So, a few of my followers will have noticed a few Worm fics I have been batting about, like my one-shot pilot for a Fate/Stay Night crossover Magissa: Origins, or my Naruto reincarnation fic Tobi Taylor's Trolling Tales. Well, this is my attempt at doing a Potterverse one, albeit one where the emphasis of the story is on the Potterverse. After the initial chapter, no more characters from the Worm-verse will appear. I'm deliberately leaving parts of the backstories vague, as I haven't read Worm beyond the first arc, and there's only so much you can research from the Wiki.

This is also another attempt at doing whitetigerwolf's 'Chef' challenge, though I don't think I have succeeded, as Harry still has worked in the field with his girls. Still, Harry is paired with Taylor/Skitter, Sarah/Lisa/Tattletale, and Amy/Panacea.

The title, BTW, means, roughly, 'difficulties be damned'.

NEC ASPERA TERRENT

CHAPTER 1:

ESCAPE

"We can't stay here for long," the blonde, freckled girl in the dark skinsuit muttered furtively as she paced the room. "They'll find us."

The dark-haired boy with green eyes and a similar, green skinsuit nodded. They were currently in the basement of an abandoned building, abandoned because this town had been decimated by the Slaughterhouse 9, though given the tenacity of their pursuers, maybe not for long. "How long, Tats?"

"Stop calling me that, Typhon," she retorted with good humour, before she frowned. "I don't honestly know. Between the precog Thinkers that the Cauldron and the PRT have between them, on top of satellites and other things…it could be any minute now, or up to a day. I'm sorry, I really am, and it's pretty scary not being able to figure things out, but…"

"We need to stop long enough for Bitch to get healed by Panacea and to boot Dragon back up," Typhon said. "Defiant may have been an asshole, but he died helping us get Dragon out. And Dragon's helped us before. Anyway, Skitter's going to keep an eye out. And I've got our friend running interference."

The girl chuckled. "Only you, Typhon, would call an Endbringer a friend. I'd be angrier with how much that's screwed us over, but…you're a good friend." She gave a knowing smirk. "And a great lover. I wonder if they'll allow us to have conjugal visits within the Birdcage?"

"I dunno. But I'm damned if I'm going to go there without a fight. You'd think they'd be grateful to us, stopping the Slaughterhouse 9 and dealing with the gangs back at Brockton Bay. But no, they used our existence as an independent group over us."

"Cool name, though," the girl said. "The Cleaners."

A dark-haired girl wearing glasses and wearing a dark outfit came in. "Sarah, Harry, I can't see anything at the moment. But knowing what's happened, it's only a matter of time. Amy's managed to heal Rachel, but Rachel's taking the loss of Judas pretty badly."

"What about Dragon?" Typhon, now named Harry, asked.

"She's still booting back up. Whatever they used on her wasn't as bad as this Ascalon thing Saint was supposed to have, but…" The girl ran a hand through her thick curls. "Defiant warned us Richter put in some emergency measures that cut in while he was trying to unchain her."

Harry nodded, before his eyes widened. "Shit, she's got something on her! They're trying to backtrace my link to her! We've got to…what the hell?!"

The room was suddenly filled with flickering blue flames, centred around Harry. He dashed through into another room, where a few others were gathered. And the flames were filling this room too. A mousy-looking befreckled girl in white robes looked up. "What's happening?" she asked in understandable confusion.

"I don't know, I…" Harry began, before something seemed to clench the air around them. In a flare of cyan light, they were gone.

And in the skies some distance away, where a number of smaller figures were fighting against a larger one, one that resembled a bizarre angel with asymmetrical wings and grey eyes, the angel's grey eyes suddenly widened, and with a shriek, it disappeared from the world in a blast of blue flames. All that it left in its wake was puzzlement and fear.

For weeks, months, even years to come, the inhabitants of Earth Bet, or at least those in the know, puzzled over the disappearance of the rogue parahuman group known as the Cleaners and, more concernedly, the Endbringer known as the Simurgh. Those orchestrating certain events had intended to take this wayward group of (mostly) teenagers and take them to the Birdcage, to be released when they were needed. Instead, they had disappeared, along with one of the monsters terrorising the world.

To some, the disappearance of both an Endbringer and a troublesome parahuman group was cause for celebration. But they were the ignorant ones. Those who knew were considerably more troubled. They tried in vain to track their fugitives down, even looking to other worlds, for they had sources that claimed that Harry came from another world, one that sounded like Earth Aleph.

