Harry darted past some students in the Great Hall to the Ravenclaw table. He'd visited the Gryffindor table for lunch that Monday too many times already – Ron was starting to look at him oddly. Time for a change to a new table.
"I'm just going to grab a bit of a snack," he said apologetically to the Ravenclaw students, grabbing a whole pie off their table. "And my Pokémon need food too, so…" He shoved a whole platter full of sandwiches into a bag that looked like it really shouldn't hold as much food as it did.
Luna pushed past some students to look at him sternly. "Harry."
"Luna, my Mooncalf-love," he said nervously. "I really have to get back to my Pokémon, we're in the middle of a training session."
"Don't have time to talk?" she said pointedly. "The last Harry had time to talk to me. You must be the earlier Harry, who hasn't yet learnt it's wrong to hide things from his girlfriend."
He hung his head shamefacedly. "I'm almost done. I just need another week of Mondays, and I think I'll have my kitten floating properly at last."
"One more week of work for you, and then next-week-Luna – that's me a little while ago – insists on a whole week of dates to make up for it. Starting ten minutes ago."
"He's back here at our table for more food again? He just left! He's barmier than a whole flock of fruit bats," muttered an eavesdropping Ravenclaw.
"It's a colony," another corrected. "They're both crazier than a whole colony of fruit bats. It's a flock of birds."
"Must you always correct me like that?" whined the first. "How about crazier than a tree full of coconuts?"
"Sure."
Harry ignored them, as did Luna. "I can't take you with me."
"Yes you did," she insisted.
"I can? I did?"
"Yes. We had a lovely time. Five past twelve – don't be late. And don't forget to shave."
"What?"
"You've spent so much time on your new Pokémon you've got a moustache, Harry."
He felt his face – there was a soft down of hair on his upper lip and part of his cheeks. "Well what do you know. I've got a moustache!"
"Amazing," muttered the grammar-picky Ravenclaw. "What a shock it must have been."
"Maybe he never looks in a mirror. It would explain his hairstyle."
Harry glared at them. "Did you have something you wanted to say to me or Luna? And I'm taking this pumpkin juice."
Harry waved his hand and the top of the glass jug reformed, caving in at the sides to seal the juice inside so he could put it in his bag without it spilling.
"And this bowl of fruit." He snatched the large dish from the table right in front of their plates and emptied it into his bag. "And the roast chicken." He wordlessly and wandlessly levitated it from the middle of the table into his bag, as his look dared them to object.
"Be our guest," one said nervously, awed at his casual display of wandless, wordless magic.
"No offence meant," apologised the other. "Please, help yourself."
Ten minutes earlier, or a week later (depending on perspective) Harry stopped by for more food, and whisked his girlfriend away from the table for a minute. Or a week. Linear time really was just an illusion people collectively supported, in Harry's opinion.
Harry and Luna greatly enjoyed their time away from time, including a stolen visit to Hogsmeade to visit Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop for a proper date, a rummage through the Restricted Section of the library, and a thorough explore of the junk room that Harry had found the tiara Horcrux in. They didn't find anything too amazing in there, but they sure had fun looking for treasures.
Their best discovery was that the junk room was more than it seemed – Harry had found a trick to it. If you wished hard enough, it could be anything – it didn't even take a lot of effort. He'd been refashioning it every visit into something new each time he time-travelled, so he could stay there over and over again without running into himself.
"You'll have to stay with me there too, Luna. Purely uh, for time safety reasons. Paradoxes, you know," he said nervously.
"Of course," she said, hugging him tightly, and tilting her head back for a kiss. "And not for any other reason at all."
After his "date week" with Luna, Harry spent another fortnight (or four hours) training his two new Pokémon and tweaking Growlie's Flamethrower attack to make sure it could reach Fiendfyre strength, before he finally felt he was ready to face Lord Voldemort.
He lapsed back into regular time, and wandered around a bit until he found someone who could tell him what classes he was supposed to be in. He went to Charms before dinner, just for fun, where he promptly annoyed half the class by not having a clue where they were up to. "What are we supposed to be working on again?"
"The Silencing Charm, Mr. Potter? The one you neglected to do the essay for, I presume?" Professor Flitwick squeaked in his high-pitched voice.
"There was an essay? Oh yeah, I remember. I read that some old wizard thought the range and duration of the spell should be limited. It didn't seem right, so I decided to ignore it. Sorry, there's just no point in writing stuff that's all wrong just for the sake of it. No offence. I've worked hard on the charm, though."
