Harry was having a few disturbing flashbacks to the early parts of his war against Voldemort. In the first few months after the Second Blood War really began, Dumbledore, the then leader of the light side, had not allowed any real force to be used. The Order of the Phoenix were given orders only to stun and restrain their foes while the Death Eaters were under no such limitations.

Losses had been heavy for them in those months especially. Finally, during Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts and still long before he was able to get personally involved, Mad-Eye Moody, one of Dumbledore's closest friends and a veteran of the previous war, had finally convinced the headmaster to allow more powerful and damaging magics to be used. From what Harry was later told, Dumbledore had given a long speech about how a point had been made and he was doing his allies no favors by practically forbidding them to use any deciding force. He had made it clear that he wouldn't take action against them for using more force against the Death Eaters, but he didn't like it himself.

It had largely made little difference in the fight as it was. Many of the members of the order had continued with the same limited spell selection, their minds still set on Dumbledore's former opinion. It had cost a great many of them their lives.

By the time Harry had gotten involved in the war personally the damage had already been done. Voldemort was all but personally in control of Wizarding Britain, ruling the ministry from the shadows and hunting down pockets of resistance with in inner circle elites. At the same time, he was planning on taking his domination to the rest of the world, both Wizarding and muggle. The last remaining members of the Order were those who had been willing to fight dirty, practically, taking lives just as readily as the Death Eaters when the situation called for it. Those are the people who taught Harry most of what he knew about magical combat after Dumbledore's death.

You respond to various threat levels with similar levels of power and lethality, but if an opponent clearly has no problems escalating things themselves and you have an opportunity to end it before it gets to that point, then you take it. More Death Eaters were removed from the equation in the weeks following Moody taking over leadership of the Order than the entirety of the war before that point simply because of this philosophy. Many of those killed had been some of Voldemort's worst. Death Eater veterans from the first war who fought with impunity and little care for the Order's actions since they knew that they couldn't, or wouldn't, do anything to stop them with finality.

And now, much as Harry had said to Jason the day before, he found himself in a situation where the authority seemed to follow a similar line of thought to Dumbledore's early beliefs. He had hoped that there weren't any rules to that affect in his current situation, a hope that was buffered by the Rangers' tendency to blow the crap out of Rita's monsters on a regular basis. It seemed, however, that it was merely a matter of reactionary stages.

Don't pull weapons unless the enemy uses their own. Don't call the Zords unless the enemy is enough of an overwhelming threat to warrant their use, apparently only when they've grown to giant size. Always reacting. Never taking the initiative to remove a threat before it can hurt others. This was a type of tactic that rarely worked unless you were the overwhelmingly superior force and/or had little to no care for collateral damage.

In the current situation particularly, what with the Green Ranger easily outclassing each of the Rangers and Harry, they were clearly not anywhere close to the superior force. And a potential lack of care for collateral damage suggested several things about Zordon that Harry just didn't want to consider.

Though this might just explain part of Jason's outrage at Harry's attack on Tommy. If his mind was hardwired along Zordon's "don't escalate" mentality, it would easily explain part of his anger when Harry seemed prepared to destroy an otherwise defeated enemy.

Harry was drawn out of his musings by a loud beeping sound coming from the computers in the main room. He ran out just in time to see Alpha and the Rangers all gathered around the center console, Alpha frantically pushing buttons as the Rangers switched back and forth between watching him and watching Zordon's tube which now held a foggy and out of focus image of the entrapped wizard's head.

"Rangers… me… to…Grid… acquire… Rita's…" Zordon's voice was just as choppy as it had been when Harry first saw him vanish after Tommy's initial attack on the Command Center.

"It's no use Alpha, we still can't understand him!" Zack shouted.

"I'll try to boost the power of the signal beam," Billy said quickly before jogging over to another console and pressing several buttons.

Zordon continued talking, apparently unaffected by the struggles of those within the Command Center. "… seem… remain… in… other… overcome… know…"

"Power boosted by 43 percent!" Billy reported, making his way back to Alpha. "See if you can't modify the hyper-actuator frequency to allow for a more cohesive signal transpondence."

