Last Second Savior

by plums

While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a destabilized Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far far away. Eventual Harry / Multi

2. Senseless Death

Summary:

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far away.

Disclaimer

I don't own Harry Potter in any way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

*Author's Note *

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

Chapter First Published: 2013-03-05

Chapter Last Update:

Chapter 2 – Senseless Death

Harry had finally discovered a magical method of travel worse than apparition, portkeys, and the floo combined. The lights and flashes he saw made him nauseous, and it was all he could do to not throw up.

He found himself falling end over end for what seemed like hours but could easily have been minutes before he was unceremoniously expelled into a marshy field. He looked up just in time to see flames from the explosion burst from the portal as it closed, which left Harry in an eerie silence. Slowly the somewhat familiar noise of bugs, birds, and other animals came back as they recovered from the startled silence that was induced by the deafening roar of the portal.

There was no longer any sign that there had ever been a portal there, other than one solitary human who had no clue just how far from home he was at the moment.

He stood up carefully, and simultaneously checked himself over for injuries and attempted to squash down the sense of panic in his stomach that had begun to mount. Harry took stock of his surroundings and himself. He didn't seem harmed, and all of his equipment was still with him, including his invaluable customized wand holster which looked like it was about to earn its exorbitant price tag even more than it had in the past. He checked his clothes and armor, and found no tears or damage to anything other than his trusty helmet, which had apparently been lost. A quick stretch revealed that he seemed a bit sore from excessive magic usage, but at least his reserves were barely touched after he was able to gather so much energy from the Earth itself in his time of need.

His own health verified, he began to take in his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was the humidity. The air was stifling, especially in comparison to the sand-filled desert wasteland where the demonic portal had been summoned. The sunlight had an odd brightness to it that he normally associated with deserts along the earth's equator, and he instinctually threw some ultra-violet protection charms on his exposed skin. Sun poisoning combined with heat stroke was one problem that he did not need to have now.

He had been there less than a few minutes and he could already feel the sweat begin to pour down his face. A cooling charm alleviated the way the air seemed to coalesce around his head like a hot thick soup, and Harry figured he would have to be quite liberal with its reapplication over time if he was to be stuck here. If it was humid there were also likely to be bugs that carried diseases that would be attracted to him, so he put up a few charms to repel them as well.

As far as he could see, the place was half marsh, half-fungal heaven. If there was any question he was no longer on Earth, he had his confirmation when the size of the surrounding vegetation finally sunk into his dazed mind. There were flowers shaped like trees in every direction, some as tall as thirty meters, that glowed with an inner phosphorescence. Between the giant trees, the ground was covered with plants that could only come from an artist's dream world in the way they resembled absolutely nothing that Harry had ever seen on Earth. He could feel the magic they emitted from here, and as he stretched out his Mage Sight to view the world, he got the strangest shock of all.

Everything here glowed with magic. In fact, it seemed like the very air he breathed had it. All the plants in the vicinity glowed brightly to his eyes, where plants on earth would not even be visible unless they were something he knew could be used in some particular potion. He absently wondered quickly how many of these obviously magical plants could be used in revolutionary new portions or wand components.

As he held his Mage Sight and gazed in absolute awe of the surrounding area, his senses relaxed and involuntarily extended far beyond normal. They stretched out to encompass the immediate area, but didn't stop there. Further and further he mind reached. He sensed continents, oceans, and finally the circumference of the planet. The image in his mind that appeared was so clear that he felt he could apparate or portkey anywhere he wanted on this world without the normal inconvenience of having been there in person. The fear of appearing inside a mountain was the furthest thing in his mind. He felt he could instinctively picture an area and know that no natural feature of the land would harm him if he were to apparate there. Finally, his mental picture of the planet crystallized and he could quite clearly sense and feel two powerful magic users very far away.

His joy and wonder at having such a clear picture of the planet quickly ended when he realized that if he could sense others, the others may be able to sense him. A twinge of fear settled in the pit of his stomach, based on the possibility the unknown wizards could possibly track other magicals in the same manner as the demons did on Earth. In response, Harry quickly suppressed his magical aura down to the size of a flobberworm. No one would be able to sense or pinpoint him now in the amidst the massive magical background noise of this planet.

Aura suppression was something that he, and almost every magical person on Earth, was required to perform on instinct. The primary prey of demons were magical people. So, in a city full of six million people, if there was only one magical person out of all those six million, the demons would immediately attack and try to kill that person first. They would even do this if faced with more dangerous threats. The acquisition of the ability to suppress an aura almost round the clock became a tiring exercise, but eventually everyone learned it, or wizards did not stay alive long.

The feeling of safety returned, so he checked his gear just to confirm everything was still where it was supposed to be. His wand holster still had all five wands locked away, and his backup holster attached to his right calf still contained Voldemort's old wand. His forearm holster also had the two shrunken trunks that had collectively saved his ass so many times he couldn't count. Finally, his emergency potions belt was secure and intact. Not that he expected any of the unbreakable charmed vials to have taken damage, but the verification was more to just confirm the belt and all its contents were still securely tied to him and not lost somewhere in the twisting nether between worlds he had just passed through.

Next thing he had to decide is what to do next while he made the conscious effort to put home out of his mind. His rather extensive knowledge of demon portals revolved around the shutdown of those already in existence and not the opening of new ones. In fact, he didn't know a single thing about opening an extra-dimensional portal other than what was usually used in the process, and the sacrifice of innocent lives to utilize the energy of their souls was definitely not a price he would pay to get home. He was sure the collection of books in one of the compartments of his 'special' trunk would have no knowledge whatsoever on the subject.

If he was to be brutally honest with himself, he was lucky to have the information he did have. Hermione was only able to attain the knowledge currently in his possession by risking her job after she stole tomes from the Department of Mysteries. The Earth had been involved in a full-fledged war and the statute of secrecy had been utterly destroyed in the process. The very existence of all life on the planet was at stake and the thrice-damned Unspeakables still refused to offer information and aid. So it was one of the few times in her life Hermione willingly placed books in danger through her actions.

