"Rita… Skeeter?": Would I take a widely reviled character like Rita Skeeter and turn her into a positive influence? Would I really? …Okay, yeah I would do that in a heartbeat. I haven't played with her much (aside from enslaving and killing her in the Black Queen series), so even though she doesn't have much of a part to play in this story, it was still fun to paint her in a different light like this.

Dadycoool: Well to start, Harry didn't live in Little Whinging for 13 years. He lived there for 5 years, then the Transition happened, and he was in Whinging Village for another 8 before he and Dudley set out on their own as Adventurers two years before the "start" of this story. They are both sixteen at this time.

As for why he did not go to Hogwarts, I had hoped by now to show that just about everything about Earth society has been screwed up to hell and back. That includes what remains of the Wizarding World. They had bigger problems than sending off invitations to school.

It's been… not the longest I've ever gone between updates, but about a month or so now? Longer than I like, anyway, and compounded by the fact that I've been working pretty much nonstop on my quest. I was at one of those story arcs that's necessary and yet a pain to write, so I wanted to get it over with. I feel like I owe you guys at least a couple of updates of this story as a result, so yeah. All Eternal Fantasy all the way for the next few weeks.

Last time on Eternal Fantasy…

The trio of Harry and Dudley returned to their hometown of Whinging Village so Hermione could send off the foslyrite they had found to save the live of a little girl. The second day of their stay, and the day they already planned to leave, they were approached by a former client who introduced himself as Draco Malfoy and offered a partnership in what he described only as a 'profitable venture'.

Chapter 10
The Escape

Harry and Dudley had encountered a number of clients over the last couple of years working as Adventurers, and while many of them liked the tried and true contract, others preferred the personal touch. Tracking them for a week was extreme but not unbelievable, or would not have been were they famous Adventurers or made an extremely good first impression. That being said, none of them as far as Harry could remember had ever opened up an offer by showing far more knowledge of his family than anyone not named Potter or Dursley should have.

"We'll take on a number of ventures," he answered, letting the creepy knowledge of his past slide for the moment. "But we need a little more information than just that you expect it to be profitable. When, where, what, that sort of thing."

"Ah, yes," Malfoy said, dropping his gloved hand and putting an obvious salesman's smile on. "True enough. I hope you can forgive me my enthusiasm. As I'm sure you recall, I previously hired you alongside many other Adventurers to find enchanted objects in the manor. I simply hoped we might do the same again, perhaps with a bit more equitable division of the profits."

The idea that Malfoy had earned far more from his sale of all the stuff they had found than that he had paid them was no great surprise. If it he had merely broken even, there would be no point to the entire thing. What was a surprise was that he would seek them out specifically for a repeat. That and describing the items as enchanted. Storing spells in scrolls was not an uncommon practice; Harry had spent the first winter after he and Dudley left the village doing just that with Cure spells to sell them on the cheap to other new Adventures so they could actually make ends meet for a couple of months when there were no jobs to be had.

None of the things they had found were scrolls, though, and no one on Gaia had ever thought about making paintings that could move on their own so far as he was aware. Rita's description of the blond in front of them as being similar to one of her spellsingers, however, put that in a very different light. If the bartender was to be believed, the Stellis had a group of magicians before being pulled from their original world during the Transition. Might not the same be true of humanity, hard as it was to imagine?

"Why us?" Hermione asked, pulling Malfoy's attention away from Harry. "Or perhaps more accurately, why Harry? It can't just be because we found two of those wands you were looking for."

Malfoy shook his head. "It wasn't that. I simply thought Mr. Potter and I might pool our knowledge to find more."

"Find more?" he asked in surprise. "I'm as decent at tracking as most Adventurers are, but that's finding monsters. Not furniture and crap, and definitely not when I don't know what we would be looking for. I wouldn't know something enchanted from anything else."

His statement replaced the dandy's smile with a frown. "What about where you grew up? If you point me in that direction, I would be willing to split the proceeds with you."

Harry waved a hand around them. "Look around you. Normally I'd be happy to help you take anything from just about anyone in this town, but I think you would be wasting your time. The people here hate anything abnormal with a passion, and I expect that would apply to this enchanted stuff of yours too."

"You grew up Muggle?" Malfoy said, his careful expression falling away to reveal true surprise. That surprise quickly morphed into contemplation. "So that's why you use Gaian magic. You don't understand a word I've been saying, do you?"

"So humans also had a native group of magic-users? I know we did before the Transition," Hermione cut in, sounding for all the world as though she had not just learned about this ten minutes ago, "but I thought it was just our race."