Hermione huffed and folded her arms crossly. Professor Flitwick smiled tolerantly, however, fond of Hogwarts' star pupil, despite his appalling lack of interest in magical theory.
Harry impressed Flitwick, and most of the class, with his ability to silence an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock with a wave of his hand from the far side of the room, and a muttered instruction to "Hush". Flitwick set it aside with a scrap of parchment noting the date and time, to see how long Harry's silencing charm would last.
"You can write your essay on what ways make the spell work most effectively for your own particular style of spellcasting, Mr. Potter," suggested Professor Flitwick. "Some experiments on whether duration of the spell varies in accordance with the distance you cast from may yield useful results."
"I'll get around to it if I have time," said Harry, thinking of his upcoming plan to defeat Voldemort. "I'm a bit busy this week. Maybe next week?"
A couple of students left the room muttering about prima donnas. Truth be told, most of the students in his year were jealous not just of Harry's abilities, but his increasingly casual approach to homework and the teachers' tolerance of it.
*pokemonpokemonpokemon*
A simple overpowered "Point me" spell and some Apparition got Harry and his army of Pokémon to Lord Voldemort's secret hideout. Harry sent off notes with the location to Sirius, and to Director Bones (who was in hiding last he'd heard), using Hedwig as the messenger. She was a much faster flyer now than she was last year. Really, this was the Aurors' job. Slackers – couldn't anyone cast a proper location finding spell? They wouldn't have lost the Ministry if they'd put in a bit more effort to find evil baby Voldemort, who apparently had a proper body now, somehow. Harry hoped by the time they got his notes, it would be soon enough to summon help, but too late to actually stop him dealing with Voldemort.
He called most of his Pokémon out of their Pokéballs, reserving only Gyarados, who didn't like dry land much, and his two newest Pokémon (which he was keeping as an amusing but nasty surprise for the right moment). Even the slightly sulky Haunter got called out. At least it looked right now even if it still had some attitude problems.
They formed a quick huddle to review their strategy, outside the creepy old mansion. "Alright everyone, Remember the plan? Pikachu, you're my bodyguard, so stick close. Ivysaur, you're on defense and tidy up – watch the perimeter. Charmander, Squirtle, Haunter, you're on offense. Growlie – Horcrux hunting. You sure you'll be alright on your own? And is it here in the building?"
It nodded. "Growlithe!"
"Good, that keeps things simple. Alright then, good luck. Howl when you've burnt it!"
Growlie started sniffing around, and headed around the back of the house.
"Let's go team! Time for a big noisy distraction for Growlie!"
Pikachu blasted the front door completely to smithereens with a lightning bolt, and Charmander and Squirtle charged forwards, followed obediently by the sulky purple ghost Pokémon, then Harry with Pikachu perched atop his shoulder and Ivysaur at his side.
It didn't take very long at all for Lord Voldemort to show up. He wasn't an evil baby anymore, but he was still incredibly ugly, with deathly pale skin, a hideous remnant of a nose, and no lips to speak of. He eerily reminded Harry of a super-evil version of Michael Jackson, except that Michael had hair. And of course Voldemort probably wasn't going to sing or moon-walk any time soon.
Harry focused on shielding while his Pokémon attacked, and made stone walls erupt out of the floor whenever one of those green killing curse bolts headed towards any of his team. But Voldemort was no slouch at defence either, and while his Pokémon were clearly driving the Dark Lord into a towering rage, they weren't as effective at hurting him as Harry had kind of hoped they would be.
As Harry bunkered down in a stone fort in the middle of Voldemort's hall, a happy howl rang out through the mansion. Excellent. That meant that the last Horcrux should've just been burnt to a crisp by Growlie's Fiendfyre breath attack.
"Enough of this foolishness!" Voldemort proclaimed furiously. "Enough ridiculous creatures! Death Eaters - attend me! Potter – duel me man to man!"
"Very well," said Harry, recalling his Pokémon to their Pokéballs, except for Pikachu and Growlie, and sinking his stone fort back into the ground. Harry waited politely, and didn't interrupt Lord Voldemort as he ranted away with a very tiresome "join me" Dark Side speech, as his masked followers Apparated in. This was what he wanted. Time. It would be nice if his backup arrived sometime soon. And if not, he had a plan to subdue Voldemort's followers on his own.