Harry dragged his mind back to the present and realized he needed to stay focused in order to not panic, but it was getting harder and harder the longer he tried to not think about his current situation. Everything he thought about made him realize exactly how perilous his status was. He had no idea what was safe to eat here or would poison him. He did not know whether the nearest settlement would be friendly to him. Finally, he had no idea if the two strong magic users would listen to him or kill him on first sight. He felt more alone than at any point in his entire life.

He shook his head and slammed down on his Occlumency shields to stem off the debilitating panic before it could take root. He temporarily accepted that a method to travel home was absolutely out of the question for the time being, and it would simply have to be something he researched later as time allowed.

Harry realized he had life-altering decisions to make and he needed to make them quickly. Did he try and contact the other magical users on the planet, or did he set up camp here. Either choice could be considerably dangerous. The magical users could end up not understanding him despite language charms and attack him. How he was going to covertly cast translation charms upon them without violent consequences was something he chose simply to not think about at the moment. On the other hand, if he tried to set up camp, he could miss an opportunity to acquire help. Not to mention the fact that staying stationary would likely mean any predators in the area could more quickly zero in on him and turn him into a fast meal.

Finally, he made the conclusion that he would never forgive himself if one or both the magical users could help him get home, so he decided to try to make contact. He looked around the clearing one last time and locked a clear image of the area into his mind. One day, if he ever attained knowledge about how to get home, he could possibly return to this spot if this location was required in some way for him to go back to Earth.

With the image forever burned into his mind, he reached out with his magic and tried to sense the two others without letting his aura flare. Both beings seemed to be roughly equal distances from him, but for some reason, something told him to try a specific one over the other. He paused for a moment while he mulled over the compulsion to apparate near that specific living font of magic. He wanted to make sure it was his own free will behind the decision, but there did not seem to be any untoward influence in the air and his Occlumency was at full bear anyways.

Harry decided to trust whatever instinct led him to this decision. He proceeded to disillusion himself, silence his feet, and threw the cloak portion of his uniform into one of his trunks for now. It would be no good if it caught on something and gave his position away. He centered himself within his mind, and once again marveled at the way magic seemed so saturated in the planet. The almost casual way it allowed him to sense far off places was simultaneously the coolest and scariest thing he had ever seen.

With that in mind, he apparated towards the person he felt the indescribable need to move towards.

-o0o0o-

He appeared silently and still invisible. As he looked around, he saw a giant flower nearby which would give him an excellent vantage point of the surrounding area. With the second apparition, he found himself upon a flower that may as well be a tree for how sturdy it was.

He had no need to use Mage Sight to find the person he was looking for. The person's magic screamed power and alertness to him. Despite the invisibility spell he was under and being almost thirty meters in the air with a suppressed aura, Harry unconsciously ducked down to avoid drawing attention. He caught his first glimpse of the source and nearly choked.

Below him, surrounded by a dozen humanoids in full body suits of white plastic-like armor, was a blue…

…person.

She was most-definitely not human. He had never seen anyone quite like her before. Her most prominent feature, beyond the blue skin, was the two tentacles about the length of Harry's arms which protruded from the back of her hairless skull. Part of her head was wrapped in a protective head guard that also had straps which wrapped quite elaborately down the tentacles. She wore skin tight leather pants and a leather top which left little to the imagination and proved beyond a shadow doubt this was a female. The leather top bared her midriff and showed quite a bit of her considerably ample cleavage, yet covered her arms down to her wrists.

Harry had never seen such a beautiful magical being in his life. He was counting Veela such as Fleur and her even more attractive sister Gabrielle in this statement. Harry just hoped the being would be friendly. She was obviously on high-alert, as were the soldiers which surrounded and protected her.

His instincts that helped him find Masterminds definitely worked overtime here. He could tell this woman was in charge of the detachment of troops that obediently surrounded her. The subtle adjustments they made to her movements and directions only reinforced this belief. The group as a whole seemed to be some sort of scouting or investigative party.

The troopers were a sight unto themselves. They wore white full-body armor, with a black protective shoulder pad that provided their shoulders and chest with additional protection. Their primary weapon appeared to be some sort of black looking gun held at the ready in two hands. Harry doubted their suits had cooling charms on them, so they had to be cooking alive in this oppressive heat. But they trudged on anyways, and Harry grudgingly gave them more respect for it.

He looked around and was startled to see even more troopers behind them. Then he noticed the huge lumbering mechanical animals that were the size of small buildings. The first impression he had of them was that they seemed to be troop transports. They looked to have massive guns in the "heads," and Harry swore to never piss these folks off unless he had no other alternative.

Suddenly Harry's senses shrieked danger at him as he heard a loud roar overhead. He looked up and saw a flying transport unlike any he had ever seen before. It hovered there for a moment over the endless field of flowers, and fired what looked to be large beams of light somewhere into the distance, causing an explosion, the sound and feel of which washed over Harry like thunder about ten seconds later. The flying thing moved off into the distance, the pilots obviously in search of a new target.

The whole scene had occurred in less than thirty seconds, and left Harry in awe and reevaluating everything Harry knew about muggle technology. He had seen non-magical weapons previously, such as missiles, projectiles, and even experimental rail guns. But what he just witnessed was on a whole new level to him. Weapons like that could have provided enough kinetic energy to drop the wards around demon portals far faster than his world's military could have dreamed. Maybe he could get some technology to take back to Earth if he ever managed to find a way back.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized this group couldn't simply be some sort of standard peacetime patrol. This group was at war with someone, which meant Harry was at a distinct philosophical and moral disadvantage. Which side was the right side of this conflict? Was it the super hot blue alien chick below, or was it the unknown 'enemy' which he hasn't even had contact with.

Beyond harsh reminder that these folks were at war, he came to the realization that they were serious about their jobs. It would mean he would have to be extra careful when he attempted to make first contact or he would not live more than a few seconds with multiple guns like that trained upon him. He would be lucky in fact to not wind up in an interrogation cell. For some reason, the thought had only occurred now to him that what he was doing was a borderline wartime infiltration mission, and the insight actually depressed him.

Harry continued to shadow the procession for a few hours while he used as little magic as possible to hide from the woman below him. The only draw upon his magic was an occasional apparition, cooling charm, and Aquamenti to replenish lost fluids, since he still sweat buckets despite the cool air the charms provided. He waited for an opportunity to introduce himself, but the timing never seemed right.

