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xXx The Storm Over Remnant xXx
xXx Ch. 01: Izanami no Mikoto xXx

xXx The Department of Mysteries xXx

Harry should have known that he had been walking into a trap, and that his friends were too faithful to him to let him do so alone. The group of students from Hogwarts, Harry included, had been hopelessly outmatched by Lucius and those who he had brought with him, yet still they persevered long enough for reinforcements to reach them.

Unfortunately, right before Harry's very eyes, a bolt of red energy was flying straight towards the very man whom Harry had been endeavouring to save this very same night. Harry just knew that if the bolt hit his Godfather, then the man would die, and the entire reason they had come here would be meaningless.

So with a roar of frustration, Harry began running as fast as he could towards his Godfather, and managed to reach him well before the bolt of energy hit the man. He then managed to interpose himself with his godfather by using his momentum to send Sirius falling to the floor and away from the veil. However, in his haste to save his Godfather, Harry had ignored something incredibly important.

It was with an expression of shock, coupled with an ungodly scream of agony, that Harry realized exactly what spell it had been which had been fired off towards Sirius. What was worse from Harry's perspective, was that the bolt had hit him with sufficient force to knock him off balance and he was now falling face first into the veil of death and in far too much agony to do anything about it.

Through the pain he was experiencing, Harry could distantly hear the screams of horror coming from around the room as people either watched this happen, or tried to shake themselves out of the shock long enough to rescue Harry from his ill deserved fate.

No one was fast enough, or else they had become otherwise occupied by the Death Eaters that were still within the room. Thus, within less than ten seconds after having been hit by the spell, Harry's head and face fell past the veil, and at that point, it was already too late to save him, as he was already well and truly dead.

xXx Unknown xXx

"You have to be freaking kidding me!" a feminine voice exploded into the awareness of whatever it is that remained of the one who used to be Harry Potter.

"Mu-m?" the disembodied wraithlike being tried to speak, but it came out in a distorted crackle.

"No, I am not your mother. You shouldn't even be where we are right now, because it is not your time to have kicked the bucket! That shouldn't have happened for a good many more years yet," the woman retorted.

"De-at-h?"

"Yep, that's me!" the woman exclaimed, "Now what to do. I can't rightfully claim you because you aren't supposed to be dead yet. However, I also can't send you back to your world due to the fact that the method of suicide you opted for yourself does not give me the ability to send you back."

There was a pause for several minutes, before the woman, Death, exclaimed, "Oh ho! What have we here?"

If Harry could see the woman, he would have discovered that she was holding a fine silvery cloak that had just materialized in wherever it was that they were. "I haven't seen this thing in nearly one thousand years by your reckoning, Mister Potter. I shouldn't have been able to see it ever again due to the fact that I specifically designed it to hide itself from me."

"Wha…" the spirit that had been Harry Potter tried to say something but couldn't quite manage it.

"This, Mister Potter, is a fragment from my very own Invisibility Cloak, given to one of your ancestors for being the only one of a trio of brothers to ask for the smart gift. A gift that would allow them to walk away from having met me without me following in their footsteps just looking for a way to kill them."

The spirit had no idea what to say to the knowledge that he had kept such an object in his possession for all these years, but the woman seemed to be impressed by it turning up wherever it was that they had ended up. "The presence of this cloak, combined with the abomination I extracted from your soul when you first materialized, means that I can send you to another world without demanding you sacrifice the one personal talent or skill which you value above all other talents or skills. And don't think I am unaware that you value your ability to cook more than you value your magic, as weird as that might seem to me."

It was then that the woman, or whatever she really was, gave off sounds which gave the impression that she was walking across a hardwood floor in high heeled shoes that ended in metal spikes rather than a more classic style. After several moments, the sound returned and the woman spoke again, "Well it seems you are in luck. My older brother has just informed me about a world that has a surplus of Distressed Damsels, and not nearly enough Prince Charmings. Congratulations, you are on your way to a world bathed in the light of a shattered moon. Have fun, and don't forget to write!"

xXx Unknown xXx

Harry's eyes snapped open as he realized he was once again a living being, and that bizarrely, he could somehow remember everything that had led to him being in his new location. The first thing his eyes registered however, was the fact the rather ominous looking scythe that was floating in the air above an altar located just a few feet away from his location.

"I fall through the veil of death and die, only to be given new life in a room with what looks remarkably like Death's very own scythe sitting on an altar just a few feet away from me. This is just not a good day."