Her deception, as sudden as it was, still seemed to work because Malfoy nodded. "We did as well. We kept ourselves separate from Muggles – humans without magic – except for when we had to interact or when wizards were born to Muggles." He turned back to Harry. "Your parents were part of our world before their deaths, and then you disappeared. No one knew where you were, or at least no one who knew was willing to reveal it. I apologize for catching you off-guard about it. I assumed, like everyone else did, that you had been raised in a magical household."

"A household you wanted to plunder like the manor you hired us to raid?" Hermione asked, earning a nod from Malfoy. She scowled at him. "You would sell off his family's property?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Considering the manor I hired you to 'plunder' is where I grew up before the Transition, I promise it isn't personal. The wand you found that caught me by surprise?" he continued, his voice growing hard. "That belonged to my mother. She died in that house to buy time for my father to get me to safety. I was not asking him to make any sacrifice that I have not made myself, and I resent the implication."

Hermione looked away, her face flushed with shame. "Sorry."

"You raided your own home?" Dudley asked, speaking up for the first time since this explanation started. "Why?"

"Let's just say that enchanted items from Earth are in high demand," Malfoy replied cagily. "They are also, unfortunately, difficult to recover because every location with a high concentration of magic was almost immediately overrun with monsters following the Transition. Several of our most important buildings, such as the Ministry building where we had our government, are still lost.

"For the last couple of years I have been tracking down all the homes where I knew even their vague locations. My family's manor was the last one I knew about. I was hoping you would know some more, Potter."

How quickly the 'mister' fell away when it became clear he had no information to offer. Still, Harry thought, he could not blame Malfoy entirely for that considering the blond had apparently followed them for a week just to speak with him. There was one question that still lingered at the front of his mind, however. "You said I disappeared from your society. Why? I'm nobody important."

"Some would disagree with that. Regardless, you were hidden away due to politics that are no longer important to anyone on either side," was Malfoy's dry reply.

"I have to admit," Dudley said with a sigh, "I find all this really hard to believe. A society of wizards? Magic on Earth? It's just, this all sounds like something from a storybook, not real life."

A single knock came from the door before Rita poked her head inside. She must have been worried that he would be too much for them. Harry appreciated how much she cared, but he had to shake his head at the idea that three of them with the element of surprise on their side could be so easily beaten. He was about to say something to that very effect when he noted the serious expression on her face. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"We have a problem."

Going across the hall, the five of them stared out a window at the street below. A contingent of guards was assembling in front of the inn, and while Harry might not know what their motivation was, it was easy to guess that it was not to welcome them to the neighborhood. A familiar head of hair joined the group, and his eyes narrowed. "Piers. We told him we were leaving today, didn't we? Does he think we need an escort or something?"

"I don't think they plan to let us leave anytime soon," Dudley said, pointing out four sets of heavy iron manacles hanging from some of the guards' hands. "But who's the last one for?"

"I wonder," Rita said into the silence that followed, her eyes focused on Malfoy. "They know the three of you are together, but do they know why he wanted to find you?"

"You think they think he is part of our group." Rita nodded at Hermione's guess, and the younger of the catwomen turned her gaze back to the guards. "It would give them the justification to arrest us for that fight we had with your father, Dudley. If the people here are as racist and xenophobic as you two have implied, I would rather not hand myself over to their tender mercies. There is no telling what people like that will do when they are given power. Is there another way out?"

"If they are this serious about arresting you, they should have locked the gates and posted people there. You won't be able to walk out."

Dudley's eyes met Harry's. "There is always the way we used to get out of here last time."

The way they used last time? "You have got to be kidding me," he groused. When they ran away from Dudley's parents in the middle of the night, they had decided not to risk being seen before they were long gone Whinging Village. Instead of slipping out the gates, they picked a route that no one in their right mind would choose.

"Do you have a better idea?"

He did not, and Dudley knew it too. Harry turned to Rita. "Do you think you can distract them long enough for us to sneak out the back?"

"I can do better than that. Come closer, all of you, and grab somebody's hand." She motioned from them to come close enough that she could lay one hand on Dudley's shoulder and the other on Malfoy's, who made the opposite end of their chain. Rita closed her eyes and schooled her expression. "I lost most of my powers when we came to this world, but I should have enough left for this."

For all that Rita had called her people's native magicians 'spellsingers', what came from her mouth was no aria or ditty. It was a low, ominous chant in a language he could not make heads nor tails of. The words had a weight to them that nothing in English ever could; he could practically feel them landing on his shoulders and wrapping around his wrists.

"Walk downstairs and go out the back door. Don't let go of each other until you are outside out of sight. My spell did not make you invisible," she warned, opening her eyes to stare meaningfully into his, "but as long as you do not draw attention to yourselves, no one outside should pay you any mind. Now go."

