A/N: So, another chapter. I'm glad that people seemed to like the last one so much. I do have a request, though. If you have a question to ask me via review, please post the review with an account, not as a guest.

And before people get on me about it, the views expressed about the worship of the Abrahamic God are Semiramis' as I would imagine she would see it, not mine.

Disclaimer: I do not own TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.

"Man, is Grandpa pissed," declared the young woman seated across from Kiritsugu Emiya, her shoulder-length ochre-coloured hair swaying animatedly. The bowl of rice in her hand swayed perilously to and fro as she gesticulated while the chopsticks in the other were stabbed viciously against the table to prove her point. "The Namikawa family's been on his back about a bunch of their guys going missing on his turf. They say he offed them, and they want to get back at him, but he says he didn't, and that only makes them more pissed."

Kiritsugu and his adopted son, Shirou, nodded solemnly in unison. They had long since learned that when Taiga Fujimura worked herself into a rant, the best course of action was to nod and listen, and then talk once she had finished.

"He says they didn't have any business being in Fuyuki without his permission anyway-" She paused, shovelling a mouthful of rice down with the chopsticks, before resuming. "And they don't have any backup here, so they shouldn't complain if the job went wrong."

Sensing an opening, Kiritsugu broke in.

"What were they doing here anyway?"

"Well, they said that they were doing a ransom job - and Grandpa doesn't like that kind of thing anyway - and then the kyodai they sent out just didn't come back. The trackers didn't return anything either, so they're not just dead." A malicious grin crawled its way across her face and he leant over the table towards Shirou. "They just vanished. Maybe it was ghoooosts…"

The red-haired child blinked owlishly back at her.

She plopped back into her seat, muttering "You're no fun." under her breath.

"So yeah," she continued, her chopsticks scribing lazy circles in the air "They can't pin anything on Grandpa, because all they know is that the guys disappeared. Grandpa said to stay away from west Tokyo, if we could help it, for the next few weeks, though. That's where the Namikawas set up shop."

A few more mouthfuls of rice were devoured in short order.

"He also said that he was going to be organising some people to look around for any information on whatever happened to the Namikawa guys." She leaned in conspiratorially "He even said that it might even be yokai* that did it, so he's bringing in a couple of the family's Mahōtsukai** to deal with it."

"Mahōtsukai?" asked the former magus. He had heard, of course, of the magic-users which lived side-by-side with the normal people of Japan. They were nothing like magi, so he wasn't all that concerned with them. The creatures which they often dealt with, though were a whole other matter.

The part of him that once held onto his ideal of salvation ached inside, trying to compel him to help, to hunt down whatever did this, to do something. He quashed it down, burying it under the pain of the Grail's curses and the light in Shirou's eyes. He wasn't that person anymore. Let the Fujimuras handle it.

"Yeah, he's really going all out." The formerly rice-filled bowl now lay barren and empty on the low table. "I talked to one of them. What was his name? Ummm.. Mako? No. Uhhh… Mikoto! Mikoto Yusuke. He gave everyone in the family one of…" she pulled her satchel over to her and rummaged around in it for a moment, before pulling out her keyring, attached to which was a small red talisman, not unlike the ones which Ryuudou Temple sold. "These! He said that they'd warn us if there was something weird about. I think mine's broken, though. It started doing its little thing when I got here. Ne, you're not a wizard, are you, 'Sugu-san?"

Kiritsugu tried hard not to choke a little on his tea. Shirou wasn't quite so subtle and looked with wide eyes at Taiga, his mouth hanging open a little.

Luckily, the kendo champion's capricious mind seemed to have already flitted to its next line of inquiry.

"So how did school go, Shirou-kun?"

"Eto… It was OK, I guess." replied the young boy. "There was this girl, Matou Sakura-chan, who was being really weird, though."

"Ooohh?" inquired Taiga "Sakura-chan, huh? Has Shirou-kun found himself a girlfriend?"

"No!"

