A/N: And I'm back, with another chapter. This one is almost entirely timeskip, I'm afraid, but the action will pick up again next chapter. Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter and gave their opinions.

Also, we now have over 200 favourites and more than 300 follows. I'm so happy!

Disclaimer: I own neither TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.

The sky was clear and blue above Semiramis' head as she stood on one of the many balconies which overlooked the plains of the Hanging Gardens. Every few seconds, the air was split by a sound like thunder, emanating from the golden spur which projected out over a sea of clouds beneath her and on which stood her son, practicing his latest magecraft, a spell he called the Hammer of Anu. He had designed it himself, as he often did now, and it was constructed to make especial use of his Singularity Alignment and Qabsu Mystic Codes to accelerate a projectile to immense speeds. In the eyes of many magi it would have been viewed as crude and unrefined - and in some ways it was - but it was nonetheless a powerful spell and one perfectly suited to Asharu's style. Few magical protections would hold against such an attack, and fewer magi or wizards would think to defend against it.

She smiled, both over her beloved child's inventiveness and the memories of the years which had cultivated that quality, the seven years since his kidnapping.

After their reconciliation, the bond between mother and son had only strengthened. There had been a number of visits from the police, asking questions about what, exactly, had occurred with regards to his kidnapping and how it was that Asharu had been safely returned. At first, their assumption was that she had simply paid the ransom, but when it emerged that that was not in fact the case, a great deal of fast-talking and judicious hypnosis to escape the ensuing questioning. Eventually, though, the authorities were mollified and retreated, leaving the adoptive family in peace.

After he had returned to the wizarding school on Kozushima island, time had rolled on apace. Both his magecraft and his wizardry had advanced by leaps and bounds as he bent his will with quiet determination to the task he had assigned himself in the aftermath of the event: To become strong enough that he would be able to rescue himself and, one day, to become even stronger than his mother.

A wistful smile crossed the Servant's face at the memory of her son declaring his ambition to her. The will and determination to realise his goal had shone like stars in his eyes and she found herself believing it, on some level. Certainly, it would take years yet for him to reach such a level, but she had no doubt that he would eventually achieve his dream, and outshine her. It was in his very nature, after all. He was a singularity, an axis upon which the world would turn.

He had applied himself to his studies with impressive persistence, learning both wizardry and magecraft at a rate which impressed both his teachers and Semiramis herself. He was by no means a once-in-a-generation genius, but he had a knack for devising intuitive solutions and the will to overcome any troubles that might bar his way.

He had not neglected his mundane learning, either, learning various sciences, reading widely in both literature and nonfiction texts and reaching a passable proficiency in a number of languages besides English and Japanese - German, Latin, Spanish, Greek and Assyrian among them - before he celebrated his twelfth birthing-day.

That had been quite the event. A great white pavilion had been erected in the garden of the Sharratu mansion - Sharratu being the surname which she had assumed for herself and her son - and beneath its bleached expanse a labyrinth of tables had been laid out, each laden with dozens of dishes, each prepared by chefs specifically hired for the occasion. It was a feast worthy of the birthing-day celebration of a prince, even if her son's status was not known to many of those that had attended.

The guests had been an eclectic lot, drawn from both Asharu's school friends and their parents - many of whom had been quite astonished at the pomp and circumstance of the affair - and the rest from business partners and associates of Semiramis' and their families and children. The gathering had persisted late into the evening and after the summer sun had set, many-coloured lights had illuminated the dissolving and recombining cliques on the manicured grass, while the children played at imitating their elders.

It had been the next day, after the tables had been cleared, the pavilion deconstructed and the grass had begun to struggle back into shape after ist ordeal beneath a hundred pairs of feet, that Seru, now a fully-grown and 2 metre long Western Green Mamba, had asked her son if he would take the serpent on as a familiar, as the serpent could see no better way to spend his life. He had explained that although the concept of a 'purpose', besides simply living, was a strange one to him, but that he was more than willing to try it out if it would allow him to accompany his 'young-hatchling-speaker'.