In truth, Harry Potter had been born on a version of Earth never touched by the Entities and their shards. But just because the Entities had not interfered with that Earth did not mean that extraordinary powers didn't exist. They did, but in hiding, and it was one of those extraordinary powers that had reached out to grasp Harry Potter…and had pulled him back home, whether he liked it or not…

Where in the world was Harry Potter?

This had been a driving question in virtually everybody's minds in Magical Britain. It had been, ever since he had been revealed to be missing not long before his tenth birthday, when he seemingly vanished from his relatives' home during a violent storm. Four years since that night, nobody was close to an answer, not even the man who was supposed to hold all the answers to Magical Britain's problems, Professor Albus Dumbledore.

The man himself had been guilt-ridden when, while investigating the Dursleys' home, he learned of what happened. While he suspected that the Dursleys might treat Harry coldly, he never truly believed they would descend into outright abuse and virtual slavery. It was certainly all he could do not to succumb to the temptation of using the Cruciatus on them. He couldn't even tell whether Harry was alive or dead: while the instruments showing Harry's location and general condition were dead, they had died when Harry disappeared in a blast of lightning, and Dumbledore found traces of magic not wholly inconsistent with Apparition, albeit with other traces he couldn't identify.

The past few years had also been eventful. An attempt to lure Voldemort out of hiding nearly went awry, with a promising Muggleborn student nearly getting killed (though Miss Granger survived, and indeed, began to thrive). A diary containing a Horcrux was planted on a student, thus allowing the Horcrux to possess said student and unleash a Basilisk. Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, and had been Kissed by a Dementor, though not before revealing the true traitor to be Peter Pettigrew. And now, the revival of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, a half-baked scheme thought up by that punch drunk fool Bagman and that bureaucratic pedant Barty Crouch Senior.

Dumbledore also knew it would be too much to hope for a quiet year, even without the Tournament. The Death Eaters running riot at the Quidditch World Cup and the Dark Mark appearing were a sign of things to come, he was sure. And Severus mentioned his Dark Mark tattoo getting darker.

So, it was to his utter surprise that a fourth piece of paper spat from the Goblet of Fire, and upon it was a name he had not expected to see on it. For a moment, he stared in shock at it, before reading out the name. One spoken in a tone of fear and hope. Hope that he was wrong, that the person the name was attached to was still alive…and fear that said person was either dead…or about to be drawn into something against his will.

"Harry Potter."

Suddenly, the Goblet flared, and a blue flame burst from it, streaking out through the doors. On instinct, Dumbledore hurried out, Crouch, Bagman, Moody, and the heads of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang following. He followed the flame out to the grounds, only to see, on a cold, large patch of grass, a flare of blue flame.

A small group of people eventually appeared within the azure conflagration, most of them in their late teens. There was one adult, a woman, and there seemed to be a pair of dogs. But their costumes were somewhat strange and eclectic, to say the least.

There were a couple of dark-skinned teenagers, apparently brother and sister, the latter being particularly young. There was a boy in old-fashioned clothing and wielding a sceptre. There was a rather muscular girl half-wearing a mask looking like a snarling dog, who stayed close to the dogs and looked at them with wary, barely-restrained belligerence. There was a rather mousy-looking girl in white robes. There was a woman, half-sitting, wearing green, draconic armour. There was a tall, thin girl with glasses and wearing a dark outfit. There was a blonde girl wearing a figure-hugging black and purple one.

But it was the boy in the green outfit that caught his attention most of all. Messy black hair, emerald green eyes, and, even in the moonlight, he could see the scar zig-zagging out from beneath his fringe. It was like looking at James Potter reborn, albeit with green eyes and no glasses. Terrible hopes and fears were born in that moment in Dumbledore's heart.

All of the group seemed wary, on-edge, though the blonde girl, as Dumbledore and his impromptu entourage approached, remarked, "Well, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Her accent had an American drawl. East Coast, maybe Massachusetts or thereabouts? "Did we end up at someone's LARPing session or something?"

The scarred boy raised a hand to his head, and said, his voice betraying a mixture of an English accent and the same American accent, "Guys…Zizzy just said we've…well, we've gone across worlds. And timelines. She can't feel the presence of any others like her, and she can't even feel Eidolon's presence. She's looking down at our position from orbit. We're in…Scotland."

The woman looked up at the sky. After a moment, she said, "And judging by star positions, we're in late autumn. I'd be more precise, but I've just rebooted. There's an energy field impinging on my sensors too." She then shook her head, and then walked over to Dumbledore. Her face was attractive, but didn't seem to be of any definable ethnicity. "Good evening. Can you confirm our location, as well as shed some light on what happened?"