"Reeeeally? Are you suuuure?"

Kiritsugu quietly ate his rice, greedily drinking in the sounds of the two younger occupants of the room squabbling good-naturedly. It almost took his mind off of his daughter, Illya, back at the Einzbern castle and the bone-deep ache of the Grail's curses running through his veins.

In the days following Asharu's waking, the relationship between him and Semiramis was more strained than it had ever been since she had taken him from the Dursleys' in the first place. The young wizard seemed to have partly retreated back into the timid shell he had worn at his relatives' house and lost much of the confidence and self-assurance which he had built up in the intervening years. The school had allowed a leave of absence to deal with whatever issues might arise from the kidnapping and it was lucky that they did so.

For those few days, the child seemed to Semiramis' eyes like a ghost, wandering the Gardens. He spent long periods simply staring out over the sea of clouds which washed against the edges of the floating palace, or else obsessively practiced the magecraft which he channelled through his Qabsu. He had created a spell, a simple magic by which he condensed water from the air around the clay spheres - of which there were three, now. It was the first spell which Asharu had ever made on his own, without her aid, and she wondered how long he had been working on it in secret. Creating a new spell was not a thing done in only a day or two, after all. It was an important milestone in the education of a magus, and he seemed to care little for it.

It worried the ancient queen. In more ordinary circumstances, she was sure that the apprentice magus would have showed the spell to her with utmost pride, a joyful smile gracing his face as she inquired as to its mechanics. In another life, it might have been a moment for them to share. In this one, it was merely a lost opportunity.

Asharu's silence gave her time to consider recent events. Times had changed, she realised, and with them the people. Of course, it was obvious that the world had changed enormously since her lifetime. It would be impossible not to realise that. It had not truly occurred to her before then, though, how much the values of the people had changed in that time. Her adopted son had not been brought up in her time, nor in the amoral care of a family of magi. He had been raised with the values of the modern world - and with the values of his reprehensible relatives, for that matter - so it was only natural that he would be disturbed by her exacting of the justice appropriate to her time.

Such a morality would ill-equip him for the Grail War, though, and the harsh choices it would bring. As much as it pained her, it would be better for Asharu to enter the War with eyes wide open than to open them there, amidst what would doubtless be a bloody and merciless conflict.

For now, though, he was still a child, and one in need of his mother's comfort.

It took almost a week for the young wizard to abandon his isolation and begin to speak to Semiramis of his own volition again. The warmth of their bond was slow in returning, but eventually it did, coinciding neatly with Asharu's return to his tutors and wizarding school. His focus arrived as well, a ring of pale maple wood inlaid with a greyish thread which the accompanying letter claimed was taken from the feathers of a tengu*** and and the two bonded once more over discovering its capabilities.

The excited smile which split her son's face from ear to ear upon using the focus for the first time was worth any hardship, to the Servant. Even if its powers were limited to the channeling of minor, innocuous magics, it was still magical, and magic was something which never failed to ignite a spark of wonder in the child's eyes.

It would have been a perfect time, had not the queen returned to her residence in the shadow of Mount Miyama to discover a beady-eyed and oily-feathered raven standing sentinel upon the wrought iron fence which encircled her garden, a message on its leg and the taint of prana in the air.

The church to which she had been summoned via familiar loomed over Semiramis' homunculus like a broken tooth piercing towards the sky. Such a building being a house of worship was a strange thing, to the Assyrian queen's eyes. In her time, the gods had been praised in the shadows of great ziggurats and monolithic temples, the greatest buildings in the cities - barring, sometimes, the royal palaces. This church, though, was little larger than a sizable house, a poor match for the glass-skinned skyscraped which inhabited the city centre.

Perhaps it was something to do with the nameless God which this religion worshipped. A God which espoused humbleness and humility. How such a being could inspire such a following was beyond her. What could one hope to achieve in the service of such a deity, when the very gathering of power and prestige was viewed as an affront to 'righteous' living? She much preferred the now-dead gods of her native land. For all their capricious cruelty, they at least did not claim to be righteous in the creation of all suffering.

