Now, before I get onto this really weird crossover (the next instalment of Spanner in the Works will be posted with the upcoming early Christmas update, and thanks for putting The Cauldron over 800 reviews now), a bit of news. The early Christmas update is coming up soon, and some of you will be pleased to note that some stories I haven't updated in a LONG time WILL be updated. If you haven't been reading my profile (and if you haven't, shame on you), then you won't know that chief amongst those belated updates will be new chapters of Haemophilia and Nitimur in Vetitum. Haemophilia hasn't been updated for a year now, and Nitimur in Vetitum hasn't been updated for a year and a half, more or less. Hopefully, this will herald more frequent updates for them, particularly Haemophilia, but, well, no promises.

Besides those two, I'm also updating Yield to the Darkness, Ghost of Dalmasca, Neopolitan and the Goblet of Fire, Ignis Aurum Probat, Gorgon and Thanatos, Wings of the Forsaken, and The Uncertainty Principle. In addition, I am also updating the non-Potterverse stories Xenagogy for Belligerent AIs and Dungeon Denizens, Light the Blue Touch Paper and Run Like Hell, and putting a sample chapter into The Forbidden ANBU Files.

In what may excite you guys even more, I'm posting two new stories that had their origins right here in The Cauldron. RWBY fans can rejoice, as I have watched enough of the series to confidently start posting Under the Light of the Shattered Moon as a full story. And I will also be posting the first chapters of Never Tear Us Apart.

Okay, now that that bout of shameless plugging is over, let's get to this story. It's weird where ideas come from. I've been meaning to do a crossover with the Cthulhu Mythos for some time (including an abortive Sekirei crossover, as some of you might know, called Madness, Chaos, and Wagtails), but it wasn't until now that I've managed to find the right hook for it. People reading this will doubtlessly see the DNA of my Batman crossover Verdant Magic in it, and while nowhere near as cracky as On the Delights of Drinking Blood, it will have a not dissimilar tone, as well as having elements from Puella Magi Luna Magica. I was also inspired a little by Haiyore! Nyaruko-San, as well as a webcomic I used to read before it got put on hiatus called Ow! My Sanity, which is basically Oh My Goddess meeting the Cthulhu Mythos. The title took a bit of work, but in the end, it was pretty damned obvious.

The reason I am posting this now is that, if I write enough chapters, I might just post this for the Christmas update. After all, who doesn't want eldritch abominations around Christmas time?

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE

CHAPTER 1:

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LITTLE WHINGING

Many things were forbidden to the young Harry Potter when he was growing up in the prison…sorry, home of his relatives at 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. Some of those prohibitions fell away when he went to Hogwarts, but others remained in place. But with his being isolated by the people he had thought of as friends, at a time when he thought he needed it most, after Cedric's death, these edicts chafed at him more than ever.

And the weird dreams, too. Not just the nightmares, of Cedric, the graveyard, of Voldemort and the Death Eaters. No, these dreams of strange and horrifying creatures, dreams that were almost literally indescribable. They disturbed him, and yet, they drew him in, enthralled them in a bizarre way.

In any case, he was finding his ability to give a fuck about any of the strictures of the Dursleys lessening. And one of those that he had been dying to break was about the attic. The hatch had tempted him from a young age, though the one time he had tried to break it…his aunt had broken his arm.

Well, this time, he was going to find out what his aunt was hiding. Maybe it was something of his mother's that that bitch Petunia hadn't burnt. Maybe it was monies. Or maybe it was something his mother meant for Harry, but Petunia had kept away from him out of spite.

Or, it could be useless pieces of shit. Or maybe it was a deformed evil brother of Dudley (or wouldn't that make him the good twin, even if he was deformed?) kept in the attic because there was no room in the cupboard under the stairs, for obvious reasons? Harry had occasionally heard strange noises from the attic, after all.

So, when Vernon and Petunia went off to watch Dudley's boxing match, Harry took his chance. They'd be gone for a few hours at least. So once he was sure they were gone, he got out a stepladder, and clambered up to the hatch, ready to pull it down. He snarled quietly in pain as he whipped his hand away from the latch. When he touched the metal latch, it felt like an electric shock. Touching it again, though, got no such reaction. Must've been static or something.

He pulled the hatch down, and climbed up into the attic. Thankfully, he had thought to bring a torch as he moved through the dusty attic. An attic, he was sure, nobody had really been in for years. The dust was thicker than Dudley's skull, and that was saying something. He was surprised that Petunia hadn't ordered him to clean up here, given that they made him their own personal House Elf, but still…

There were piles and piles of junk. Some of it he recognised as detritus from Dudley's second room, the one he now occupied. Shit that the spoilt little fat brat had demanded, broken, and discarded, no matter how expensive it was. Harry recognised an old NES and a Sega Master System, a few action figures, a broken globe…all of it wasted on an ungrateful little bastard.