"…You are indeed in Scotland, my dear woman," Dumbledore replied diplomatically.

"She's a Muggle," Crouch said. "We need to contact the Obliviators."

"Hey, watch what you say to Dragon!" the scarred boy snapped. "She's just lost her best friend! Okay, he was an asshole, but he was trying to make up for that! Anyway, who are the Obliviators? Some special unit of the PRT?"

"It's okay," Dragon said quietly, though her eyes were filled with sadness at the reminder of, presumably, another's passing. She then looked at Dumbledore. "Well?"

"…I believe he mentioned that you came from another world?" Dumbledore asked. He was humouring them for the time being, because they may have just offered absolution to one of his greatest regrets. "We don't know about a PRT."

"No Parahuman Response Team?" Dragon asked, confused.

"No. Is this a Muggle organisation? Where do you come from? Geographically, I mean."

"Brockton Bay," the tall, thin girl supplied.

"I don't believe I've ever heard of the place," Dumbledore said.

"No, but you know who he is," the blonde girl said, indicating the scarred boy. "I can tell these things. Looks like he wasn't crazy after all. He came from a world without capes. But not without powers. Though seriously, why are you dressed like a pantomime Merlin?"

"Seriously?" the tall, thin girl asked. "Given what we're wearing, and what lots of people were wearing back home, that's what you're taking issue with, Tattletale?"

The girl called Tattletale sighed, before saying, "Okay, what's the date?"

"Halloween, 1994," Moody supplied in his customary growl.

"Well, when we left, it was 2013. Typhon here said it was 1990 when he…well, ended up in Brockton Bay. Okay. Introductions. I'm Tattletale. This here is Typhon." She indicated the scarred boy. "You've met Dragon. That's Skitter." She indicated the tall, thin girl with glasses. "Those two are Grue and Imp, and that fop with the staff is Regent."

"Fuck you, Tattletale," the boy with the old-fashioned clothing retorted good-naturedly.

"That's Panacea," Tattletale said, indicating the brown-haired mousy girl, "and that's Bitch, or Hellhound if you want to be PC." This was the muscular, belligerent-looking girl.

"But his name isn't Typhon!" Bagman said in confusion, just having to open his big damned mouth. "That must be Harry Potter! And he's been named a Champion in the Tri-Wizard Tournament!"

"Tri…Wizard?" Dragon asked, blinking. She looked over at Harry, then back at the others, then back to Harry. "…This explains so much, and yet so little." She returned her gaze to Dumbledore. "In fact, I think we all deserve an explanation."

That makes two of us, Dumbledore thought in the privacy of his head. After all, even with Harry back, he had not come back unchanged. His eyes were too hard and too old, even for the apparent age he was at. And his motley companions had similar looks in their eyes. What in Merlin's name had happened?

And could he fix it?

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

So, Harry, along with his motley crew of parahumans, has come back to the Potterverse, with Dragon and the Simurgh along for the ride. Yikes.

Now, I'll be blunt. I only know about the story of Worm in broad strokes, so any vagueness as to what happened is deliberate. Harry and company will allude to various events that they got involved in, but after this initial chapter, there'll be no other elements of the Worm-verse coming in, other than the parahumans who came over. Any mistakes I make can be chalked up to it being an AU of Earth Bet, partly due to Harry's influence. However, Harry, Tattletale/Sarah, Skitter/Taylor, and Amy/Panacea are about 18. Harry should be 14, but, well, timey-wimey. We'll get to that later.

They were on the run partly because Harry's connection to the Simurgh got them too much heat, and after refusing to join certain factions (including the Cauldron), they went on the run, aided and abetted by a few other groups, including the now deceased Defiant/Armsmaster and Dragon. And yes, Dragon's AI has been fully downloaded into one of her suits/gynoids. But the process was pretty traumatic, along with losing Defiant and breaking free of Richter's chains.

In case you're wondering about certain other characters…well, Danny Hebert is dead (thanks to the gangs), Brandish disowned Panacea (and Glory Girl blamed Harry), the Slaughterhouse 9 are dead thanks to the Cleaners, as is Coil.

Now, you'll be surely wondering, why would Harry want to stay in Magical Britain? I have to ask a counter-question: is Magical Britain, in all but the worst portrayals, anywhere near as bad as Brockton Bay, let alone the world of Worm? While Dumbledore's flaws will be noted, he will be a good guy in this story. Of course, he also has to deal with hardened, cynical pseudo-child soldiers with superpowers.

No numbered annotations this time.