Casting such thoughts aside, she directed the homunculus, grown from seeds taken from the Gardens, planted in its soil and watered with her blood, to push aside the wrought-iron gate of the churchyard and walk towards the door of the church proper, where a brown-haired man in a black priest's robe and wearing a golden cross around his neck stood, a faint, sardonic smile playing on his lips.

As she approached, he spoke. His voice was low and cultured.

"You are not the Master who was summoned."

"I am not. What wisdom would there be in risking my Master in such a perilous situation as this?"

"Surely it would be no risk, for one with the power to keep a Servant materialised without the aid of the Holy Grail."

Clever man. He was fishing for information.

"My Master is capable, true, but there is no need for undue exposure when it could easily be avoided."

The smile returned.

"Surely you do not intend to keep them closeted away from the world until the Grail materialises? After all, the heretics of the Mage's Association are cutthroat in the extreme, and not without cunning. Surely the danger in revealing themselves to the Church is the lesser of the perils, compared to the risk of a magus discovering them without the Holy Church's backing behind them?"

"Perhaps, but such matters should not be discussed in the open. Shall we enter? Surely you would not deny a lady the sanctuary of the church, even when she comes in the stead of another?"

The priest chuckled, and opened the door.

"For all that the false life of a homunculus is a blight upon my Lord's creation, I am sure He will permit your entry."

The inside of the church was light and airy, the large windows which lined the hall allowing the morning's sunlight to stream in. The air was cold and, if Semiramis stretched her senses, a taint could be detected on the draught from the open doorway, not dissimilar to the malevolence which polluted the earth in a large swathe of Shinto. And beneath that, there was something else, the faint sounding of a golden trumpet to the discordant tones of crawling curses. The resurrected sorceress noted the sensation for later investigation.

She turned to the priest, even as he closed the doors with an echoing thud.

"So, what more do you want of me, beyond the certainty that a Servant has already been summoned?"

"If I may, what class were you summoned under? Given your current form, I would hazard a Caster, or perhaps a strange Rider."

"I am Servant Assassin."

"Both an assassin and a magus? You are a woman of many talents, my lady." A sarcastic bow accompanied the pronouncement. The priest's casual manner pricked at Semiramis' pride. The phantom tones of golden horns, sounded louder, and this time the queen recognised them as the spiritual core of another Servant, albeit distorted by some other force. Was she the second Heroic Spirit to be summoned for the War?

Her musings were interrupted by the clarion call of another voice, its arrogant tones perfectly mirroring the sensation which accompanied its prana.

"What a pitiful Servant, to stoop to using a meat doll instead of coming here yourself. Have you no shame, dog?"

The speaker revealed himself on the last word, stepping out from behind one of the columns which lined the church. His hair was a pale, golden blond and his skin likewise. His eyes were a burning, ruby red, alight with confidence and arrogance and each was split in two by a pitch-black pupil. He wore a black jacket, the zipper left undone to reveal the button-up shirt beneath. His hands were sunk lazily in the pockets of his jeans.

Despite his modern dress, though, every nuance of his stance and presence screamed that he was something other, to all those with the eyes to look and the knowledge to accept the offerings of their senses. This being was something beyond human, even as she herself was. At the same time, simply calling him a Servant would be as incorrect as calling him a human. His body had the minute imperfections, the tiny irregularities which the Grail did not impart to the quasi-spiritual bodies of Servants. It marked him as something different, a physical existence.

Deciding, even in the face of her wounded pride, to err on the side of caution, the queen inclined her head towards him, offering him that least of respects.

"All too often, pride leads to the downfall of heroes such as us, would you not agree? Therefore, I shall be circumspect in my designs on the Holy Grail, hoping to avoid such a fate."