Occasionally, he noticed his target would glance at a flower he had just left, but never at the location of the new flower. He was definitely glad he had learned to suppress his aura, as Harry had no doubt the woman would instantly lock on to him if he were to walk around with his aura unrestrained. He noticed there were other search parties similar to the one with the woman in them, but they had no magical user, and her group was most definitely the lead party.

Then, just like before, he seemed to receive some instinctual suggestion. It was definitely reckless, but for some reason he felt it was urgent to move now. He got idea to flare his aura off to the side of the column of troops, which would draw the woman away from the main force. Thinking more about the idea, it would give him a chance to talk with her with only twelve additional guns pointed at him, rather than a few hundred. There also this sense that there was a pressing need to do this now, rather than wait any longer.

He apparated about two hundred meters to the right of the column of troops and flared his aura briefly before he suppressed it again. Instantly he felt the woman respond with a pulse of magic of her own as she went on high alert, and he noticed her aura flared brightly but definitely had not matched his own. In the distance, he could just barely see her break off to investigate. She moved much faster than the troopers who failed to keep up with the woman's run speed. She was in remarkable shape, and he swore she somehow used magic to move faster than any person should have any right to be move on foot.

The group was within twenty meters from Harry when he felt a subtle change wash over the troops that followed the woman. They slowly fanned out in a half circle around her. The presence of the troopers now screamed enemy to Harry's senses. A sudden thought came to Harry as he observed the oncoming troops. The position of 'leader' of the approaching group had switched from the blue woman to one particular soldier with a yellow stripe on his helmet and armor.

Harry could see the trooper coordinate his troops in a subtle manner that oozed malevolence and cold precision. Harry instantly recognized their positions as the beginnings of an entrapment configuration designed to make sure no soldier was in another's line of fire as they targeted a position in the middle of their near half circle. These soldiers had a new target for their weapons, and their prey was caught in the net and she didn't even know it.

A feeling of absolute horror washed over him. Harry knew exactly what was about to happen. This woman was about to be executed from behind.

The blue-skinned woman was caught completely unaware of these events. No more than five seconds after the point where Harry realized something was wrong, the soldiers all collectively opened fire on the blue woman. She only had time to look around in shock and raise the cylinder clipped to her belt up in one hand before she fell.

Harry tried to prevent the soldiers from firing once he realized their intentions but failed to stop them all. Seven blue'ish white bursts loudly impacted the woman in the back before Harry raised a fist and wrenched his hand in a sharp rotation. As he did this, the heads of eleven soldiers simultaneously twisted completely backwards and their now dead bodies slumped to the ground as if their strings had been cut. He summoned and stunned the twelfth soldier, who had only looked around wildly after he saw his comrades' fall before he flew towards Harry and entered blissful unconsciousness.

While he ran over to the woman, Harry secretly thanked whatever deities continually watched over him. From the way she instantly fell and the number of impacts, Harry knew that there was the strong possibility that this woman faced paralysis in addition to death. The knowledge he had acquired of field medicine and his surgical training would save this woman's life or end it.

Harry fired the strongest stasis charm he could at her. His actions were rewarded when her body glowed a deep red, which signified she was alive but in severe critical condition. She, in fact, would likely be dead in seconds, but the stasis charm would keep her body alive for up to forty-eight hours as long as the woman's magical core was strong. This particular spell unfortunately had no benefit to muggles, since it relied upon the body's own magic to sustain itself.

The charm would preserve her body in its current state with no degradation the entire time. It could be lifted slightly to improve healing rates at the cost of reducing the overall length of time the charm would last. With this method, her body could be entirely healed without the loss of blood since the heart would no longer beat as well.

With the stasis charm successfully in place, he threw the strongest and quickest muggle-repelling ward he could muster. After that, Harry quickly implemented a half-baked plan he had come up with over the span of the last three seconds. The troopers wanted their leader dead, so Harry had to assume this was a mutiny of some kind on their part. He knew time was short and other soldiers would likely come and check up on them once it was discovered the scouting party was missing. He had to make her death look realistic so there would be no doubt in their minds that the woman was deceased.

Harry quickly stripped the clothes off of the stunned soldier. Harry got his next shock of the day when he found the soldier appeared to be a genuine human being. Harry also found he was right during his earlier musings: the soldier definitely was roasting alive in that suit, because the smell that emanated from the naked body appalled him.

With the stunned trooper naked in the half swamp grass, Harry pulled out his second trunk from his forearm holster. Harry quickly keyed open his private potions and consumables storage bay, and used an Accio to pull out a dose of polyjuice. He quickly ran over to the injured woman and searched her for any hair he could find. Harry knew polyjuice was never intended for non-human transformations, but the problems in those circumstances came from the reversion back, not the initial transformation. The trooper would soon be dead and be in no need of transforming back anyways. After almost twenty panic-ridden seconds of no luck, Harry finally noticed the only hair she appeared to have on her body was her eyelashes.

Quickly plucking one, he dropped it into the vial, which turned a color similar to turquoise. He went over to the soldier and banished the potion directly into the soldier's stomach. He was rewarded to see him morph into an exact naked duplicate of the woman his squad had just attempted to murder. Harry finished the charade by summoning some larger leaves from a nearby plant and transfigured them into copies of the woman's clothes and shoes. After a few quick switching spells directed at the newly created clothes, and there were two exact duplicates of the woman present.

A sudden noise startled him and, when he lifted his head up, he saw three squads had already traversed half the distance to Harry, so he knew he had to hurry. As he looked at the woman, he noticed the now magically frozen wounds upon her back looked like heat damage combined with a withering curse with the way they both cauterized the skin and inflicted massive localized cauterization. Firing a dozen curses to simulate the effect into the polyjuiced soldier's back, Harry than finished his faked death with a heart attack curse that would kill the disguised soldier five seconds later if he wasn't already dead from the damage to his back Harry had inflicted.

Now all that was left was cleanup and escape. He ran back over to the woman while he banished the solider's armor into the trunk, shut and shrunk it, and then summoned it directly into his holster. He then grabbed onto the girl and the metal cylinder she had unclipped from her belt and apparated one thousand meters straight up.