They hurried down the stairs as quietly as they could. Harry felt ridiculous holding onto Dudley's and Hermione's hands like he was, but he did it nonetheless. Rita's magic was a new discovery, but he knew the woman who had done it and gave them this warning. He had trusted her with his life before, and she had not let him down nor left him to fend for himself. If she said this was necessary, then necessary it was.

There was no one waiting in the pub, and bereft of any watching eyes they practically ran into the kitchens and through the door at the very back of the building. "Where's this secret path you two were talking about?" Hermione demanded.

"Over here." Dudley led them down the street and around the corner into a narrow alleyway. Their destination was three streets over from the pub, but finally they reached a tiny intersection between three alleys. On one wall was a door that almost blended in with the tan stone of the building. The Knight released Harry's hand so he could grab the handle and give it a mighty tug, but for all his strength the door refused to budge. "Damn. It's locked again."

"Allow me." Malfoy strode up to it, shifting his grip on his cane halfway down its length so he could touch the ornate sphere on the grip to the handle. His left hand he raised and thrust forward as though pounding on the air. "Knock knock."

The lock clicked in the following silence.

"Would have been nice to have you around last time," Harry could not help but say. It was no spell he had ever heard about, but he had never met a wizard before today either. "We spent more than an hour picking that lock."

The blond smirked. "It is a useful little trick."

With the door open before them, all of them except Dudley ran down the stairs into the darkness. Harry found a couple of torches resting at the bottom where he expected them to be and lit them with a Flare spell; the light was Dudley's signal to shut the door, cutting them off from the outside world.

Hermione looked around at the wrought iron rails and the single door that surrounded them like a cage. "What is this place? It looks very different from the rest of the town."

"No surprise there. Most people here stay out if at all possible." Harry opened the door leading deeper into the complex. "Nobody likes to spend their time in a sewer, after all, but that should play to our advantage."

"A sewer?" Malfoy's lip curled in disgust. "This is the best escape you can think of?"

"Maybe not the best, but definitely the fastest. Unless you would prefer to tussle with the guards?" taunted Dudley. He took one of the torches from Harry and waved it down both sides of the tunnel. "Just watch out for the rats."

"Are these rats normal in size and possessing a timid disposition?" Hermione asked in a resigned voice. It was almost as if she had run into overlarge, overly aggressive rats before and had no desire to do so again. That was a feeling Harry could understand very well.

Sadly, he had to dash her hopes. "Not unless the guards really cleared this place out after we left. I wouldn't count on that, though."

"On the plus side, we didn't see any slimes when we were here," Dudley chipped in. "The last sewer we were hired to explore, we had to deal with slimes that could teleport us around whenever we got too close. It's just rats and the occasional tunnel snake down here."

"Fantastic." She raised her bow and loosed a single arrow. Following its flight, Harry found a three-foot long rat pinned to the wall. "Just what I wanted to hear. Let's just get out of here as soon as possible."

They started walking through the tunnels, being careful to stay on the raised paths on either side of the murky sludge that ran through the center. The exact route they took was less important than the overall direction; so long as they walked away from the center of town, eventually the tunnels would merge and lead to the nearby river. As they journeyed, however, Harry could not help but notice something missing. Perhaps it was the intervening years reshaping his memories, but he could swear that when he and Dudley had escaped from Whinging Village last time, they had to fight through what seemed like hordes of rats. Now, though?

Harry thrust his arm forward and shoved the blade of his rapier into a rat's head, killing it instantly. This was only the third rat they had seen in five minutes of walking. "Hey, Dud? Is it just me, or was it a lot worse last time?"

"I was thinking the same thing," his cousin answered. "Part of it might be that we aren't brand new Adventurers anymore, you know? It was the first real dungeon we ever entered. It looked big and scary, but we've been in bigger and scarier places since then. Now it's nothing special."

"Yeah. I suppose that could be it," he agreed with a nod.

Dudley threw open a door and stopped in his tracks. The room beyond looked like it had been covered by a giant furry carpet, but as that carpet undulated it because clear that they were staring at a gigantic collection of rats crawling over each other. Realizing what they were looking at, Dudley added with a squeak, "Or maybe the difference is that now it's mating season and they're all in here?"

"Shut the door!"

It was too late for that. The creak of the door opening had distracted some of the rats from their murine orgy, and with a wave of red the sewer-beasts turned to stare at them with eyes that reflected the torches' light. A low hiss from several hundred throats washed over them. Those nearest the door pulled away from the rest and took a few steps towards the party.

"This can't be the only way in or out," Hermione said. "Not with it being closed. We can't bottleneck them in here. They'll surround us and rush in."