He hated it. He hated lacking power. He didn't want for fame over in Magical Britain, but that could easily turn to infamy, as his second year, as well as the Tri-Wizard Tournament, showed. But he had been so powerless. He had been forced to flee Voldemort with his tail between his legs…though he had to wonder why his mother didn't appear during that whole spectacular lightshow. That had been mildly disturbing. Did that mean his mother was alive somewhere? In a coma? Or had she abandoned him?

And he found himself becoming more and more misanthropic (wouldn't Hermione be surprised to learn he knew such a word?). And that had only increased the longer he went without letters from his so-called friends, despite them promising to write. No, they had left him in the dark, leaving him to Durzkaban, with no news of what was happening in Magical Britain.

He was preoccupied by such thoughts that he didn't notice the coffin until he had all but tripped over it. In fact, he actually did trip over it. As he lay sprawled on the lid, he felt a sharp pain shoot through his body, and he began to convulse and spasm as if being electrocuted. He couldn't even scream, all he could do was jerk and writhe.

Then, everything seemed to dissolve into an actinic light…

In the office of Albus Dumbledore, the Sorting Hat froze, before a smirk came over its 'lips'. Thankfully, Dumbledore was conspicuous by his absence, and only Fawkes was really present to see the smirk. "Do you feel what I feel, Feather Duster?"

Fawkes emitted a trill of both confirmation and annoyance, the latter directed at the rather tattered hat. "Well…someone is in a LOT of trouble…after all, the Crawling Chaos has been freed…"

Within the Department of Mysteries, the Veil uttered whispers. Whispers that sounded like milliards of souls hissing simultaneously, in the utmost terror and fear, Oh SHIT…

Within the bowels of Azkaban, the bowels (or at least whatever passed for them) of the Dementors roiled and boiled. And for the first time in a very long time, though not long enough for them, the Dementors felt an emotion that they weren't exactly fans of.

Fear.

As she watched from the stands of the boxing ring, Petunia Dursley, top contender for Biggest Bitch of Little Whinging for over a decade, felt something like a cold chill run down her spine. And she knew, just knew, that something truly bad had just happened…and it wasn't the fact that her son had just lost a tooth…

Across the Earth, across the cosmos, vast beings barely comprehensible by human minds slumbered uneasily, knowing, even within the depths of their sleep, that one of their number had returned…though some slept uneasily because of eager anticipation…

"Hurry, you fools!" snarled Ragnuk, the ruler of the Goblins, in Gobbledegook. "If that one finds anything out of place, it will mean our uncertain doom!"

"…Don't you mean certain doom, Lord Ragnuk?" asked another Goblin.

"I know what I said, you imbecile! This is a being you do NOT want to piss off! This is no weakling wizard! This is an Outer God!"

In a dark house, a teenaged girl paused in the middle of reading a tome of eldritch lore. Why did she have this odd sensation?

If someone was in possession of a magical eye, they would have seen what looked like a tempest of magical energy, centred on 4 Privet Drive. A multi-coloured tornado that swirled around violently, like the diarrhoea of a rainbow swirling down a drain after being flushed down the toilet (and that metaphor is, officially, dead). Not enough to make the trees or bushes do more than sway, or the house to do more than creak a little, but that was because most of the magic was affecting things on a different plane of existence.

Of course, one of the watchers assigned to 4 Privet Drive was Mad-Eye Moody, and he could have seen this happen, and understood what it meant. However, he wasn't there. In fact, instead, the assigned watcher was one Mundungus Fletcher, a man who didn't really care about watching over the Boy Who Lived, being, instead, a dodgy spiv who preferred to either get drunk and pass out under an Invisibility Cloak, or else going off to make various dodgy deals.

It was the latter he was currently engaged in, trying to sell off some broomsticks that had fallen off the back of the Knight Bus, no questions asked or answered. Which meant that, when things happened, nobody was around to witness it. And while the events to follow could not be blamed entirely on him, he certainly could have notified someone, had he actually noticed something.

But he didn't…

Well, it was official. This had made it right to the top of the most painful experiences he had ever had. He never thought anything would be above being given the Cruciatus by Voldemort, or being bitten by a Basilisk. But what do you know? This actually succeeded in supplanting those.

He felt cool, soothing hands stroking his cheek. "My darling boy," he heard someone coo. A voice familiar to him from the memories dredged up by the Dementors' aura. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Harry's eyes flickered open, revealing that he was in the lap of a young, red-haired woman with emerald eyes. A beautiful woman, who looked very familiar. Well, she ought to be. She was his mother.