As he began to fall, he unholstered a wand and fired one of the few self-invented Battle Mage siege spells he had created. Harry designed the spell to be invisible while it travelled, so the victims would have no warning it was inbound. It wouldn't create the largest magical explosion he was capable of, but no one would know the attack came from above rather than by some random explosion on the ground. He fired it about twenty meters away from the mock blue girl's body, so that the explosion may jostle the corpse around a bit, but it would still be easily identifiable as hers.

After he unleashed the spell, Harry left the area via another apparition, this time while in the air. This time he travelled back to the clearing where he initially arrived on this new world. The body of his new patient was laid gently upon the ground, which left Harry with the dilemma of what to do next. He turned his sight outwards and checked the status of the other magical being he had sensed earlier that day. Only about two minutes had passed since the soldiers opened fire on the blue woman, so there may still be a chance to save the other person as well. He was easily able to determine the other person was still alive almost exactly where he had felt them before.

Harry's first instinct was to apparate directly to the person, seize them, and drag them right back to this spot. But there was always the chance the action could drop him into a full-fledged war zone for all he knew, and who knew how long it would take to return. In the meantime, he couldn't leave the blue girl here alone unprotected. He had seen a few large predators during the time he had shadowed the column of troops, and it would be his luck one of them would chomp down on his patient. Knowing the number of troops detailed by the white armored soldiers to kill the beasts, the idea of temporarily leaving the blue woman unprotected did not exactly seem like the proper thing to do.

Harry figured his best option would be to transfigure a heavy rock dome over the woman to protect her while he got the other magical. The transfiguration took a bit longer than he wanted since all he had to work with nearby was grass, but it was still done within a minute.

As he finished, he found his efforts to be completely in vain.

For one brief shining moment, he felt shock, than betrayal echo across every magical ley line of the planet. Then, it was suddenly silenced. Harry immediately reached out again, and had his worst fears realized. The second presence was gone, likely killed in a manner just as cowardly as the one attempted on the blue woman.

Without a second though, Harry immediately disillusioned himself again and apparated a fair distance from the spot the person died and hit the ground. Like he feared, he found himself in the middle of a war zone. Robots of all shapes and sizes on one side and more white armored troops on the other. Picking his head up, he gazed in the direction he knew he would find the body of the other magical user.

But there was no body. All he saw was a massive crater. There was no hope for recovering and healing whoever had perished so violently moments before.

With no more reason left to suppress his aura on the planet, Harry let go of his restraints and apparated back to the comatose woman now under his protection. With his aura loose and senses more fully extended, he was suddenly inundated with a larger sense of death from beyond the planet he was on. Elsewhere, somewhere way beyond his perception to pinpoint and locate, numerous powerful magical beings were dying sudden and violent deaths. Their final moments of pain and betrayal echoed loudly across the cosmos as they screamed for help. Harry reeled his senses back in since he had no desire to feel the constant aura of death and horror which seemed to still rumble and echo in the back of his mind.

After he removed the previously transfigured rock protections, he sat down and took a deep breath. He once again attempted to avoid the panic his mind so desperately wanted to fall victim to. 'One step at a time Harry, one step at a time,' he repeated inwardly. As long as he didn't stop, as long as he had some purpose to keep going, he would not panic.

Harry took another look at his unconscious and mortally injured blue companion. This woman represented his only glimmer of hope now. And that glimmer had just shrunk exponentially if other magical beings who were probably her allies were being cut down in such a cowardly manner.

With a glance at his watch, Harry marked the current time. He had just under forty-eight hours to save this woman before the stasis charm drained her magic and expired, at which point her life would likely end afterwards. He rolled the woman on her side and silently thanked that all the wounds were center mass on her back. There was likely some deeper penetrating damage that extended past her ribs, but most of the damage would localized to the skin on her back, her spinal column, and her ribs.

He needed a place where he could heal her. A clean and safe place. The half-bog he was in now was likely the least sanitary place he could possibly do this. He needed a cave or shelter to heal her. He could possibly do it inside his wizarding tent, but that would also require him to have a safe place to pitch said tent. Again, a quickly cleaned, warded, and defended cave would be ideal for his purposes.

He was about to apparate to a nearby tall flower to try and find a distant mountain range when he suddenly felt that pull on his mind again for the third time. It felt just like when he felt the subtle urge to apparate to the blue girl and later to pulse his aura. This time, he received a faint urge to apparate to a specific place on the planet. He had never felt his instincts like this before, and he had never felt the urge to perform two blind apparitions in the same day, 'It worked once, hopefully it'll work again and not kill me.'

A quick prayer was uttered in the hope that 'the third time' would not be charm and lead him to harm, or mortal peril. Afterwards, Harry once again held the mortally wounded alien woman bridal style in his arms. He immersed himself in the feeling that his magic gave him, and disappeared with a large crack.

Harry reappeared at the base of a large mountain range. The mountains were a line of desolation surrounded by the forest of flowers that did not seem to be able to grab a foothold upon its rocky edifice. One hundred meters directly in front of him was a cave that appeared to be exactly what he had wished for. As he purposefully ignored the fact something way beyond his normal instincts had kept him alive and helped him make critical decisions, he scooped up the woman into his arms and ran to the cave.

He did his best to ignore that her gruesome injuries now pressed against the sleeves of his uniform. The stasis charm itself prevented her blood from flowing outwards other then what had already bled out from her injuries before the stasis was applied. The charm would also prevent most of the dirt and contamination from his uniform from entering her wounds. As he ran, he found himself surprised that she was very light. As curvaceous as she was, it apparently hadn't translated into a lot of weight. Harry for some reason mentally imagined her to be much larger than she actually was while he observed her today.

'Maybe the soldiers were extremely short?' thought Harry randomly, before he refocused on the present.

When he arrived at the cave, Harry set her body down on her side outside the mouth by a wall. He wanted both hands free if he had to attack an animal that had decided to make the cave its home. However, his paranoia proved to be unfounded. The cave was a rough circle five meters deep, with nothing at all living on the inside. It was as if it had remained undisturbed underground for eons and just this morning had the entrance exposed to the outside world.