"Not if we kill them first." Malfoy shoved Harry out of the way and stretched out his cane again. With his left hand, he sketched an all-too-familiar symbol.

"Megaflare."

An ear-ringing bang echoed through the room as the big brother to the Flare spell Harry knew exploded in the middle of the rats. It was hot enough to cook instantly the rats nearby, but it would not be enough to kill all of them.

Malfoy made the Flare symbol again, but there was no desperation to the action. Instead he wore a slight grin. "Inflammum mundus."

The fire of the still-burning pelts flared up, blackening the ceiling of the room. Malfoy twisted his wrist and turned the head of his cane in a small circle; as though following his movements, the tall fires reached out and swirled around and around. They did not collapse in on themselves but instead spread, filling the room with flames. The wizard took a few steps back as the rats nearest the door and therefore furthest from his flames arrived at the door only to face Dudley's axe and Harry's blade.

After fifteen seconds or so, Malfoy stopped his spell and allowed the fire to dissipate. Everything within had been reduced to charcoal. "You might want to wait a bit for the room to cool down. It's rather hot in there right now."

"How did you do that?" Dudley demanded. "You said you were a wizard. Flare is a spell from this world. Isn't it?"

"It is, and wizards cannot cast any spell granted by the Spires." Malfoy tugged on the fingers of the glove covering his left hand and finally pulled it off. The back of that hand held a red mark not dissimilar from that on any of theirs. His grin grew wider at their stupefied expressions. "But just because I am a wizard doesn't mean I can't also be a Sorcerer."

…Suddenly the strange cane made a terrifying amount of sense. It was just a long wand, hidden in plain sight!

"Now, shall we continue on? I would like to be rid of this place sooner than later."

The majority of the rats in the entire sewer must have been congregated in that room because the rest of the walk was silent and unremarkable. Light eventually made its appearance down one of the longest tunnels, and they walked out of the wide mouth to the sight of a river placidly running past them. "Excellent," Malfoy said after taking a deep breath of the fresh air. "How far are we from the village itself? I left my mustid tied up a short distance outside the walls."

"You tied your ride up outside? Why not inside the village where it would be safe from monsters?" Hermione asked.

That question caught the blond wizard by surprise. "Oh. That's, er… This isn't exactly the first time I've ever been run out of town." He coughed in embarrassment. "Fire is a lot easier to create than it is to control."

"Suddenly I don't think I want to know the details," Dudley muttered to Harry.

Pointing him in the right direction led to all of them walking that way. It was obvious when they had found his ride; no one else Harry had ever met would be so vain as to ride an albino mustid whose pelt perfectly matched Malfoy's white-blond hair. The wizard untied the beast before stopping; after several seconds, he turned back to the group. "You still don't believe me about the Wizarding World, do you?"

"You haven't exactly given us any proof," pointed out Dudley.

"Fair enough. What if I did? I need to visit the largest remnants of our old world anyway." He shrugged. "You could easily come along."

"Why?" Malfoy shot Harry a strange look, and he quickly continued, "Why invite us? The way you made it sound, this is supposed to be a secret society of yours. We're outsiders."

Malfoy pointed his cane at Harry. "True, but you shouldn't be. You are one of us, whether you knew it before today or not. As for the rest of you, let's just say showing Muggles what is left of our world would not be the worst thing I've ever done. It's not like anyone can enforce the bloody Statute of Secrecy anyway."

"Is that thing big enough for three of us?" Dudley asked.

"It only needs to be big enough for two." Harry turned to Hermione, who was already summoning the windstorm that would give birth to her griffon. "I want to see this place, too. He made me curious, and no one can keep me from sating my curiosity."

"I'll ride with you, then. That griffon thing looks too small for my tastes." Harry looked back at Dudley to see his cousin subtly tapping the short dagger he carried sheathed on his belt. It was his weapon of choice whenever they had to fight in close quarters that were not amenable to an axe, and Harry could only guess that Dudley was signaling he would be keeping an eye out for betrayal.

He shook his head and walked over to Hermione and her mount. "Mind if I ride with you, then?"

"Come on up." He clambered onto the creature, and Hermione nudged it with her knees to make it follow the others. "This shouldn't be an issue, but just so we're clear: keep your hands below the chest and above the waist. I've met grabby humans before, and I don't want to deal with it again."

"You're right. It won't be an issue." Hermione nodded, and internally he sighed. After two years he found possibly the one catgirl his age who did not want to get in his pants, and instead she thought he was the pervert.

Maybe wizard magic really was real because if so, this was starting to feel like a curse.

If you were wondering why I made giant weasels/ferrets the main mode of transportation in this world, now you know.

Silently Watches out.