"Ha! Such are the words of a coward, unworthy of their existence among the ranks of the Heroic Spirits. Such creatures as you are less than dogs, you are worms, unworthy even of the earth upon which you crawl!" His face contorted into a disgusted sneer and a ripple of golden light bloomed into existence beside him. "If such Servants as you are the warriors of this War, it will be no war at all. Begone from my presence, worm!"

So saying, a thunderbolt in the shape of a golden spear leapt from the golden ripple, thrusting through the air towards the homunculus. Twisting, the construct evaded the first lance, but a second ripple erupted and spat forth another blade, this time a sword, into her path. The steel was an icy shock to her innards as it pierced the flesh of her abdomen, a lance of ice through her stomach which drove her to her knees. A second lance demolished the head of the construct, and the link between it and the queen was severed in a burst of pain.

On her throne at the heart of the Hanging Gardens, Semiramis sagged a little where she sat. Despite her power, such a forceful ejection was still disorienting. Such momentary discomfort was well worth it, for the information gleaned. Oh, to be sure, neither the priest nor the golden-haired Servant had revealed anything explicitly, much could be deduced from their short interactions.

The Servant - likely some kind of unorthodox Archer, given its long-range attacks - was a paradoxical existence, a creature with the presence of a Heroic Spirit but not the body of one. He had to be sustaining himself somehow. Given his obvious arrogance, it was doubtful that he would permit a Master to hold power over him via the Command Seals and even beyond that, his physical existence would make it so that he needed prana only to fuel his supernatural abilities and Noble Phantasms. That line of reasoning inevitably led to the conclusion that he was siphoning off the souls of humans to sustain himself and, given that no mysterious deaths or coma cases had been reported in the city, it was likely that he had some kind of dedicated prana-source. A weakness which she could exploit.

The priest, on the other hand, was a strange one. For all that he held a 'holy' office, his words were always undercut by a note of sarcasm, a fundamental insincerity. He quietly mocked his own God and even her, a Heroic Spirit. He was trained as a magus, as evidenced by the active Magic Circuits which had been pulsing beneath his skin as soon as the golden Servant had appeared, and as a martial artist of no small skill; his wasteless tread attesting to that. Most important, though, had been the lack of any kind of surprise when the Servant had made itself known. They were acquainted, at least, and likely allies.

Yes, mused the queen, they were a mysterious and dangerous pair. The first course of action in countering whatever moves that they might make when the Grail War began properly would be to gather information on which Spirit the golden Servant was. Every missing piece of information was as good as a weapon in the opponent's hands.

The seeds of a suspicion had begun to gestate in the corner of her mind, old legends told to her by her adoptive father of a golden-haired king with an infinite treasury. She hoped that he was some other hero, though, as if her intuition proved prophetic, he would be a mighty foe indeed. One which she was not certain she could defeat, even with the power of the Hanging Gardens at her back.

At the head of the oaken conference table in the staff room of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore waited patiently for the last of the company he had summoned to arrive.

The faces around the table were a veritable who's-who of supporters, old friends and former members of the organisation he founded to battle Voldemort's minions, the Order of the Phoenix.

Molly and Arthur Weasley were there, having left their burgeoning brood with their aunt for the few hours the Headmaster had requested their presence while standing vigilantly behind them was the grizzled auror Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody, his enchanted eye whizzing this way and that. Elphias Doge, a generously proportioned friend of Dumbledore's from his schooldays was there as well, speaking with the Ministry employee Sturgis Podmore about this summer's Wizengamot meeting.

Minerva McGonagall, long-time teacher of Transfiguration at Hogwarts and head of Gryffindor house, was commiserating with Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout - the heads of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff - over the state of the school's quidditch broomsticks and how they really ought to be replaced as soon as possible. Rubeus Hagrid towered over the rest even when seated, his expansive beard moving with his words as he discussed the virtues of dragons with Professor Kettleburn, Care of Magical Creatures professor.

