Author's Note: Well, I said I would be updating on weekends and I'm a person of my word. So, here we have some answers to questions I've been asked. Especially by one "HarbingerLady" reviewer. I don't know if they'll continue reading this story not, but here are some answers on what is going on back in Hogwarts. I don't really want to cut back to Hogwarts too often, this is a Harry centered story with Harry not being at Hogwarts being one of the main focuses. Without Harry there, its a school, nothing really exciting going on. I know some people wonder about that kind of thing though, so I'll try and drop back into Hogwarts from time to time, more than just the opening and closing of each part.
For the Harem I'm not taking any suggestions. I have the women picked out that will be with Harry and traveling with him. Yes, the powers such as being Dragonborn will crossover with Harry into the 'real' world and into the other 'game' worlds. The girls though will only be coming back to Hogwarts. Its sort of cheating in the tournament if you have a slew of people going into the task with you. That said, I have no problem naming 2 of the women who will be part of the Harem, without going into other games or who may or may not end up joining the family. Aela and Serana will be part of the harem, not only can they teach Harry things, add to his powers and teach him what it means to be part of something bigger, but also it will add fuel to the fire of Harry's Fifth Year.
Now that you are done listening to a mad man ramble, lets get on to the story!
Hogwarts had changed since the first task had begun, in ways that Hermione Granger had never fully thought possible. While the crystals in the quidditch pitch continued to show images for the hundreds who still flocked to see the only two competitors left in the task, the students had given up watching by the first night. That isn't to say that her best friend didn't have the most shocking of entrances to his game, just imagine a dragon attacking the town he arrived in and him having to run for his life! It was the beginning to an epic tale that was unfolding outside of their reality!
No the real changes were how the tasks were being shown to the students and the competitors that had already finished. The ceiling of the great hall was blazing with a dual screen split effect. On one side was the professional seeker and champion for Durmstrang, Victor Krum, driving a stolen Ferrari through the streets of a made up American city, the night sky was blazing with neon signs for everything from gun stores to strip clubs as he drove around. The other side, the one above the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, was showing a fierce sword fight between Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Didn't-Want-To-Be-Champion, and some type of magic wielding inferi.
She had been able to keep track of her friend during breakfast and lunch, but had missed so much because of classes and the need for sleep! She had been forced to ask a seventh year who had stayed up watching the task who the elf girl was with Harry. Lets just say the fact that Harry slept in the same room as a naked woman startled her quite a bit. The Harry she knew was very shy and she was surprised he didn't pass out at the sight of a naked full grown, rather robust and tanned woman.
A giggle from the Hufflepuff table had her turn around slightly taking her eyes off Harry's battle for a brief moment. Cedric Diggory, the True Hogwarts Champion, had seemingly changed quite a bit thanks to his own part in the Task. The older teen boy found himself surrounded by first year girls almost all the time, his laughter infectious as he played with them in the halls, or was asked to tea parties in the Great Hall. It was rather fascinating to watch his interactions from a more psychological point of view. There were also the weird abilities he seemed to manifest, powers not taught at Hogwarts that he claimed came from genetically splicing his DNA with something called ADAM.
Fleur Delacaur was another interesting change from what Hermione could tell. She had not known the partial veela before the task, and she did not talk to her now but her friends seemed to be regarding her strangely. The curvy blonde had taken to hiding her face within the hoods of her cloaks and seemed to prefer moving in the shadows. She had also manifested abilities that Hermione couldn't figure out. If Fleur was walking with a group the girl would usually stand out, now she blended into the background, she constantly was scanning the crowds in the halls and had even seemed to pick up the ability to see through walls.
Another odd aspect was, according to the whispered conversations in french that she had over heard, Fleur had written home for a pair of cutlasses, throwing daggers, wrist mounted blades and a set of old pistols. It was bizarre from an outsiders perspective because the french witch hadn't seemed to do anything in the task. The monitoring charm was linked to her body, so the crystal focused on her, sitting in a chair called an Animus, for several hours. What went on in that chair, no one really knows, only that the veela could often be seen a top the Astronomy Tower, gazing at the Durmstrang's ship with hungry eyes.
"I wonder how it works," Neville's nearby voice said questioningly as he stared at the ceiling with intrigue, wincing slightly as he watched his fellow Gryffindor give a feral roar before tackling the undead creature to the ground and stabbing it repeatedly in the head.
"Oh, well I watched the Professors set it up," Hermione said with a smug grin as she turned to Neville, taking her eyes away from the gruesome scene on the ceiling. "With the tasks running longer than the judge's first thought they had to change some things. The monitoring spell can't be removed from the crystals or they'll lose sight of the champions, so they arranged for a pair of omnioculars to be set up and record the crystals. The omnioculars are then spelled to project their images over the champions house or school here in the great hall. Victor's 'screen' is over where the Durmstrang students sit, and Harry's is over the Gryffindor table."
"That... makes sense... if a bit convoluted," Neville admitted before he returned to his mashed potatoes, watching as Harry and the Tamaria girl looted the creatures body, before moving on to the two chests in the cave, then scurrying up the stairs. "Harry is going to have a hard time in that world, isn't he," the pudgy boy asked the brown haired girl beside him. "He's from the Muggle World, and that land seems to be more fit toward the Wizard World or something from the past."
