Early June 1994, Fortress Rhodes, Rhodes.
It was in the late hours of the evening that word reached the Kastello that wizards of an unsavoury nature had landed on the island. Summoned from his arcane library, Harry gave up on his plans for a night's sleep, deciding instead to walk down to the police station in the Old City of Rhodes.
It was in that police station that Harry heard what had happened, a landing by a militia of wizards from all over Europe and Near Asia intending to seize the newly-transferred island and use it as a base from which to launch attacks on anyone they didn't like or simply had something they wanted. Their weapon? A basilisk. A serpent-demon of ancient make, born of unnatural spellcrafting and capable of terrible destruction.
Immediately, with the security of the islanders and the thousands of visitors compromised, Harry acted. A lot of people had mocked him for his age, but there was no doubt that in a crisis, his command was welcomed. An cordon sealed the quarry, his gunboats positioned close offshore, and the nearest battle mage was alerted. Unfortunately, the only battle mage anywhere in the Aegean was Harry himself.
He was almost looking forward to the fight.
Almost glowing pale-golden, Harry's sword had kept its edge well since completion. On each side of the guard just below the blade were red gems, formed into the shape of blazing infernos, each holding fire elemental enchantments. That keen blade was sentient, though it did not speak, Harry could feel through it emotions and even feel and learn some of the skill of the souls embedded in the metal. His battle staff of red ironwood stood ready in one hand as he approached, alone, the entrance to the quarry.
A mere thought and he was sealed under spells of stealth, making him silent, making him nigh-imperceptible and nigh-invisible, which would allow him to attack without warning. Which was excellent for Harry, for the battle mage was a specialist in shock warfare. A bit of initial stealth to neutralise sentries and try and locate the basilisk, then he'd go for all-out shock-and-awe tactics.
Waiting until he had the sun rising behind him so that he'd be able to work, Harry approached the entrance to the quarry facility, seeing just one guard in a stereotypical black robe pacing the gate, the rest of the facility surrounded by a chainlink fence. A sickening thunk announced the collision between the back of the guard's head with of the part of Harry's ironwood staff that was plated in spiked steel. Any scream was silenced by the instant massive trauma inflicted by the impact.
Harry drew out his golden sword and drove it into the back of the fallen wizard about where his heart was. He grinned as the weapon sucked all life energy from the body with grey flames, leaving it a dessicated wreck which crumbled to dust when he disturbed it by withdrawing the sword, nearly singing with necromantic energy.
The quarry that opened up before Harry as he advanced was a relatively shallow affair with a sloping floor, and was much wider than it was across from his position. At the far northern end, on Harry's right from his perch on the cliff side to the east, a gaping cave opened up in the rockface. He couldn't see anything, but given the guards pacing it, and the number of wizards outside, it was not being used as a headquarters, but a containment zone for a very dangerous weapon.
His eyes narrowed at the roof of the cave, then at the cave mouth. Harry decided that if the basilisk was in there, he was either going to collapse the cave roof, starve the creature of food, water and oxygen, or simply blast the whole thing with one of the nastier fire battle spells he was proficient with.
Catching a snatch of conversation on the wind, Harry rolled his eyes at the vanity of dark wizards. Disciples of Herpo indeed. He disappeared with a near-silent swish, reappearing on the quarry floor opposite the cave mouth, with the dark wizards positioned between them.
The concealment spells slipped away, revealing him in all his glory as a battle mage. A long coat of plates of beaten, smoked steel and black dragonscale, all on a jacket of dragon leather, a cuirass of gleaming steel centred with a sunburst of gold, thigh and elbow length chainmail attached to the chestpiece, his face concealed by cowl and hood, leaving only his eyes visible. Then of course there was the blade at his side, a bastard sword sealed in its sheath, a revolver on his hip and boots of the same dragon leather.