Eventually, the trickle of followers seemed to stop, and Voldemort was drawing out a proper duelling ring, burnt into the floor. He seemed to actually believe Harry would trust him to fight fair, with all his followers surrounding them with wands drawn. Harry was brave… but he wasn't stupid. His opponent was a man whose ethics included killing babies in cribs as a reasonable option.
"Jigglypuff, come on out!" The fluffy round pink Pokémon popped out with a happy chirp.
"Jigglypuff!" It looked cute, and harmless, much like the Puffskein it had started life as. He'd enhanced it with kitten-like ears atop its head, and adorably large eyes. Its tiny hands and feet attached straight onto its puffy body, and it bore no teeth, or claws, or anything else remotely threatening.
"How dare you! Bow before-"
"-Use Sing!" interrupted Harry, who promptly cast a wordless silencing charm on just himself and Pikachu with a small wave of his hand, and dodged away from Voldemort's angry spells.
As Jigglypuff sang its lullaby the Death Eaters started yawning and falling asleep, a few at a time. Voldemort held out the longest, and a very crazy looking woman pointed her wand at her own head and cast some spell to curse herself with deafness, laughing all the while.
"Confringo!" The Dark Lord went straight for the source of the problem, and hit Jigglypuff with a blasting curse, which knocked it backwards and covered it with sooty marks. Its eyes whirled as it fell unconscious.
It looked like it was time for the big surprise. Well, the small and adorable Surprise of Doom. "Mew! I choose you!"
Released from its Pokéball, the tiny lean pink kitten bobbed lazily in the air, englobed in a translucent pink bubble like a magical force field. Its fur was just the lightest coating of pink fuzz over its body, like soft velvet, and its adorable big blue eyes gazed around the room with bright intelligence.
"Pika?" asked Pikachu, and getting a quiet nod of permission from Harry, his favourite Pokémon wasted no time. She hit the laughing woman with a bolt of stunning electricity. "Pika-chuuu!" The woman was blasted against a wall, and didn't look like she'd be getting up any time soon.
The kitten Pokémon, much less aggressive in nature, giggled as it turned upside down. It peered curiously at Voldemort's face as it hung lazily in the air in front of him, tail waving sinuously in the air above it like a wiggly question mark.
Wary of Harry's strange creatures, and disregarding the boy himself as a threat in comparison, Voldemort aimed a couple of spells at it, which bounced off its pink force field ineffectually.
After a few more shots that did nothing (even the barrage of conjured knives just bounced off the fragile-looking pink bubble), he was clearly getting frustrated. It wasn't attacking, but just floating there and giggling. When it tired of that game and bobbed away to meander over to look at an unconscious Death Eater, the Dark Lord switched targets.
"I will deal with you shortly!" he pronounced grandly at its disinterested back, and shot a blast of flame in Harry's direction.
Harry Apparated away to the other side of the room, but his Pikachu wasn't so quick to dodge, and got knocked unconscious.
While Harry went on the defensive against Voldemort's furious barrage of attacks, Mew floated over worriedly to look at his fuzzy friend. "Mew?"
But Pikachu didn't respond, and when Mew looked around and saw that Jigglypuff was also unconscious on the ground, the kitten's angry eyes glowed an eerie bright blue, and his pink bubble gained a flaming corona around its edge. As Harry conjured another wall to block an icy blast from Voldemort's wand, Mew floated up behind the Dark Lord. Mew took careful aim and then with a flash of blinding pink light the terror of the wizarding world was transformed into a stone statue, with a permanent snarl frozen forever on his face.
With a deep sigh of relief Harry looked around for other threats, but all seemed safe. The thumping of feet worried him for a moment, but it was just Growlie finding him at last, and he ran into the room to lick Harry's face and explain in barks and calls of "Growlithe!" how he was a good boy who'd killed a snake.
Harry revived Jigglypuff with a quick cast of "Rennervate", and praised all his Pokémon for doing so well. Mew landed happily in his arms for a scratch and a pat, while Pikachu sang a happy celebratory "Pika pika pika!" song and danced about.
Harry gave Jigglypuff some polite applause and praise for its beautiful singing. But it didn't like how so many others had all fallen asleep instead of appreciating its musical talent. Puffing up like an angry fuzzy balloon, it triumphantly whisked a felt tip black pen out of nowhere, and started doing amusing squiggly graffiti on the unconscious Death Eaters' faces. Voldemort's statue got a little Hitler moustache and some crazy eyebrows scribbled on his face with its felt pen.