A slight cough from behind pulled the two students to look up at a rather gleeful Remus Lupin, their former Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and a rather shabby black dog at his heel. "Mr. Longbottom, I'm sure you'll find that Harry is a good bit more resourceful and cunning then one would imagine," the former professor said as he sat at the table, quite uninvited and seeming not to care one wit that he wasn't supposed to be there. "Professor Dumbledore invited Snuffles and myself to come and watch the tasks in place of Harry's family," the werewolf explained.
"Harry has been showing skills that I didn't think were possible. His body and magic are adapting to the world he has been placed in," the professor continued with a scarred grin. "He always was rather adaptable, even as a baby. When James and Lily were home he knew better than to beg to stay up or make a fuss over nothing, Lily wouldn't have it," he said with a chuckle. "On the flip side, Sirius, Peter and myself were all bachelors, we didn't have any children. That baby had us eating out of his hands within an hour if we were babysitting, and Lily's wrath would always fall on us," he said with a laugh.
"Um, Professor Lupin," Neville started to ask with a waiver in his voice. He didn't do well with new people, certainly never with one on one attention or in this case, one on two. "As interesting as that story is what does it have to do with Harry surviving a world with a dragon and inferi?"
The werewolf smiled to himself as he scratched the back of his head. "Well nothing honestly, I just thought I'd tell a baby Harry story," he admitted with a twitch of his mustache. "Honestly though Harry is adapting to the world he is presented with," he said motioning toward the ceiling where the young hero was climbing down a rock face toward a graveyard of what appeared to be elephant bones. "This afternoon, shortly after you went back to class from lunch, he showed two amazing abilities. He conjured fire and electricity without a wand," he said with a proud smile. "He's not only adapting he's overcoming."
"Mammoth graveyard," Tamaria tutted as she dropped down onto one of the skulls and used it to hop to the ground. "Never particularly appealing to come across a mammoth or their caretakers," she advised the youth as she began to look around, letting the wizard drop down behind her. Her amber eyes flashed toward him for a moment before taking in the clearly darkening sky. "We'll need to make camp. Get a fire going like you did earlier and I'll rummage us up something to eat," she said before crouching low and sneaking off into the shadows of the land.
It didn't take long for Harry to start his fire and spent his time waiting for Tamaria by focusing on the fire making the flames burn lower but give off more heat but not light. He rather felt like a muggle welder as he watched the narrow white hot flame burn within the heart of the logs that were cracking and breaking as they continued to feed the flame. Magic could be decisively odd when it wanted.
After he had the flame the way he wanted it, he drew the sword he had taken off the drougr that had been laying in wait in front of the word wall. It was clearly old but a type of stasis magic kept it from rusting or chipping with age. It was all carved from a single large rock and while incredibly heavy it seemed to fit his hand rather well. He could also feel the magic pouring off the stone sword in waves of bitter coldness. While the territory known as Skyrim was always cold the sword seemed to drag the temperature down a few degrees even with the magical fire burning near by.
'Good, you are practicing the lu, magic, you have learned,' the voice of Durnehiviir spoke from Harry's subconscious mind. 'It is good to see that you are practicing and becoming familiar with our world.' Harry could practically hear the undead dragon nodding its head as it spoke. 'Now, it is time to begin training your zul. You will learn words from walls like the one inside the cave we were just in, but while you can speak our language, they will not grant you their power until you have consumed a Dovah's soul. Luckily, when you consume a Dovah who has its own unique shout, you will learn that shout in its entirety and be able to use it.'
The raven haired wizard ran his hand through his messy hair. 'I suppose you are one of these dragons that has a shout,' he asked knowing how his luck usually went when it came to things like this.
'But of course,' the dragon stated quite proudly. 'I spent thousands of years trapped within the Soul Cairn, the land of the dead, and my shout shows that connection. Now listen and concentrate,' Durnehiviir instructed. 'The words for my shout are Diil Qoth Zaam.' The undead spirit spoke and Harry felt a shiver pass through him as the words translated in his mind. 'Undead Tomb Slave.'
'Do you want me to use it now,' Harry thought with a slight shudder at the possibility such a spell could bring about.
He felt the dragon begin to laugh inside his chest. 'No, I want you to wait until you actually meet another dragon. Of course I want you to start practicing now!'
Shaking himself, Harry stood and turned away from the small but intense fire. He kept his sword out in case anything happened to go wrong with... whatever magic it was that Durnehiviir was teaching him. "Diil Qoth Zaam," his voice blasted through the air. For a moment, he thought nothing had happened and nearly gave a sight of relief... before the three spherical dark portals opened among the bones of the dead mammoths.
Dark skeletons with piercing white glows coming from their eye sockets rattled as they appeared in thin air. The first held a bow and seemed to be looking for any threats among the trees. Another was a floating upper torso of a black skeleton who quickly lifted a mammoth tusk as a weapon and held up its hand as if to cast a wandless spell. The third was a massive black skeleton with a purple glow, clad in what he had learned to call Ancient Nord Armor, that the draugr it Barrow had worn.