By this time Harry was standing a few feet away from the nervous Rangers as Alpha continued to work the controls, not even acknowledging Billy's comment. After a few more seconds, Zordon's speech cleared up significantly. "… Rangers… strong… and may the Power protect you."

The instant Zordon finished speaking the image of his face seemed to flicker worse than before. After a few distraught cries from Kimberly and Trini, his image disappeared entirely just before the lights in the Command Center went out, leaving them in total darkness.

"Lumos." Harry intoned, barely lighting his wand before 'nox'-ing it and lighting it again, this time with a more suitable light level. "Well," he said dryly. "That went well."

"Yeah," Zack responded with an eye roll. "What happened Alpha? I thought we had Zordon back for a second."

The robot nodded his dome-shaped head. "We nearly did Zack. In the last seconds there we had a full connection with Zordon, but the generators appear to have given out just after the connection was made. As long as we are running only on our backup generators I'm afraid we won't be able to properly reestablish communications with Zordon."

"Well right now we don't even seem to have backup power…" Trini said unhappily. Moments later, however, the ever present hum of machinery started up again, along with the lights. "Of course I could be wrong…"

"Backup power restored." Alpha said simply, returning to pressing buttons on his console. "I'm afraid it will take a few hours to get the primary generators running though. We've done enough repair work here that Billy and Trini can finish the rest of it while I focus on the generators. Once that's done, I should be able to use the data provided by this most recent signal to find Zordon again."

"And Jason," Billy commented. "We can't forget that Tommy admitted to having taken him captive."

Kimberly and Trini gasped while Zack clenched his fist with a growl. "I had forgotten about that!" Kimberly half-shouted. "Oh my gosh! We have to do something! There's no telling what they could be doing to him!"

Before the Rangers could work themselves into another fervor, the alarms in the Command Center sounded off once before falling silent. Alpha pressed a few more buttons before reporting. "Ai yai yai! The computers have picked up a massive magical surge in Angel Grove. It's another teleportation spell!"

Harry hummed in thought. "It sounds like Rita might have just sent Tommy back down…"

"Hey," Zack jumped in. "Maybe we can track him down! If we can get ahold of him and keep him from morphing we might be able to find out where they're holding Jason!"

Billy, Trini, and Kimberly exchanged looks before Kimberly shrugged. "It could work, I suppose…"

"But Billy and I need to stay here to help Alpha with the repairs." Trini said worriedly, shooting glances at everyone else.

Harry took a step closer. "I'll go with Zack and Kimberly then. I can use my invisibility cloak if I have to so he shouldn't be able to detect me. I doubt his magical resistance extends outside of his morph so I should be able to restrain him relatively easily if I get the chance."

When nobody else had a comment, Zack clapped his hands with a smile. "Alright then, it sounds like we've got a plan. Kimberly, Harry and I will head to Angel Grove and track down Tommy while you guys stay here and get things back in shape."

Everyone nodded, though Trini still looked worried. "Alright, just be careful out there guys."

Zack nodded as Kimberly gave Trini a short hug. "Don't worry Trini, we'll be alright," she turned to Harry. "And we're taking the Rad Bug. No way am I using your teleportation magic again."

Harry threw his arms up in the air as he made his way over to Billy's flying car. "What do you people have against magical travel?"

Billy's head popped up from where he had been hunched over the open control panel of a damaged console. "It was quite possibly the single most disturbingly uncomfortable instance in my life. I concur with Kimberly."

Zack shot the other three Rangers a look as Harry and Kimberly climbed into the car. "Come on, it can't be that bad can it?"

"Alright then Zack," Kimberly huffed. "Next time you can be the one to get squeezed into a tiny little tube and yanked around when Harry wants to take you somewhere."

"I promise it gets better with practice." Harry interjected, feeling like he needed to defend his magic.

"Yeah, I'm just not too eager to have that practice if it's all the same to you, Harry." Kimberly responded as Zack climbed into the driver's seat and started the car.

"Hang on," the Black Ranger warned as he started working some of the controls and the Rad Bug lifted off the ground. For Harry's part, he was just wondering how this car would compare to Mr. Weasley's flying car from his second year…

-MR-

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Tenstar12