He decided the cave was exactly the sort of sanctuary they needed, so he rushed back outside and used a Mobillicorpus charm to float her body inside. He once again summoned and expanded his second trunk and removed a wizard's tent from the inside.

Harry always carried two trunks with him wherever he went when he was on duty. Years ago, he suggested to military leadership that all wizards should care a multi-compartment trunk that could be shrunken down easily. Its main purpose was to contain support hardware and supplies such as rations and field medicine. Harry's original proposal was that a small and standardized supply of potions could potentially save lives if injuries required things such as blood replenishing potions. Soldiers would be allowed to stock the additional two compartments within the trunk with whatever gear and other job related items they wanted. It was easy to sell leadership on the idea once Harry brought up the cost of training replacements vs. the cost of the trunks.

Regrettably, for Harry, the three-compartment trunk contained nowhere near the amount of space Harry personally wanted and needed for his gear. He initially expanded his general issued three-compartment trunk into a seven-compartment monstrosity on his own and filled it nearly to capacity with potions ingredients and a library of topics relevant to the war. The trunk became known far and wide after Harry was able to use rare herbs he kept in stock in his trunk to save one of his mortally wounded soldier's life.

Unfortunately, the brass got wind of the trunk and decided it didn't matter that Harry was using the extra space he had created himself to save lives. All that mattered was he utilized a non-standard trunk that did not have three compartments. In response, Harry very publicly cleared out and destroyed the customized trunk and replaced it with the standard three-compartment trunk that had absolutely no special features or items stored within it beyond the standard items issued to Harry and the rest of his troops.

What he didn't tell anyone beyond his select few friends and confidants was that he added a second hidden trunk slot to his general issue holster. This new trunk slot became home to a completely custom-built multi-compartment trunk that took Harry nearly a year to learn to build. It had everything his original trunk had, just in a far grander scale. It even contained a few excesses as well, as instead of seven compartments he upgraded to the next significantly powerful magical number of thirteen and found himself with more space than he knew what to do with.

With the extra space, he even converted one of the spaces into a fully functional apartment with shower, bed and kitchen. He never actually used the apartment for anything longer than quick shower, because he was paranoid about being stuck inside the trunk despite the numerous safety features he had installed. Harry's recollection of Mad-Eye Moody imprisoned for nine months in his own trunk occurred after Harry finished the apartment space. Plus a sane person just did not invite trouble by using something like this while being around George Weasley.

The contents of the second trunk were incredibly important to Harry, because, beyond the usual assortment of useful items such as wizard tents and extra brooms, it also contained potions that were far more useful than the standard array of medical consumables provided by the military. Harry's animagus form was a phoenix, and despite its rather conspicuous visage and Harry's reluctance to ever publicly use it, he religiously produced a quarter vial of tears a day through enforced crying sessions. Those phoenix tears had secretly saved countless lives during the war and likely were about to help the woman who floated right behind him into the cave.

With the duffel bag that contained the wizard's tent extracted from the trunk, a wave of Harry's hand yanked all the contents out. Another wave removed the supports and had them in the air in a roughly skeletal tent shape, and a third wave had threaded the supports gracefully into the inserts of the enchanted nylon canvas. A final wave tied all the supports together and anchored the tent to the rocky ground with automatic sticking charms.

He quickly entered the tent and conjured a medical table, which he laid the woman face down and maneuvered her head through a padded hole, which supported and immobilized her possibly injured neck. Harry banished the female's clothes to the side to be repaired later, and quickly covered her lower body. He sincerely did his best not to perv like a hormonal teenager on the attractive alien's briefly exposed bum and quite visible side-boob. Despite this, and countless hours in surgery where he witnessed the exact same view of injured females, he could not help but blush at the attractiveness of this particular woman.

With his patient secure in a semi clean room, Harry went outside and rummaged through another compartment of his trunk for pre-engraved ward stones. Normally Harry carried a variety of both pre-engraved and blank ward stones. One never knew when you needed to hide quickly or if you just needed a place where a ten minute highly classified conversation could take place with no chance of eavesdropping.

His standard wards for hiding were quick setups that contained very specific spells already engraved via runes upon them: Cave Inimicum, Repello Muggletum, Protego Horribilis, Protego Totalum, and Repello Inimicum among others. These spells collectively notified the person who owned the wards if anyone of ill-intent attempted to enter them, repelled muggles and dark magic, and offered wide and closed area protections against other forms of injury and enchantment. The real kicker were the terror inducement wards that were present. Any animal that came near would feel an unnatural instinct to flee. Sentient beings would simply feel uneasy with a desire to get out of the area.

Harry took the two stones and placed one by the cave entrance, and another at the back of the cave. Picking up a stone from the cave floor, Harry quickly engraved a magical anchor rune on it and placed it back on the ground. Firing a charge of raw magic at both stones, Harry then pointed his wand at the newly created anchor rock in front of him and shouted, "Fianto Duri."

This activated the anchor behind the wards and reinforced them to the point where they became visible. After he charged the protections for a few seconds, they faded from view, but the hum of active wards stayed present. Harry quickly went inside and conjured a small metal blade. He took some of the still wet blood from the alien woman's back and gathered it on the edge of a knife. Running back outside, he went to the ward stone by the entrance, and dripped the blood on one specific rune on the cube. He vanished her blood from the knife and then sliced his own palm, dripping some of his own blood over hers.

Quickly healing himself, Harry pointed his wand at the now blood red rune and channeled raw magic through it. This particular rune set had taken ages for Harry to discover. He remembered his first encounter with useful ward during his sixth year of Hogwarts, when Draco Malfoy let Death Eaters into the school. During the battle. The Death Munchers had erected a barrier which only allowed those with Dark Marks to pass through it. Through hours of research and patience, Harry eventually discovered the charm and how to embed it into a ward stone. He learned to further tweak it so that it would only allow those whose blood had been dripped into the activating rune to pass through. Others could be granted permission to enter if they set up the ward, but it had to be done every time someone passed through the barrier.

The wards now shimmered into place over the mouth of the cave and the protections were fully keyed to him and his guest. This accomplishment allowed Harry to somewhat relax for the first time since he had arrived in the land of oversized flowers and white armored soldiers of doom. He almost felt safe at the moment, but he knew that was totally an illusion. In fact, he began to think this was definitely the most precarious situation he had ever found himself involved. His current list of to-do's would have him heal someone whose back had just been burned off while on a different planet from where he had woken up in this morning.