Seeing no threat the three turned toward the fire their eerie white eyes landing on the teen who couldn't help but take a step back from them. Slowly the two with legs bent at the knee, bowing before the dragonborn while the floating skeleton merely put its hand over his heart.
'They see what I saw when I looked at you, Dovahkiin,' Durnehiviir spoke once more. 'We Dovah do not merely exist in the now but like our father the great Aedra, Akatosh, we too can see through the currents of time. I know of your dez, of your destiny, even though you are still struggling to understand you have one.' Green eyes listened to the dragon's speech inside his head even as the Boneman, Mistman and Wrathman faded into piles of dust as the land of the dead called them home. 'With my Thu'um you can call on the dead as allies. However, not all dead answer to me.'
The sound of a clearing throat caused Harry to spin in place to look across the small white hot fire to the other side. Standing there in her barely-there armor was Tamaria holding a few bloody rabbit bodies in her grasp. "Well that was certainly interesting," she said eyeing Harry suspiciously as her left hand drifted to the sword on her hip. "Do you mind telling me what all that was about," the elf asked with narrow amber eyes.
"This is going to be a long story," Harry said with a sigh as he rubbed the back of his head.
The auburn haired beauty sighed as she felt like pulling her hair out. "Let me see if I have everything straight," she said in as calm a voice as she could, even though she was pacing across the fire from the teenage boy. "You are what you call a 'wizard', a mage who is currently going to a school for teens to learn magic and being forced to compete in a tournament. The competition is broken into separate tasks with the first having you being sent to Nirn, a fiction world where you are from in order to save the world from some disaster," she tried to clarify.
At Harry's nod she continued. "Now, you have the soul of some dragon called Durnehiviir that has been fused to your own soul by a Daedra Prince. You are the legendary dragonborn, the same as Tiber Septim and the Empire's line of succession for ages," she rambled, seemingly at a loss at just what she was saying. "You realize this makes you sound completely insane don't you? Oblivion, I sound insane just repeating it."
The wizard looked up from where he had set the rabbits cooking while he had been telling his story. "Thank you for focusing on that part," he said with a cheeky grin, glad she decided to ignore his story of his life before and at Hogwarts for the last three years. But yes, you have the main gist of things so if you want to take off I only ask that you don't repeat it," he said gazing at the fire. "I'll understand of course, my first real friend my age took off as well, though his was more due to his jealousy then anything."
"Are you kidding," Tamaria suddenly shouted whirling around on the teen and making him jump. "This is the kind of adventure we travelers only dream about," she said excitedly. "Who would have thought a prisoner from the Imperial City would over throw the Tribunal and render the Heart of Lorkhan and over throw the Tribunal? Who could possibly imagine that another Imperial prisoner would find the lost heir and fight against Mehrunes Dagon with the Avatar of Akatosh? This absolutely bizarre and insane story is the same." The Elf leaped across the fire and grabbed the wizard's armor, staring him in the eyes with crazed amber, "This is my chance to help save the world."
"Oh," a voice suddenly spoke up from beyond the light of Harry's fire, "she's a spirited one. Reminds me of that insane cousin of mine." A young man with long black hair, a clean face and looking rather thin walked up to the fire and dropped down on one of the mammoth skulls. His grin only a grew as another man stepped from the shadows, dressed in fur boots and loincloth with a mask made of a stag's skin tucked under his arms. His face was roughly clawed as a mustache was attached to his upper lip. "By Oblivion it feels good to be somewhere with power, Hercine," the first man said.
The bigger and much more muscular figure nodded his head as he sat down, neither offering a word to the teen and elf they had interrupted. "I couldn't agree more, Clavicus, while I love vacations, can we agree to limit our time in that world? I couldn't hardly control my transformations and what those vile soul sucking fiends did to you in that prison? Absolutely dreadful."
The elf dropped the boy she was holding and seemed to try to slink away only to be chased back into the fire light by a shaggy black dog and a rather ferocious looking wolf. She knew who these two were and desperately wanted to get away. Why on Nirn would they appear now? Beside their fire? Just when her life seemed to be looking up the Eight seemed to want to crush her under their foot again.
Harry though was looking between the two men and the canines that had come with them. No one ever accused Harry Potter of being stupid... well other than his aunt and uncle but he didn't count them. "Sirius," he whispered looking at the thin man petting the mangy looking black mutt. "Remus." The man with the wolf and shaggy brown hair hadn't even tried to disguise himself at all! "What are you two doing here! I'm so glad you are here," he exclaimed before jumping across the camp into the arms of a smiling Clavicus Vile to the happy barks of the dog beside him.
"Harry get back," Tamaria demanded as she drew her sword and glared at the two men. "I don't know who you think they are, but that is Hercine and Clavicus Vile, two of the Daedric Princes who rule Oblivion!"
Author's Note: So yes, this chapter was sort of filler, I admit it. Since its a three day weekend for me, I'll be able to divest a lot more time into this story and chapters, so hopefully I can get further and further. Please everyone, if you like it, have questions, or want to give advice to a starting writer, please review or pm me! Thanks!