Harry was busy taking wands off unconscious Death Eaters when there was a loud girlish cry of "Use Horn Attack!", and a "Hooonk!" from behind him. He spun around to see the female Death Eater being tossed into the air by Luna's purple Crumple-Horned Snorkack. The woman hit the ground again with a loud thump and a crack of breaking bone, and the spell she'd aimed at Harry's unsuspecting back blasted apart a chunk of wall near him instead.
"Snorkie?"
"Snorkack!" it honked in happy greeting.
"But does that mean… Luna?"
"Right here!" she said happily, running towards him from behind her Pokémon to leap into his arms.
But it didn't go quite how she planned. For before she could reach him, his eyes widened as behind Luna he saw the injured Death Eater casting a spell on her Lord, ignoring her broken arm and the blood trickling from her mouth.
"Finite Incantatem!"
Voldemort was free in an instant, stone morphing back to pale flesh in the blink of an eye, and while briefly puzzled he spun quickly to face Harry.
"Die, Potter! Avada Kedavra!"
As the sickly green light sped towards the two teenagers, Harry threw the kitten Pokémon cradled in his hands directly at the beam of light.
"Mew!" he yelled desperately in the tiny moment he had, and his sweet little Mew darted obediently into the direct path of the incoming spell.
And the light ricocheted off its pink force bubble straight back at Lord Voldemort. The Dark Lord was dead, by the Pokémon flung from Harry's hand. He'd enchanted Mew with all the ability to reflect spells that his imagination could comprehend he could possibly endow it with. It wasn't completely unharmed by the process of reflecting the Dark Lord's killing curse though – it now had a tiny lightning bolt cut in its fur above one eye.
Pikachu, Growlie and Snorkie took out the Death Eater witch with a staggering barrage of different attacks – none of them wanted to see her get up again.
"That's definitely dead," Luna said, looking at Voldemort with an oddly twisted expression. "I know dead, and that's dead." She buried her face in Harry's chest, and with a muffled voice asked, "Is that all of them, are we safe now?"
"Yes," said Harry, freeing some more Pokémon just in case of additional surprises. "I'll get Ivysaur to hit them with Stun Spore just in case though, alright?"
It nodded obediently and got to work. "Ivysaur!"
"What are you doing here, Luna? Did you come with others – they got Hedwig's message, right?"
"Oh, yes, they did. They will. In another half hour or so they'll all even be ready to show up. It took them a while to stop panicking and get organised, apparently. I'm future-Luna."
"I brought you back in time? Well, that was helpful. You and Snorkie were great – you saved my life."
"No… yes. Yes to saving your life, but no to the travel part. In a few hours from now Amelia Bones told me Snorkie and I were heroes – she thanked me and said that we were 'instrumental in the defeat of You-Know-Who'. I hadn't been able to chat with you yet, you were busy talking with Sirius and Dumbledore and lots of other people. Well, talking with Dumbledore. Sirius was mostly just laughing so hard he had to hold his sides. And while I was talking to Amelia it just came to me - it was clear I'd travelled back in time to help. So I did it all on my own!"
"Wow! Really?"
"Yes, it was easy because I knew I could do it. Because I'd obviously already done it," she murmured into his robes, still not wanting to look around the devastated room, or at the corpse of Voldemort. "And I had to do it, to save you. So I did."
Harry stroked her hair softly. She really was the most wonderful creature in the whole world.
A/N: Just one more chapter left in this fic – the epilogue is up next Friday!
Congratulations to those readers who played "Who's that Pokémon?" with me in their reviews for the last chapter!
These readers guessed one Pokémon correctly: FIREBLISSFEATHER, mauday97, Ronin Kenshin, cnith, Mr. Skellington, buterflypuss, XxOmNiPoTent PriMorDial GodxX, Elmblossom17, wizzy5682, PotterFrkInTx, zerefdragneelx791, WatchesTheVoid, DeathCrawler, drag00n001, justaislinn, and Kai19.
And these five champions correctly guessed both Mew and Jigglypuff: Firehedgehog, Linnypants, Spazzumtard, Setras, and Reaper7. Well done!
Thanks also to everyone else who gave it a go or left a review. :)
Oh, and in case there's more readers who are curious about my Pokémon Go team – I'm in Team Instinct! Go Team Instinct – there is no shelter from the storm! (I'm not very high level – the game crashes a lot on my phone.) C'mon now, who doesn't love the adorably dorky Hufflepuff-yellow underdog team? ;)