'Why can't my life ever be normal,' whined Harry to himself as he walked back in to begin to tend to his last best hope of survival.

-o0o0o-

The second trunk followed him as he returned to the wizard's tent. He knew his potions supplies were limited now and weren't an infinite resource, and he had the raw ingredients on hand in storage to maybe replace half of his existing stock if used. He realized he needed to be careful, and that every move, spell, and potion used from here on out had to be second-guessed, because he couldn't afford to waste anything.

It was pressure like he hadn't felt in years. Once some of this stuff was gone, it would likely be gone forever. Dragon's Blood for blood replenishing potions would likely be the hardest thing to replace. He sincerely doubted he would ever find anything as magically powerful and versatile as that particular fluid again. And it was just the tip of the iceberg. He could only think to preserve a little bit of each specimen and hope to somehow mimic its properties using technology these advanced people hopefully had in their possession.

As he looked over his patient, he decided it was best to do things by the book and attempt to get a standard diagnosis of her condition. What truly scared Harry right now was the fact she wasn't human. He had of course treated non-humans in the past, but he always had a frame of reference and at least some background information. Most life-forms on earth were usually quite similar to humans when everything came down to it. He had no idea if her internal organs were even remotely similar to females of his own species, or if a potion given to her would potentially harm instead of heal. Feeling it was best to cross each of those bridges as he came to them, he conjured a pen and pad of paper, linked the pen's actions to his mind, and began casting diagnostics upon the injured woman.

The medical diagnosis spells he cast ranged from general medical information down to incredibly specific spells. Since there was no need to search for magical diseases, he skipped that entire branch of incantations. He decided to get a broad overview of her body and condition through more general spells that analyzed her overall health, circulatory, nervous system, pulmonary, musculature, digestion, and skeletal structure first.

He found a few things that varied from the standard humanoid from earth besides the obvious tentacles on her head. She had two stomachs and an extremely heightened metabolism. Also, her ears were external and conical in shape, which likely increased her auditory range and sensitivity considerably further than Harry's.

He received a shock when he discovered the tentacles that protruded from the back of her head contained extensions of the woman's brain. There were no bones present within the appendages, just a large amount of cartilage and muscle, which likely provided a small amount of prehensile movement. Relief flooded him when he realized the unknown appendages had emerged completely unscathed during the firefight in which their owner became a victim of attempted murder. They had likely been inches away from being hit by those seven shots that had impacted her. He had no clue whatsoever the course of action he would have had to undergo in order to heal them if they had been damaged.

After his general spells had finished, he focused his examination more upon specific regions of her back where vital internal organs were just barely below the visible exposed surface of her wounds. Some of the burns had destroyed all the skin and muscle tissue, which left her some of her slightly blackened white ribs exposed to the air. Surprisingly, this fact did not concern him in the least. Muscle, skin, and bone was normally easy to replace after all, as long as the wounds were not cursed.

What did bother him was the status of the internal organs just centimeters below those damaged ribs that had likely received devastating heat damage as well. Luckily, the incantations Harry utilized consistently brought back results to analyze. So, despite a non-human target, the spells still apparently found plenty of applicable information that could be used to make a proper diagnosis.

With her general back and internal injuries documented, he moved on and thoroughly examined her spine. The main focus of his attention was each place an impact had burned away or damaged the central strand of nerves of her spinal column. He absently noted three places where he identified the nerve bundle had been damaged. These would take special spells to repair. Any nerve damage incurred over the rest of her back was inconsequential to Harry, since those nerves would be rebuilt when he regenerated the burned muscles themselves.

Spinal cord damage was something Wizards far exceeded their non-magical brethren in healing. Nerves just needed the right amount of coaxing to regenerate and repair. There was always a possibility of a bit of therapy required, as some neurons needed to be rewritten to accommodate a new pathway that had been created. But things like that generally took days rather than the normally required months of physical therapy.

The final analysis he decided to focus upon was the amount of muscle mass to restore. It wasn't enough simply to repair her damaged muscles. Professional pride meant he had to try and return them to as close to the size and condition as they were before her injuries were inflicted. Harry found that good magical doctors were separated from great ones by how closely they attempted to return their patients to their previous health. He would never just go through the motions and release a patient whose repaired injuries were a pale shadow of their former vitality.

This woman, from what he observed today, was an athlete in tremendous physical shape and her body a finely oiled machine. It was Harry's duty to ensure that, when she lifted herself out of this bed, she was as close to her previous health as possible and could walk, move, and fight without pain.

After ten minutes, he finished his last scans and began to read the results of his spell work. The blue woman seemed in absolutely excellent health. Far better health than Harry and he did his best to train with his battalion every chance he got. The spells placed her age around thirty to thirty-two Earth years of age. The diagnostics found indications of numerous old injuries that had been occasionally repaired with magic, but more often than not healed via muggle means. Some of those injuries still had the potential to be further healed, strengthened, and refined.

Despite indications of magical healing, Harry found no evidence of magical potion consumption, though he found the remnants of a massive short-term exposure to some mind-altering chemical that was still present in some of her fatty tissue and her two brain appendages. 'A purging draught should take care of that easily enough,' thought Harry.

The Skele-Grow test spell confirmed her species was one the potion could easily treat. None of the injuries to her bones from today's incident would require vanishing and full regrowth. All she would be required to do is ingest a small dose of Skele-Grow to repair the flash burns and bruising they had taken from the kinetic force that impacted her back along with the intense heat.

The internal injuries didn't seem bad either. The scans showed her physiology to be remarkably similar to humans, so Harry felt that he could more than adequately interpret the results of his scans. Fortunately, the scan results told him her injuries didn't require any particular special healing spells to mend. Her ribs seemed to have absorbed most of the damaging energies successfully and protected her more vital organs. A combination of spells and an injection or two of phoenix tears should easily repair everything so that they were in better health than before her injuries occurred.