He attacked. His first spell was wandless, a mere gravity charm triggered by him clenching an armoured fist. The two closest wizards suffered immediate and horrible deaths in less than a second. Harry watched, grimly as the they suffered the results of the pressure of the air around them suddenly increasing from just under fifteen pounds per square inch by five-hundred atmospheres to three-and-a-third tons of pressure per square inch. The resulting implosion compressed the poor bastards almost instantly into tiny mushed lumps of red... stuff. As he concentrated on the counter-attack, Harry unclenched the fist holding the spell, and with the sudden release of the five-hundred atmospheres of pressure, the remains of the wizards blasted outwards in an explosive fashion, coating the surrounding stone and sand with blood as that mush of red goo reacted to the sudden release of pressure in an explosive fashion.
Turning so cutting spells flashed off his armoured coat as the stunned dark wizards shrugged off their moment of frozen terror and attacked. The slicing spells merely left scars on the armoured coat, allowing Harry to strike the nearest wizard a terrible blow with a sweeping head-height swing of his staff before thrusting it forward.
"FULMINE MORTEM!" he incanted, a crackling charge of electricity bursting from the end of the staff, gripping a wizard in the terrible power of what was a mere shade of nature's electricity.
Switching the spell, he turned the end of his staff, lifting the smoking corpse into the air before thrusting the staff forward, sending the body bowling into some men emerging from a magical tent, crushing the tent with them. The canvas structure burst into flames, Harry throwing a wind spell at it to fan the fire, turning it into a raging pyre for those wizards. A fitting funeral.
More curses flashed his way, but with terrible metallic clangs, they were thrown aside by shields, then the response came. A ball of shocking yellow erupted from his staff, tinged with blue to the front. The blue of the shield-breaking spell blasted a hole in their jointly-cast bunker spell, then the blasting spell splattered them across the quarry. With such a gruesome end dealt by the battle mage, it was of little surprise that the invading wizards tried to close the distance and surround him.
It seemed a good idea, right up until the first one toppled into a pit of boiling quicksand. Then the battle mage was amongst them, two wizards swept up off their feet into a raging maelstrom of sand conjured with a typhoon of air. The sand stripped them to the bone, and then it was too late. Harry's flaming sword struck left and right, cutting the wizards down with contemptuous ease, cleaving off arms and heads with his sword and finishing the maimed off either with the spiked butt of his staff or rolling them into the boiling quicksand.
Then Harry heard the smooth rustle of skin on the sandy rock. He froze for a moment, listening and identifying the location, then vanished. Appearing on top of the cave entrance, Harry looked down on the back of the sinuous beast moving forth from its layer, and struck. He drove his staff, with a great build-up of magic, into the stone beneath his feet and collapsed the cave entrance. As he rode the landslide, he waited until the perfect moment and bounded forward onto the basilisk, driving his sword deep into it's spine between the armoured plates of its back, neatly paralysing it with one thrust. Dropping onto the ground from the snake, he conjured a tray with which to catch the basilisk's precious lifeblood before opening its throat.
A highly magical substance such as that would be of great use to a thaumaturge such as he.
August 1994, Domum Magicae, the Vatican, Roma.
Entering the Grand Hall of the Mages was always an interesting event. Seated in serried rows, from nearly two-hundred countries were the most powerful and skilful wizards, headed up by the Arch Mage. The Mage Councillors, in their roles as politicians and diplomats, then the occasional combat mage, like himself. For Harry, he elected for an appearance of supreme boredom, making sure they all knew he had far more useful things to be doing than delivering his annual report. Battle mages were used to commanding, leading men, fighting. Not paperwork and speechifying.
Chronomancy, thaumaturgy, demonology, necromancy, pyromancy, invocations and summonings. Not bureaucracy. He could summon wraiths and demons, he could fiddle with the passing of time. Elements could be combined in magic to create other substances. He could bring up the shades of the dead, burn a great forest to the ground. The names and powers of the Old Gods were his to invoke. With his eyes alone he could shatter the mind of an enemy, with his own mind he could project terror or courage into others. Arcane spells were his to wield, his sword his right hand in battle, his magic his left.