The traditional familiar ritual had needed some minor adjustments, so as to preserve the snake's will and personality while still allowing for Asharu to use him as a conduit for his magic and see through his eyes, but for one of her skill it had been little more than a refreshing diversion. The ritual itself welled forward in her mind.

The circle was prepared, mingled blood and mercury set in intricate mandalas and patterns on the floor. Curled in the centre of the magic circle was Seru, his yellow-green coils wrapped around and over one another. The black fork of his tongue tasted the air, flickering out and in.

Her son stood at the edge of the circle, three of his Qabsu orbiting him like planets to a sun.

§Are you sure, Seru?§ he asked, looking a little nervous.

§Of course, young-hatchling-speaker.§ replied the serpent, indignantly. §This child-of-earth-and-sun has chosen.§

Asharu's expression hardened with resolution. He stretched out his hand towards the circle, palm down and fingers splayed.

"Adad.*"

Semiramis felt the rising of prana in the air, as the three Qabsu left her son and began to trace the outer lines of the circle. Blue-green light trailed in their wake and began to spark in the silvery lines of the magic circle on the floor.

"Let Silver and Sanguine be the foundation; the Eye and the Stave of Enki the emblems."

The prana flowed along the channels of the circle, washing inwards towards the serpent at the centre. Seru twitched uncomfortably in the centre, uncoiling a little and raising his head from where it had rested.

"From Silver and Sanguine the Chain is forged, to bind the Serpent."

The prana flooded the inner circle and washed over the snake, engulfing it in a tide of almost-gaseous energy. There was a strident hiss, equally wordless to the ears of both Asharu and Semiramis. Magical energy burned through the young magus' circuits flowing out and into the Mystic Codes floating in the air, now rendered indistinguishable by their speed. He forced himself to speak the final lines of the aria at a measured pace, taking care not to rush.

"Place the Eye atop the Stave and give the power into the possession of the Bound. Let the Bound be Eye and Stave to the Prince, when Silver and Sanguine ebb.

"Nehu.**"

The last words tumbled from his lips and the prana of the ritual faded into Seru's scales. The magus sagged, the energy of the ceremony leaving him. Semiramis stepped forwards to hold him upright, running a quick diagnostic spell to ascertain whether he had suffered any injury from the taxing rite.

Seru stirred from his place, slithering across the floor towards the exhausted magus. Raising his head from the ground, the serpent brought himself to eye level. Half-closed emerald eyes met their exact duplicates, set in a wedge-shaped serpentine visage.

At the same time, though, he saw the same eyes mirrored in a human face: his own. The colours of his vision were oddly altered, the greens and blues pronounced while reds, yellows and oranges were dampened and washed-out.

§It worked...§ muttered the magus under his breath.

§Yes, young-speaker.§ hissed the snake, swaying gently back and forth. §I am different, stronger. My venom burns within me. If this is 'purpose', I realise now why two-legs so often wail about it.§

The years had not been completely devoid of trouble, though.

With Asharu's skill with his particular brand of magecraft came a certain arrogance which had lead him into trouble on more than one occasion. Any magus worth their salt knew that attempting spells beyond their capability was a road which lead to a painful death. Semirmais had made certain that that lesson had been pounded thoroughly into her son's head long before she allowed him to perform the tiniest cantrip on his own. The overconfidence of youth, though, combined with his knowledge of his own skill had driven Asharu to exceed his boundaries more than once.

One time had been when he was trying to master the skill which had once been called Belutu*** by the ancient magi of Assyria. It was a magic which allowed one command over their own mind and security against the manipulations of others. Like almost all magecraft, though, that power came with a price: the risk of permanent damage if the user was overzealous in its use. Unfortunately Asharu, being little more than 11 at the time and with a self-assurance born from a combination of skill, Divinity and that peculiar quality of children to see themselves as the very pinnacle of the world, decided that giving himself an eidetic memory would be an excellent idea.