That left the muscles and skin of her back to repair. The muscles could be restored with a muscle growth potion and then further aided by more phoenix tears. Normally potions needed to be keyed to a certain species. Once keyed, it was impossible to give the potion to another species. Hence if a potion was keyed to a human, a near-human species like a Veela would have some luck with the potion, but a house elf could very well be killed by the tissue rejection the potion would force the elf to endure.

It was the wide variety of magical species that fought in the Demon War which led Harry to stock nothing but unkeyed potions and force all hospitals he aided to do as well. If he added a bit of her healthy skin tissue to a few vials of muscle rebuilder mixed with phoenix tears, it should easily soak in and regenerate all of her lost and damaged muscles. A few targeted spells to direct the muscle formations to be at a specific level of strength would decrease her downtime as she does whatever limited reconditioning her body her body needs to recover from this whole fiasco.

Finally, that left the skin of her back. The scar tissue initially formed would be unavoidable with the first treatment he would give. Non-magical cuts were easily healed with a quick spell without scars. Burns such as this however were an entirely different story. At least they were not caused by magical fire. That was an entirely different ballgame to heal and there would be no chance of removing the scars created in those situations. As it was, the woman's scar tissue could eventually be healed with a long-term regiment of spells and/or potions Harry was more than happy to provide.

The scan results also indicated her heart had already stopped by the time Harry had placed the stasis charm. A quick Crucio would be more than sufficient jump start her heart and would be the first course of action after the stasis was lifted. Early in his healing training, he researched magical methods of resuscitation. Harry quickly determined Crucio was the magical equivalent of a defibrillator. Despite all their advances in medicine, Magicals had never developed or even pondered a method that would restart a heart that had stopped.

Any act that brought the "dead" back to life was a taboo that was never broached or suggested within magical hospitals, even though that technically was not what happened. CPR and defibrillators were foreign concepts to the wizarding world, and it was laugh worthy to see uptight pureblood traditionalists screaming of necromancy when the subject was first discussed. The snickers and outright laughter of muggleborns and half-bloods more than made up for the arguments that ensued.

Harry felt that all of these procedures combined should heal the woman. He had previously healed injuries far worse and this time he actually had a somewhat clean and stress-free location in which to complete his work. The only difference was that Harry had a personal investment in the case to ensure that the woman survived.

When Harry finished his analysis and had meticulously documented how he would treat the woman, he walked over to a couch and sat down. He would double-check his plan of attack in a bit, but for now he needed to eat and rest. He had been going strong for at least sixteen hours at this point, and he needed to keep his strength up to not lose focus and make a mistake. After a quick meal that had probably been stored in the tent for years, he changed his battle robes into something a bit more comfortable. Then he decided to get one last breath of fresh air before the marathon healing session began.

As he stood at the mouth of the cave, Harry took a deep breath of the rapidly cooling early evening air. It was a bit after sunset, and dusk had fully set in. The colors of this world never ceased to amaze him. The luminous flowers that had been fairly bright in the stifling heat of the day lit up like a busy metropolis during the night. The twin gorgeous moons of the planet plus near neon brightness of the flowers meant that night would never truly set upon this strange world. It was one of the most amazing sights he had ever witnessed and he would have to remember to take a few magical pictures of this place. He half wondered what the night side of the planet would look like from space, and decided that would be an image worthy of acquiring as well.

'It might just be an excellent vacation spot someday. That is, if this world didn't have legions of psychopathic soldiers and robotic armies destroying their human overlords. Guess no place is perfect,' laughed Harry to himself.

The laugh made Harry think of George, who had been one of Harry's lone sources of entertainment lately. On a whim, he pulled out his wand and incanted, "Expecto Patronum".

He mentally told the phantom stag that appeared to deliver a message to George Weasley and said out loud, "I'm fine George, though I'll probably never get home. I hope everything back on Earth worked out. Say hi to Angie for me. Love you all"

The stag however didn't move. It simply gazed at Harry for a few long moments, before it slowly lowered its head and faded away. The target could not be found, and its message was undeliverable.

'Well, there's always the really unthinkable chance they didn't survive the last battle,' pondered Harry. Then he realized who would definitely be alive, 'Hermione.'

He repeated the spell and message to the same end result. The stag simply stood there and stared into his eyes before it reluctantly again dropped its gaze to the ground and faded away.

An involuntary sigh escaped his lips and he closed his eyes in resignation. He let his mind wander one last time. There was a strong likelihood he was never going to see any of his friends again. Never hear George laugh or tell a joke that earned him a slap from Angelina. Never see Hermione bite her lower lip while she researched some breakthrough which would ultimately benefit all of mankind.

He tried to look on the bright-side. Was there anything positive about this he had just gone though?

Harry realized this whole fiasco now meant he could live a life without expectations. No one knew him here. He wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived. He wasn't the Man-Who-Conquered. And he wasn't the Mastermind Slayer.

While he would also classify himself as a man without any resources and identity, he did however have most of his important worldly possessions strapped to his forearm. '…And at least I'm free of all hyphenated titles,' Harry chuckled to himself.

Harry hoped the woman would help him when she regained consciousness. He didn't want to think about what would happen if she was hostile towards him. The worst case scenario he willingly let himself ponder would be that she couldn't remember the attack and didn't believe the circumstances around her injuries. He had a Pensieve, but that would only work so long as she believed it wasn't a fabrication and agreed to view the memory in the first place.

He shook his head to brush off the negative mood that threatened to envelop him. 'No use in worrying about it now. What happens will happen. I have to heal her first to even get to the point of worrying about her rejecting any offer to work alongside each other,' thought Harry.

He returned to the tent, where he immediately extracted the potions and medical tools the surgery would require. He liberally removed stored vials of phoenix tears. Once upon a time he thought about selling them for money, but now he was glad he never did. The money he would have acquired would have done nothing for him now. The extra resources he had at his disposal more than made up for it.

With everything prepared, he walked over to the table the woman lay upon and took took one last look down upon her. She truly was beautiful. Any male he knew, and quite a few females, would fall over themselves for the chance to date her. A bunch of humans just tried to murder her though, so it was doubtful she would ever start something with another one. At least that's how misguided hatred worked back on Earth.

Shaking his head at the absurdity of his thoughts, Harry withdrew a wand from his holster. He floated a syringe full of phoenix tears from a nearby table over to him, he set about isolating the first internal injuries in her back he needed to heal.