Present him with paperwork or politics and he tended to start looking for heads to remove.
"Battle Mage Potter, have you heard of the situation in Britain?" asked the Arch Mage.
"All I know of current affairs in Britain is what I have discussed with my counterparts in the Royal Navy as per the discussions on the defence of Rhodes." Harry stood and announced; "That is limited to matters in the Mediterranean and Aegean, and the supply of retired seamen as an auxiliary force to man my patrol boats."
"Then I fear you have not heard of the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort." the Arch Mage.
"The who-what?!" replied Harry.
A few uncomfortable glances were shared between the witches and wizards seated there.
"The British dark lord." hinted the Arch Mage.
"YOU FORGET, I raised myself as a bit of a vagabond around Continental Europe for a number of years before settling into my study of magic." Harry silenced the whispers; "Names of dark wizards mean little to me, unless I'm intending on making a corpse out of them."
"Perhaps then it would be best if you learnt this yourself, but we have reports from a trusted source in the form of the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards that the believed-dead dark wizard has in some form evaded death after what should have been a fatal curse." the Arch Mage half-explained; "It has been decided to form an investigative mission to the United Kingdom, and as our sole British member, it is common sense that you should lead it."
"Lucky thing that wizards so lack such a thing as common sense." Harry mocked, before the ensuing silence informed him of what he really didn't want to know; "You're not bloody serious, I haven't been in that damned country since I was a toddler. A homeless orphan. With respect, my home is Rhodes now, and you'll need a bloody siege to pry me out of there."
"Rhodes is still, and should be for many years yet, your seat as a mage of this council, but despite however many years since you stepped on the soil of green England, you have spent many years on Malta and Gibraltar, sailed and fought with the Royal Navy, and far better to lead such a mission than a number of our more... set in their ways... mages." the Arch Mage sighed; "What would persuade you to agree to this mission?"
"We haven't had any involvement in Britain besides some covert assistance to the failed Jacobite Rebellions, so I want full diplomatic protection." Harry demanded; "The right also to call in reinforcements should I feel myself, my mission and civilian populations are put in jeopardy. The right to run my mission as I see fit without interference at any level."
There was a collective wince. It was a lot to demand, and the last time the young battle mage had brought in 'reinforcements', it had been in the South Atlantic, routing out a cult in Angola obsessed with human sacrifice. Finding himself out of his depth, he'd decided to simply flatten the jungle around the target. He did check beforehand that all the spells the cult had in place had driven out all the wildlife before calling in the naval gunfire strike.
The jungle target was divided into sectors, a box laid out on a map, with a grid of thirty-by-thirty foot squares, laid out in a grid forty by forty, or fourteen-hundred sectors, each of nine-hundred square feet. The heavy cruiser employed for this destructive purpose laid down salvo after salvo for a mere ten minutes, putting down a hundred-and-twenty kilo shell with ten kilos of high explosive into each sector, completely flattening it with a total of a hundred and sixty-eight tons of shells and fourteen tons of explosives. The whole jungle target sector had been flattened in under ten minutes and when the reinforced mages went in for the clear-up, it had not been pleasant.
"With your status as Lord Inquisitor of the Holy Office of the Magical Worlds, I believe that your independence of operation can be guaranteed so long as regular reports are received here. The matter of diplomatic immunity should be already in place due to your work with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta." the Arch Mage replied thoughtfully; "However I would suggest holding off on bringing force to bear and attempt to cultivate diplomatic ties with the Court of St. James. I won't limit your use of your own staff and forces, but I will have to approve any mobilisation of mages of the Holy Office."
"Finally, as agreed, I will delegate temporary command of Rhodes to a person of my choice until my return from Britain." Harry laid down his last demand, and with its acceptance, he went to pack a bag. He was returning to one of the hearts of magic, the British Isles.