Before Harry could really contemplate what sort of bad luck had just happened to him, the door to the room opened, and in walked a woman whose beauty was as close to perfection as Harry had ever seen, without the woman in question giving off a Veela's allure. The woman was armed with a rapier, and Harry could see several guards located behind her who were armed with guns, and he didn't really need to guess who those weapons were intended to be used upon.

"Who are you? How did you get in here?" the woman demanded, "This room shouldn't be possible for anyone to access without my authorization."

Harry blinked as he heard that statement, and what survival instinct was warning him that he had to be very careful around this woman. The soldiers were actually a lesser threat it would seem. However, while Harry could cast some magic wandlessly, he wasn't ready to attempt casting the Protego charm, so dealing with this diplomatically might be the safer option.

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, and only then realized he wasn't wearing his glasses. Which immediately had him glancing down at the rest of his body, whereupon he squawked, "Holy hell, I'm starkers!"

The woman scowled, before turning to the guards and asking "Did any of you understand what this person just said?"

Harry frowned as he realized that while he could understand them, they couldn't understand him for some reason. He now had to figure out why that was. "Oh for the love of…" Harry exclaimed.

"Hello?" that was in French. Harry didn't know much French, but Fleur had taken it upon herself to begin teaching him so he could actually have a conversation with her sister. Seeing their blank though bemused expressions, he realized they weren't speaking French. The problem was for some reason his mind was processing what they were saying as English, despite the fact that it wasn't English.

"Let's try again shall we," Harry tried, this time in Scots-Gaelic, which he had learned more as a curiosity language due to Hogwarts Castle being in Scotland. Minerva McGonagall frequently quizzed him on what he knew in the language so he knew quite a lot more of that than he did of French. Unfortunately, it appeared that wasn't it either.

The woman sighed as she pulled out something from one of her pockets, tapped it, and then spoke into it, "I need a Translation Unit sent down to the Relic Chamber."

There was an explosion of irate noise from the other side, and then a much calmer voice said, "Both the unit and I will be down momentarily. I want an explanation."

The woman nodded her head and then clicked the device off, before looking at Harry and saying, "Okay, since you seem capable of understanding us, I should explain the predicament you are in. This chamber is so highly classified that the only reason the guards behind me won't be killed for seeing the inside of this room, is because I hand picked them for the security detail myself."

Harry frowned, what the hell had Death gotten him into?

"Strictly speaking, this room is not ever supposed to be opened, but I unsealed it because the internal sensors detected you inside of it," the woman explained in a cold and lethal manner.

"Why is this child not already dead?" the voice that had been on the speaker intruded on the conversation.

"General Ironwood, we still have yet to determine how he even got in here to begin with. He does not appear too know our language," the woman replied as she turned and saluted an older gentleman.

The man, General Ironwood, pulled a gun out of a holster on his hip, and aimed it at Harry. It was at this point in time that Harry found himself absolutely thankful for the existence of Accidental Magic for the first time in his entire life outside of that one incident at the start of the previous year at Hogwarts.

A wave of pure electricity lanced itself out in every direction from Harry's place on the floor. It plowed straight into the General, who was caught so completely unprepared for it that it caused him to fall to his knees in spasmodic shock. The woman was surprisingly able to ignore the wave by using what was clearly magic of her own to protect herself from it. Meanwhile, the guards outside the room were all hit with sufficient force to knock them to the ground.

Harry was quite at a loss for words. He had never experienced a bout of accidental magic quite so severe before. But then, he had never had a gun pointed at his head before.

"General!" the woman exclaimed as she dashed over to him. However, even as she did that, she was casting confused glances over at Harry.

Several moments later, the General had recovered enough to speak, "That was…"

"That wasn't a Semblance, General. That was… I can't explain how, but it was almost like this boy used a portion of the gift I was given a few weeks ago by the former Summer Maiden," the girl, presumably this new Summer Maiden, stated as a means of explanation.

The general glanced back and forth between the girl and Harry for several moments, before asking the woman, "Winter, are you telling me this boy is the illusive Wizard?"

Harry had to snicker as soon as he heard the reverence used for that particular word. Winter however had called in the translation unit and said, "Could you please speak into this device for a moment?"

Harry sighed and did as asked, but decided to be a bit cheeky with it, and spoke in two distinct dialects, one was English, and the other…

"Error, error!"

Harry smirked for a moment before standing up and walking over to the scythe, much to the angry protestations of Ironwood. Harry then touched the scythe and said, "Death, if you are listening, it was nice of you to give me the ability to understand what they are saying, but you didn't complete the information upload."