-o0o0o-

Three and a half hours later, a mentally and physically exhausted Harry collapsed upon a leather chair in the corner of great room of the tent. He was quite pleased with his work. Years of observation and then practical application in military hospitals had honed his healing skills. Healing was always something he enjoyed. There was far more satisfaction found when he put someone back together than it was to destroy a large force of faceless enemies.

The phoenix tears had once more proved just how valuable they were. The woman's physiology had one of the most dramatic reactions to the tears he had ever seen. Spells that should have taken thirty minutes to produce results did so within seconds with the tears support. After he saw the initial reaction he decided to be even more liberal with the use of the substance. He often hoarded it in the past, simply because it was such a rare resource that he didn't want it confiscated by the military brass to heal some nameless face he would never meet. Its use on virtually all of the blue woman's injuries definitely made him feel his previous secrecy was worth it. Even the scars on her back were minimized. With luck, they should only require a few short weeks of minimal treatment to look like nothing had ever happened to her. The tears were truly wondrous.

The speed at which they worked also surprised him. He had expected to treat her injuries for another six hours before he would stop to sleep, whereupon he would get up and continue her treatment. Instead, the desired results happened far quicker than he had ever anticipated.

He could not understand why though. There were three distinct possibilities he could think of as a root cause. One, the woman's body was responsible and had some natural healing abilities. Two, the planet and its strange echo-like version of magic was somehow behind this. Or third, and most improbable, he had suddenly gotten much more powerful and better at healing than he previously thought.

Whatever the cause, it was quite welcome and he would worry about it later.

The Skele-Grow potion plus injection of tears into her bloodstream had also helped to heal old injuries that may have been minor inconveniences to her. She appeared to have sustained knee injuries in the past, and the remnant of one such injury was well on its way to a state of constant low-level pain in her right knee. The evidence of previous surgeries had not completely solved the issues, but the tears repaired the damage to the point she appeared to have never injured her knee at all.

After he double and triple checked his diagnostics to ensure he had not missed anything, Harry removed the stasis spell. He immediately hit her with a short burst of Cruciatus. Her back arched and her heart started to pump strong again. As he expected, she did not regain consciousness, so there were no unexpected after-effects of the stasis spell so far. People normally took a bit of time to drag themselves out of the depths of a stasis-induced coma, so he figured he had an hour or two before he needed to explain what happened.

His preliminary post-stasis scans indicated all her injuries were repaired, and she was now comfortably asleep after having her magical core drained a bit from stasis spell support.

While he pondered his next actions, he figured the woman might be in a better state of mind when she awakened if he put some clothes on her. He used a switching spell from behind to place a large oversized t-shirt upon her along with some sweatpants. There was no way any of his shirts could be worn by her with the size of the appendages on the back of her head. They would never make it through the hole in the t-shirt. He then raised her into the air, and transfigured the hospital operating room table into a queen sized bed and tucked her in under the covers

Harry's final act was to place a Consciousness Alert Ward around her bed, which would notify him to when she began to awake from her sleep. The spell was the bane of Harry's existence while at Hogwarts. Every student that passed through the doors of her hospital wing had always assumed Madame Pomfrey had some insane sixth sense. Her instinctual ability to know when a patient tried to sneak out of her hospital ward at three in the morning unnerved many that passed through her ward. It turns out each of the beds was charmed to let her know when someone woke up.

With the healing session finished far faster than he thought it would take, he realized he needed to now ponder what he would say to the woman when she awoke much sooner then he originally anticipated. Consciousness would likely return within the hour if her healing abilities were as remarkable as he guessed they would be. He decided to take another look outside and get some fresh air while he waited for the woman to wake. Upon his exit from the tent, he found it was definitely now well into the night of this planet. As he gazed around and tore his eyes away from the bright lights of the forest, he was shocked to see the outlines of three massive illuminated shapes that lifted off from the ground in the distance. The objects had to be huge, and they appeared to be leaving.

'Looks like the soldiers are pulling out,' thought Harry before the full implications of the solidiers actions sunk in. 'That's wasn't good. Those ships are obviously not going anywhere on this planet, so they may be our only ticket out of here.'

He had briefly mulled over plans while healing the blue woman to stow away aboard ships with the blue girl to get off the planet to wherever the rest of the main part civilization was for this society. He just knew that there was no way this planet was the epitome of society in this universe. But with the ships gone, his one known sure shot to leave this planet had departed before his very eyes. Who knew that the soldiers would leave this planet after so little time had elapsed after they had killed their magical comrades.

Harry cocked his head as he suddenly realized something profound with that last thought of his…

Time.

For nearly the last decade, Harry had carried around a time-turner, gifted to him by Hermione. At the start of the Demon War, she had grown increasingly more and more frustrated with the Unspeakables lack of participation and cooperation. She did her best to smuggle spells, research, and books out of her department, but her coup de grace was the discovery of a mislabeled time turner that had been reported destroyed after Harry's Ministry of Magic misadventure during his fifth year. Hermione simply figured if it was already reported destroyed, no one would notice her giving it to Harry.

He carried the dangerous item around with him for years and never once pondered its use. In fact he often thought of it as more of a necklace at this point than an incredibly dangerous magical object. It only had seven grains of Time Sand in the hourglass. Each turn of the glass would consume one grain of sand and send the user back three hours. An additional person sent back would cost a further grain of sand as well.

Harry checked his watch as an idea slowly formed in his mind. It was now almost six hours after the initial attack. If she woke up soon and she was cooperative, she could help him raid whatever base camp was somewhere out there for supplies nine hours in the past. They could very realistically acquire food and medical supplies. If they were lucky, they could probably acquire and hide one of those massive gunships he saw firing under some wards as well. Who knows what else they could accomplish.

But it all hinged on the woman waking up soon, her belief and trust in his story, and then full comprehension of exactly what the consequences of time travel were. His spirits dropped at that thought.

'How do you tell someone you can go back in time, then in your very next breath tell them they have to allow their fellow comrade to die because it already happened and you're not allowed to change it?' thought Harry with sadness.

As he pondered this thought, he closed his eyes and continued to think about his options.