And…she was naked. And apparently not caring.

With a yelp of surprise, Harry shot off her lap, scooting backwards. "What…who…why…huh?" he stammered.

Lily Potter sighed, pouting slightly, before she snapped her fingers. Black shadows seemed to writhe across her body, and when they were done, she was dressed in a rather slinky, figure-hugging dress with a sort of dark cape or shawl along the back…which still managed to show some cleavage in the front(1). "There. Better?"

After a moment, Harry managed to engage his brain again, and said, "No. How…how can you possibly be still alive?"

"I think the better question is, why am I here?" Lily said. "Not that I can prove who I am to you. Not unless we go to Gringotts, anyway." She pursed her lips. "So, where should I begin? Well, when you fell across my little coffin, and things happened, I saw your memories, so I'll fill in the bits you don't know. It wasn't love that saved you from Voldemort, at least not directly. It was my love for you, true, that motivated me, but I had every intention of surviving that night. A little Killing Curse can't kill one such as me."

Harry had to wonder what she meant by that, but she continued. "Of course, I needed to put on a convincing act, so down I went. Then, Voldemort turned his wand on you. Now, had you been more grown, that wouldn't have inconvenienced you so much, but I had to awaken your powers enough to survive that night. Unfortunately, someone had other plans. I was sealed up in this coffin. Normally, such a thing would be a trifle to me, but unfortunately, awakening your power sapped a lot of mine, and on top of being hit with the Killing Curse…well, I wanted to keep this body. It has good sentimental value, you know?" Lily then cupped a breast briefly. "I mean, regenerating a body can be a real bitch, and well, I was betrayed, weakened beyond what I thought. So, I got locked away in the coffin. I was delivered up here, and every now and then, Petunia would have a good gloat at me. That's why she kept you out of the attic."

"Because I would free you?"

"Oh, that was entirely accidental. There are wards here keeping me in place, as well as restricting the entirety of your powers, powers that, well, they'd make the sheeple here turn on you in an instant. And those very wards were powered by your own powers. Really, the only thing that could keep beings like us imprisoned is the power of another such entity. A cruel irony, considering they used my son to do so. But, well, the funny thing was, I don't think that they tried hard enough to keep you out, save for a small ward you overloaded by accident. The runes work is pretty sloppy, and the arithmancy was done in a hurry. Oh, it was good stuff, but it'd have to be to keep us under control. But it was also done with some haste. Which'll be their downfall. You see, your power was used to power the wards keeping me here. But when you got close to the epicentre of the wards, making contact with my prison the way you did basically caused the equivalent of a short-circuit. I don't think they would have foreseen that. I certainly didn't. Rather annoying I didn't think of it first, but…well, I'm out now. And I'm mildly vexed."

"…Mildly vexed that you were kept in a coffin for nearly fifteen years?" Harry was on the verge of turning sixteen. And he would have thought that anyone would be more than mildly vexed at being imprisoned for so long.

"Oh yes. It's not the first time that it's happened, though it's the first time for a millennium or two. Bloody embarrassing when it happens, though. Which reminds me, never go on a pub crawl with someone with access to the actual Necronomicon. It never ends well."

"The Necro…nomicon?" Harry knew of that book. Out of boredom, he had read various books at the local library, one of his few retreats from the Dursleys. And that included the works of HP Lovecraft. Racist as all hell, and the language was pretty dry and overly long and lyrical, but Lovecraft did know how to make a good atmosphere. And he felt a feeling of dread crawl up his spine at the implications.

"Oh, you know? Well, this should be easy, even if Lovecraft deliberately misrepresented me. I swear, that stupid racist agelastic(2) bastard…I should never have agreed to those interviews. Anyway, I should really tell you who I really am, son. I'm not sure that you'd believe me, but, well, it's true." Lily grinned. "I'm your mother, Lily Evans, though most people know me as the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep." She gave a little wave and a big grin. "Hi."

This proved to be too much for Harry. Understandably, he fainted, the last thing he heard before the darkness of unconsciousness consumed him was his mother saying, "Was it something I said?"

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

Oh dear. Lily Evans was really Nyarlathotep? And Harry's powers were used to imprison her? So, who imprisoned her? Well, let's find out…

The whole reaction thing was partly based on my Puella Magi Madoka Magica two-shot crossover Puella Magi Luna Magica. I wholeheartedly recommend it, if only because you get to see Kyuubey getting owned by Luna.

1. I was thinking something along the lines of Salem's outfit from RWBY.

2. An agelast is someone who is not known to laugh or show any mirth. TV Tropes' picture of Lovecraft shows him trying, and failing miserably, to smile.