A month of missed school and lessons had followed as the young magus had been confined to a bed, first for a week-long coma only kept from permanence by near-constant use of healing magic from Semiramis and the magical Healer who had been hired as an emergency measure in the aftermath of the kidnapping incident. The other three weeks had been courtesy of that same healer, who insisted that he remain abed as long as possible and meditate daily, so as to allow his jumbled mind to settle with as little interference as possible from new experiences and memories. The enforced boredom was artfully coopted to serve as an extremely effective punishment by Semiramis, leading to the young wizard being very careful thereafter not to overreach himself, even if exactly what was defined as 'overreaching' was sometimes a hot subject of debate between him and his adoptive mother.

That particular issue had flared up on a number of occasions, especially following Asharu's meeting with the Second Owner of Fuyuki - a young magus by the name of Tohsaka Rin whose task was ostensibly to regulate the magi in the city. Whoever had decided that a girl only a year older than her own son was the right one for the post, even considering the fact that Rin's father was the previous Second Owner, must never have met the younger magus, in Semiramis' opinion. The Tohsaka heir was a spirited girl to say the least. The memory of her son's description of their original meeting never failed to evoke a chuckle.

A dark and dreary Saturday night found Asharu huddled in a long raincoat against the persistent, miserable drizzle of rain. Tall buildings clustered close around him and rose towards the leaden sky, thankfully blocking the worst of the wind as he traversed the alleys and abandoned streets of Fuyuki, seeking the signature rotten-flesh-and-rust taste of the prana of the wraith that was his prey. Sodden and discarded newspapers decomposed apathetically in sodium-lit puddles while in the deeper shadows the eyes of animals - perhaps hunting cats, perhaps the rats that they hunted - gleamed like marbles, watching him pass.

Ordinarily, he would have been huddled up inside on such a night,, but his mother had decided that dealing with a relatively minor threat such as the wraith that had possessed a corpse from the city morgue - it was unknown whether the corpse, formerly one Akihiko Tamashi, was the wraith's actual body or not - and had been preying on a number of the homeless people of the city. The mundane police were still treating the deaths as a result of starvation and the cold, unforgiving weather that they had been experiencing recently, but to any magus the symptoms were childishly obvious. Something had been roaming the city and devouring the prana of those it believed would not be missed.

A Dead Apostle would have drained them of blood and there would have been no corpses to be found, the victims being converted into ghouls to act as the monster's familiars. A Servant would have been detected by the extensive and subtle Bounded Fields which had been erected by Semiramis over the city to detect any such presences since her visit to the Kotomine Church. That left wraiths, and if it needed to consume souls and minds so often to sustain its existence - over a dozen corpses had been found so far with the relevant symptoms - it was highly unlikely that the spirit would be especially powerful.

All of which led to the apprentice magus slogging through the sodden streets of the city, looking for a walking corpse with the hope of fighting and beating it.

His mum had an odd idea of what should be done with a Saturday evening.

Unfortunately, Asharu's distraction with the disgusting weather and the unfairness of not being able to take Seru out with him - the snake was grumbling ferociously about the cold and how he would never have become a familiar if he had known that it would deny him his winter hibernation - was such that he didn't notice the strengthening taste of prana in the air until cold, dead fingers had already clasped around his throat and begun to squeeze with impossible, unnatural strength.

Forgetting himself in his surprise, the 13 year-old scrabbled at the corpse's hands at his neck, trying to pull them away. Bits of putrefying flesh came away beneath his nails and he managed to keep it from throttling him, but before he could Reinforce his limbs to pull it away properly, now that his presence of mind had returned a little, there was a patter-splash of feet running through the puddles behind him and a shouted exclamation.

"Das feuer, brüllen!"

A reddish-purple light erupted behind him, accompanied by a whoosh of consumed air, and the fingers relinquished his throat with an unearthly screech. The young magus made use of the reprieve put some distance between him and the wraith-possessed cadaver. As he did so, he got a look at his savior.