Remus Lupin sat awkwardly on a chair halfway down the table, purplish bags hanging heavy beneath his golden eyes and bent over as if beneath some great weight. He spoke lowly with Hestia Jones, who sat next to him, speculating on the subject of the gathering and reminiscing about the 'good old days', before the first war with Voldemort. The rest of the seats were filled with an assortment of personalities, from rising stars to old money. The air was filled with a murmur of voices discussing a thousand and one different subjects.

The doors boomed open to admit a black-robed figure, oily hair framing the hard lines of his face and contrasting the paleness of his skin. The Potions professor closed the door behind him as Dumbledore stood, bringing a hush to the gathering.

"Ah, Severus, I am sorry to take you away from your experiments."

The dark man silently levelled a glare at the white-bearded headmaster as he pulled up a hair at the far end of the table. The aged wizard cleared his throat.

"Thank you, my friends, for coming today, but I am afraid that the news I have to share with you is most troubling."

From one of the multitudinous pockets of his robe - scarlet with slowly moving golden spirals, today - the Headmaster pulled a well-thumbed letter.

"Six months ago, I received this letter from Arabella, who lives near to where young Harry Potter was placed with his relatives. In it, she asked me where I had placed Harry, after taking him from his relatives," he neglected to mention how thankful the old woman had been, for removing the child from such - in her words - 'disgusting people' "and whether it would be possible for her to watch him again, as she had taken quite the shine to him."

"What's the problem, then?" asked the Weasley matriarch "Do you need someone to take him in? We'd be happy to have him over every now and then. He'd be about my Ron's age, wouldn't he?"

Dumbledore graced her with a genial, if slightly strained, smile "Were that the situation, Molly, I would like nothing better than to watch the children playing in your garden with a cup of your excellent tea. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

"I did not remove Harry from his relatives."

A ripple of speech passed around the table as the gathered men and women realised the implications of the aged wizard's words. They were quieted when the silky voice of Severus Snape cut through the noise like a polished knife through butter.

"You have attempted to locate him?"

The white-bearded headmaster nodded. "Whatever locator spells I could muster would not suffice, though. It appears that whoever abducted Harry has some impressive wards protecting their residence and that he is not permitted to leave. Some of the spells I employed would have broken through any protective magic which could be attached to his person."

Molly spoke again, her face far less jovial than before. "The poor dear, imprisoned. I'll bet you it was the Malfoys that took him, or one of their lackeys. It would be just like them."

"Fortunately, my dear, that is not within the realms of possibility. The blood wards which protected the Dursleys' residence would repel any who meant Harry harm and any who bore the Dark mark. Also, the monitor which I made for James and Lily to track Harry's state shows that he is still alive."

"I doubt that any of the old families would keep quiet if they had found Harry Potter, at any rate." chipped in Elphias Doge.

"Indeed. It is my opinion that whoever has custody of Harry is somewhere abroad."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Lupin, all tiredness gone from his visage and eyes burning with determination.

"Simply keep an ear to the ground and you can to discover any clues to Harry's whereabouts." He let a vast exhaustion seem to overtake him and he slumped. "I can only hope that Harry is still safe by the time we find him."

Harry's presence in Britain would be vital for the defeat of Voldemort when he returned. The country could not afford another lengthy civil war. He would not allow another generation to fall to the dark, or have to suffer through such a tragedy.

Two world wars, the death of his lover and a bloody conflict driven by bigotry and ignorance had taught him that there was no glory, no salvation in battles or their winning.

War was hell.

XxXxXxXxX

*Supernatural beings, in this case, Japan's magical creatures. Of the Wizarding kind, not the Phantasmal kind.

**Wizards

***A yokai which appears as a humanoid bird. Go look it up if you're curious.

A/N: To those who have been asking questions about how prana and magecraft are meant to work, whether Harry can summon more Servants and so on, I'm afraid I am going to have to ask you to find your answers on the Type Moon wiki. I will be assuming a certain level of base knowledge for the writing of this story.