The expressions of horror on everyone's face when the scythe actually spoke back would have been priceless, if Harry could have seen it. "You already know their language, I just made it so you aren't constantly translating it when you hear it spoken to you. It's a language that very closely resembles the Osaka dialect from Japan."

Harry rolled his eyes, removed his hand from the scythe, and walked back over to the shell shocked people in the room. "Right, so let's start from the top. My name is Harry Potter. Thee woman whose lovely voice you all just heard is responsible for me being in this room right now. The closest translation for her name into the language we are now speaking would be… Izanami no Mikoto."

"Salem? Salem sent you here?" Winter inquired.

"Oi!" Death spoke up from the scythe, "Don't mistake me for someone like her!"

Harry sighed, "I'll assume that you have someone in this world that is doing the Evil Dark Lord thing and leave it be at that. I meant however that it was Death who sent me here for a second chance at life when I prematurely killed myself. Now is that sufficient information for the two of you to stop trying to execute me?"

General Ironwood had listened to this boy, Harry, for the past couple of minutes, before coming to the realization that he was not from this world and thus could not be held responsible for being in places he was not cleared to be, especially if whatever spirit it was that inhabited the Relic was the thing that brought him to Remnant in the first place.

Eventually, the General said, "I will overlook your trespass, however for the foreseeable future, you are to remain under strict observation by Specialist Schnee. During that time, she will also bring you up to speed with what you will need to know in order to survive in this world."

Harry considered that for a moment, before smirking, "Well she is a far more appealing prison warden than my last jail keepers."

This naturally caused Winter Schnee to blush a bit, before she growled out, "You look to be the same age as my younger sister. As such, you aren't even remotely qualified to be making comments like that towards me. And don't get any funny ideas either!"

Harry sighed, before noticing the cloak on the ground, "Huh." He grabbed it, and wrapped it around his lower body, "Death, thanks for the gift… and is that the Marauder's Map too?"

The snickering he heard from the scythe was about the only answer he was going to get, but the looks of numb shock he was seeing on the faces of both Winter and the General were totally worth it. "Yes, this bit of cloth has rendered my entire lower body invisible. No, I am not in the habit of using it for voyeuristic pursuits."

"Oh! And it will only work for Harry-kun or those he gives direct permission to. If you kill him it will completely cease functioning. I decided to tinker with it when I had the opportunity," Death spoke up. "You did me a favor, so I did you one as well."

"I'm going to ignore the implications of that, because I really don't want to know how much I messed up the plot of my old world by doing what I did." Harry replied, "Anyways, can we take this somewhere else? Death is getting to be a bit…"

"Yes!" Ironwood exclaimed as he began leading the way from the room. They only stopped long enough for Winter to reactivate the seals locking it from the outside world, a process that took far too long.

xXx Half an Hour Later xXx

After fully briefing the General and Winter on the situation he was in, or rather the one he had been in just prior to kicking the bucket, Winter had dragged him off to get some proper clothes. This ended up taking the better part of an entire afternoon.

She took him from one shop to the next, always having him try on new outfits each time and showcase them for her. Eventually, they ended up going for a series of outfits that while stylish enough to pass her incredibly high bar, were still casual enough for Harry to not feel like he was dressed up like a Malfoy out on the town.

They then had to proceed with kitting out an entire wardrobe of clothes in a similar fashion, and at least one outfit which he could wear in combat situation… at which point Harry put his foot down, and listed his own personal specifications to an armorer. The man working the shop seemed confused at what he was hearing.

The man looked at Winter and said, "Is this a joke?"

"Harry-kun, you aren't going to find materials like what you just described in a store, or at least you aren't going to be able to purchase them for a reasonable price. Actual animal hides are extremely valuable due to the fact that animals are so rare, and… well, dragonhide armor just won't ever happen." She then looked at the man and said, "He is suffering from partial amnesia."

Harry scowled, he had assumed magic was more in the know in this world, but clearly that was not the case, and there may not even be any magical creatures to speak of. "Okay, so how much would a faux-leather jacket, reinforced jeans and combat boots run?"

"Is that really all the armor you intend to get?" the man inquired.

"I am fully confident that before too long I won't actually need armor. So yeah, that is all I need," Harry retorted with a self-assured arrogance the likes of which any Slytherin would be proud of.

"Charge it to my father's account," Winter interrupted with a mischievous smirk on her face.

When Harry gave her a confused look, Winter simply snickered "I'll explain later."

xXx Winter's Quarters, Atlas xXx

"Okay, so what exactly is wrong with this world?" Harry questioned. "I haven't seen one animal since I got here, and you pointed out that they were extremely rare. How is that possible?"