She was a girl he would guess was about his own age, her long black hair and blue-green eyes revealed by the fallen hood of her all-encompassing rain jacket. Her right hand, which was outstretched towards the wraith and was held in a finger-gun, was outlined in a flickering aura of purplish fire, the same hue as that which was guttering out on the rotting, greyish skin of the wraith's host.

"A magus." he muttered under his breath, deciding that until he had more information on the capabilities of this new factor, he would be cautious. Carefully, hiding his hand beneath his coat so as not to be seen by the magus-girl, he summoned Sa Imti to his hand, just in case it was needed.

The possessed corpse was rallying, now that the spell which had driven it off him was dissipating. It hadn't seemed to do much damage, beyond scaring the thing and possibly hurting it. It began to charge towards her, but it looked as if she was prepared for that. She brought her other hand up beside the first, holding the palms flat towards the wraith and fingers pointed to the sky.

"Das schließen vogelkäfig, Echo!"

A magic circle erupted into existence before her hands, unleashing a wave of reddish light. It flowed around the creature, forming a boxed enclosure. A bounded field, and performed with no more than a short aria. This magus-girl was impressive, a prodigy even, and with that came risk. If she was a true prodigy, most likely a scion of a magus family, it was unlikely that she would hesitate to eliminate a 'civilian' witness to her magecraft. On the other hand, revealing himself as a magus himself would carry risks of its own. In the end, he decided that he would have to chance it. He was confident that, if push came to shove, his magic would prove the stronger in combat.

She lowered her hands to her sides, looking a little tired.

"You know, I had it handled." he told her, flaring his prana in such a way that it would be obvious to the most basic of magi. Her eyes widened slightly, before her expression was schooled into a practiced mask of casual arrogance.

"You're a magus? What are you doing in Fuyuki? I'm the Second Owner here. It's my job to take care of this city and I can't do that if I don't know about the magi here."

Asharu blinked in surprise. This was the Second Owner of Fuyuki, a girl no older than he was? What were the Mage's Association thinking?

"I can't very well introduce myself if I don't know who the Second Owner is, can I?" he gestured to the trapped corpse, which was now pounding at the barrier which imprisoned it, trying to escape. "What are you going to do with it, anyway? Do you want it for an experiment?"

She blinked, as though the thought of what she would do with the wraith once she had trapped it hadn't occurred to her. "W-well, I was just doing my job as Second Owner, making sure that my city is safe," she said defensively, flipping a tail of hair over her shoulder. It hung, limp and damp with the persistent drizzle. "And you didn't look like you were handling it."

The barb stung. Being reminded of how stupid he had been, to be so caught up in being annoyed with the world as opposed to actually looking for the homicidal ghost he had been hunting wasn't pleasant, and it rankled.

"How do you intend to get rid of it, then?" he retorted. He was rewarded with an embarrassed silence.

"I'll tell you what, if you can hold it still while I kill it, I'll get you something warm to drink in the all night cafe up there." He pointed with his thumb towards the end of the alleyway. She considered for a moment before the prospect of respite from the cold and damp won out and she gave him a terse nod.

"Alright then. On three." Withdrew the knife from the inside of his coat, letting the crimson light of the barrier reflect off of it.

"One. Two. Three!"

On the last word, Asharu was already moving towards the barrier, even as it collapsed inwards and formed into bands of power to restrict the corpse's movement. Dimly, he was aware of an accented German aria ("Das vogelkäfig, eine Kette werden!") as the wind rushed in his ears and the knife slipped through the dead flesh of his enemy's throat with a sickening schlickk. Clotted, black-red blood painted the blade in the crimson light of the bindings.

Equally swiftly, he slipped out of range of any retribution that the wraith might have been able to muster, if it should break free of its bindings. He waited, panting a little, for the blade's enchantment to take effect. What was probably about half a minute, but which felt like much longer under the distinctly mocking and superior glare of the other magus, passed before anything happened.

And then something did. The wraith, which had been attempting futilely to squirm its way out of its bonds, suddenly stiffened and let out a keening wail. Its limbs jittered and jumped, as if the spirit's motor control was failing it. The head of the corpse rose, as if to look at the sky, then fell bonelessly limp as the blue-black-silver bruise of a creature that was the wraith flowed up and out of the mouth and eyes. An exclamation of alarm issued from the other magus, before it was strangled in her throat.

The spirit wouldn't escape.

An emerald corruption was spreading through its form, leaving a black, vaporous substance in its wake which swiftly sublimated into the air. Despite its near-formlessness, the spirit's jerky, panicked motions spoke volumes of its distress, and the same unearthly cry that had previously emerged from the corpse's throat filled the air, before its echoes faded into nothingness, along with the last remnants of the wraith.

There was silence, until it was broken by the female magus' voice.

"I'm Tohsaka Rin."

"Sharratu Asharu."

They left the corpse behind them as they quit the alleyway, their hoods pulled up against the rain.

Following that first meeting, the two young magi had formed a friendship, of sorts. Rin had been absolutely insistent that Asharu was simply a measuring stick for her to test herself against, while her son had been equally determined that the Tohsaka family heir was just a bother. Regardless of that, both of the magi met at night on a semi-regular basis to compete in their magecraft. The fact that the 'spars' often ended in both exhausted combatants sharing dinner and whichever was the less spent healing the other was meticulously ignored by both parties.

The extent of Semiramis' skill, as well as her nature, had been carefully concealed from the other magus, as despite her debatably friendly status she was still the heir of one of the founding families of the Grail War, and as such would almost certainly be chosen as one of the Masters in the coming war. The only likely end to a friendship between Masters - no matter how much the relationship's nature was denied - was tragedy. Asharu was determined though, as in everything he did, that he would not give up only on the grounds of a likelihood, and the meetings had continued.

In fact, that was the reason that her son was working so hard on his new spell. In their last bout, Rin had used a powerful anti-magic shield spell which had counteracted the relatively weak wizarding curses which Asharu usually used for offense. His answer had been to develop a spell which would bypass her shield entirely by relying upon physical force, resulting in the Hammer of Anu.

As the magus in question washed off the sweat of his exertion in the pool below, the Servant's smile faded with the thought of the merciless conflict which was on the horizon. The levels of prana within the Grail beneath Mount Miyama indicated that the summoning of the rest of the Servants was likely to take place within the next year and a half. The Grail itself was, as far as she could detect, damaged and warped from some trauma in the 3rd and 4th wars, and there was some unknown presence within it. She knew no more than that, as whenever she tried to probe deeper with her magic, some kind of compulsion would take effect and she would return to awareness minutes later with no memory of whatever she had found there.

It was likely that whatever laired within the Grail was making use of the Command Seal system to prevent her from isolating or identifying it, and that scared her. Anything powerful enough to subvert a magical device based upon one of the True Magics, capable of summoning posthuman spirits of dead heroes and of breaching a hole in the substance of reality itself to reach the the Root of All Existence was not to be trifled with, especially when one's continued existence depended upon the functioning of that device.

She could only hope that when the time came, the power of the Gardens and of her son would be enough to deal with whatever entity had hidden itself within the labyrinthine matrices of the Grail. She prayed to the dead gods of her homeland and to her divine mother that what she had taught him was enough, as with her vulnerability to the entity's manipulation, her power could not be counted upon in the coming battle.

*A nonsense word Harry uses as an 'activator'. Like Rin's 'Anfang'. Related to Hadad, a name for the Assyrian storm god.

**Literally, 'calm'. A word to close his circuits and end the ritual.

***Literally 'dominion'.

A/N: And before anyone asks, no Rin is not going to be a pairing with Harry/Asharu.

It has been brought to my attention that I may have made an error in my portrayal of the difference between the ancient magic of Heroic Spirits and the modern magecraft of magi. To be perfectly honest, as I have little to go on in regards to the former, I shall probably be treating them as more similar than they probably ought to be, purely due to the fact that I have more information on magecraft.

I apologise for any inaccuracies in my portrayal of magecraft, but I think we can all agree that Nasu's system of magic is beyond complicated and is quite opaque.