Winter sighed as she cut up a slice of the steak that Harry had insisted on preparing for her as a thanks for buying him so much clothing. Tapping the tip of her fork into the plate, she said, "Animals aren't rare per se. Rather the majority of the ones that are known to humans and faunus are kept in habitats meant to keep them protected from the Creatures of Grimm."

"And what are those?" Harry questioned as he stabbed at his own slice of steak.

"Well, based solely on how you described your experiences at Hogwarts, they are sort of what you would get if you gene spliced a Dementor with a Dragon, or any other animal anyways… just without soul sucking kisses," Winter explained.

As soon as Harry heard that statement, he sat bolt upright and stared at the woman with horror, "I don't know if I can even perform wandless magic on a conscious level yet, and here you are telling me I'm in a world populated by Eldritch Horrors from Beyond the Stars in the form of animals? I'd need an army of Patroni for something like that!"

Winter nodded along with his complaint, though she wasn't quite sure what an Eldritch Horror was, or what it had to do with outer space. Though to be fair, Remnant's space exploration initiative had hit a snag, they couldn't really go very far out before Dust started to lose its ability to do whatever it was Dust did, and so they were confined to planetary orbit at best, at least until they found an alternative rocket propellant and electricity conductor.

"It's a good thing the Grimm can be harmed using conventional weaponry and don't usually give off auras like the ones you described coming from the Dementors," Winter agreed. "Though they can do that too, if enough gather in one place, or one gets old enough to do it on its own."

Harry blinked in surprise, "Huh. That… that is actually rather worrisome."

"What is it?" Winter questioned.

"Hermione and I did a bit of research in our third year during that whole Dementor occupation of Hogwarts thing. It turns out that the man who is presumed to be the creator of the Dementors lived in and around the fifteenth century. That means the Dementors had existed for at least 490 years, give or take a few, by the time they were at Hogwarts in my third year. There were enough Dementors for there to be about twenty to fifty in a horde trying to suck out the soul of Sirius Black at the end of that year, and still have who knows how many to spare left guarding the prison." Harry explained.

"Well then, it would sound to me that your former world had something that was remarkably similar to the Creatures of Grimm, if not quite the same thing, since I have never heard of a humanoid Grimm in such vast numbers, though Salem herself might count as one if the rumors about her are to be believed," Winter explained in a bland tone of voice. "Of course, it goes without saying that pretty much all information regarding Salem is need-to-know, and I am only allowing you to know since you are in this world at the behest of Death itself or so it seems."

"You and Ironwood intend to turn me into an asset?" Harry questioned.

"James probably does. As for me, I think it would be easier to help you discover your own path forward in this world. While my day job is as a Specialist in the Atlesian Military, I am in reality one of the Four Maidens, which is also something that is strictly need-to-know. In fact to my knowledge, only you, Ironwood, and those soldiers I have guarding the Relic even know I am a Maiden right now, which is how I intend for it to stay for as long as I can keep it that way."

"And what exactly is a Maiden?" Harry questioned.

Winter smirked at Harry, "I'm basically what you would refer to as a 'witch', except my magic is limited to manipulating the weather."

"Oh, so you are like Storm of the X-Men," Harry remarked with an amused grin.

"I would have no basis to compare it with. In any case, I am specifically the Summer Maiden, which means my abilities are more geared towards manipulating weather in a…"

"But it is freaking cold in Atlas, shouldn't you have picked a different nation if you were going to be a Sunny Maiden?" Harry interrupted the beautiful and now scowling woman. "And your name is all wrong, you should be named Daffodil or some other flower name."

xXx Chapter Concluded xXx

Author's Note: Okay first things first… I have no fucking clue whether or not Winter will turn out to be the canonical Summer Maiden. I have decided to make her be the Summer Maiden in this story because it suits my plot for the story to have her be that maiden. Also, no, this is not a Winter / Harry pairing. She will mostly be an older sister figure for him.

Next up, for those wondering about the scythe… It's true and proper name is "Scythe of the Goddess of Death" and it actually takes the form of a glaive. Have fun looking that one up, as that will tell you exactly what appearance Death has decided to take in this fic (no promises that her personality is going to be a match, as it is still my rendition of Death of the Endless).

Lastly, yep, Harry well and truly kicked the bucket only to end up in Remnant for his Next Great Adventure.

Preview Note: This chapter is currently in preview form, because I am still in the planning stages for the story as a whole, but thought I'd share it with everyone. I have not yet gotten much farther than this chapter, but have a rough outline of events for what I hope to be a sizeable number of chapters (no promises).