Sadly, my original take on this story didn't go so well. I decided to revisit whitetigerwolf's 'Animagus Lover' challenge to provide a new angle, in order to allow Harry and Sucrose to bond.

Hope you enjoy...

SWEET ALCHEMY (REVISED)

CHAPTER 1:

THE ALCHEMIST AND THE WIZARD

He couldn't sleep that night. The Dawn Winery was a luxurious manor by any standard, and despite Diluc having a massive stick up his arse, he was at least courteous enough and kind enough to let them stay on the trip to Liyue. But everything that had happened over the last little while had conspired to prevent him from sleeping, at least for long.

So he wandered out of the manor, and looked up at the star-speckled sky. It had already hit him that he was stranded, far away from home, but looking at those stars, in positions he had never seen stars in before, reminded him of his plight. He may have made new friends on coming here, but he had left his old friends, what few of them he had, in the worst possible situation. He wasn't even sure if they were alive, and despite everything they kept from him, despite everything they went through in that year, he didn't want them dead by any means, or even harmed.

Tears began blurring his sight. Would he ever be able to get home? That depended entirely on one of his travelling companions, who claimed to have travelled between worlds rather casually not so long ago. But that power had been taken from her by a vicious deity who had denounced her efforts as 'the arrogation of mankind', whatever the hell that was. And it wasn't all that had been taken from her either. Her twin brother and fellow traveller had been as well.

He had no idea how long their journey would take, and given what they had encountered so far, it would probably be a long time. He'd already spent over a month in this world, this Teyvat. It was a beautiful world, a wonderful world, even with all the threats and horrors infesting it like the Fatui or the Abyss Order.

But it wasn't his own.

It wasn't footsteps that heralded the arrival of company, but a strange noise, almost like an ethereal version of a water drop falling into a pool. By now, it had become a familiar, and somewhat welcome sound. Though he wasn't sure how welcome she would be.

"Are you okay?" asked the high-pitched voice, unusually quiet and solemn.

"…Do I look okay?" he asked.

"…No. Paimon thinks you look far from okay," the voice said, and he looked up to its owner. A tiny little thing, floating in mid-air as if it was the most normal thing in the world, looking like a little girl with a strange floating tiara, and a cape that seemed to trail stars and constellation-like patterns in her wake. There was something vaguely imp-like or pixie-like to her appearance. Her purple eyes were unusually solemn, when they often sparkled with life, while her cute features were creased in concern.

"…And you'd be right, Paimon," he said quietly. "I…I just…I miss them, Paimon. I want to go back, to save them…but here I am, having to run around this world, trying to find a way to go back. Lumine's my best hope of doing so. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't want to help her or Teyvat. The people at Mondstadt at least have treated me well, for the most part." His eyes flickered to the doors of Dawn Winery. "Especially her."

Paimon looked to the door, and then back to him. "You mean that sweet, shy little alchemist? Yeah, Paimon could tell you two have become good friends pretty quickly. Paimon was surprised when Albedo said she should come with us." The imp-like being turned back to him. "Do you want a hug?"

The little pixie spread out her arms, and for a moment, he couldn't help but chuckle wearily. Her arm-span wasn't enough to encompass him. It was more of her offering to let him hug her, rather than the other way around. And for all the times when Paimon spoke too much, was more gluttonous than his cousin or uncle, or got annoyingly shrill, when she wanted to help, you could feel the sincerity. So he gently hugged Paimon.

The embrace wouldn't take away all the pain he felt for now. It never could. But it helped. And it helped that he had made other bonds in this world. They helped distract him from the pain of being torn away from all that he knew. And maybe, even if and when he returned, those new bonds could remain.

But even as he hugged Paimon, he thought back to how he met these people, how some perverse quirk of fate drew him here…

The City of Mondstadt, the capital of the country that also bore that name, was a city built on freedom. It had been a founding principle ever since the overthrow of the tyrannical Decarabian, the late and unlamented God of Storms, and while Mondstadt had some troubles pursuing that ideal, it tried to adhere to that very creed to this day. Even now, the closest thing the region had to rulers were the Knights of Favonius, and the Church of Favonius.

Many looked on Mondstadt from afar and thought them weak, soft, impotent and effete. But people forgot that the Knights, for all their seeming ineffectuality, were still an effective fighting force, even with most of their number gone on an urgent expedition. They had been founded after the overthrow of aristocrats who had taken Decarabian's place as tyrants, founded on the ideals of fighting for freedom. And if you pushed them far enough…they would do more than merely push back.

Thus, Mondstadt, on the whole, was somewhat peaceful, and yet, it did accommodate change, to some degree. Fitting, then, that when a certain girl found an injured bird and, on a whim, helped it out, the seeds were sown for an even greater change. If for nobody else but this girl…

Gloved hands rummaged through the midden, carefully extracting yellowing bones. Said bones were examined by amber eyes peering from behind glasses, before being put into a sack. Despite being involved in something rather morbid and macabre, her lips were mostly pursed in thought, occasionally twitching into a small and gentle smile. One would not have thought this girl was a member of the Knights of Favonius.

The Knights of Favonius were an egalitarian organisation. In other words, if you had the skills and ability, and would adhere to their creed, then it mattered little what your age was. One only had to look at the Spark Knight, the rambunctious Klee, to see that. Then again, bringing her into the Knights was perhaps the best way to give her discipline and control, when the young Spark Knight's typical toys was high explosives.

Sucrose was somewhat older than Klee, being about 15, but she too had joined the Knights of Favonius at a young age, albeit at the recommendation of their top alchemist, Albedo. And while her line of work was as potentially dangerous as Klee's own, being alchemy, specifically bio-alchemy, Sucrose's temperament was different to Klee's. So much so that one would question why she was in the Knights of Favonius at all.

If one could describe Sucrose in a pithy phrase, it'd probably be 'shy genius'. She was quite a pretty girl, with green hair and amber eyes framed by glasses, though her features were often set in a pensive or nervous expression, and she was mostly soft-spoken. Oddly enough, a pair of strange tufts of hair would turn out to be, on closer examination, a pair of animal-like ears. Even Sucrose didn't know what lineage that had come from: her parents were both humans with no known bloodlines from those with animalistic features like the Kätzlein lineage the Springvale hunter Draff and his daughter Diona belonged to. There were rumours of kitsune from Inazuma, other humans with animalistic features from Sumeru, and of course the various Adepti of Liyue, to name but a few.

Yet nobody could deny her intelligence. True, it was paired with some disturbing quirks: her interest in bio-alchemy went hand in hand with an interest in bones and viscera that would have been considered morbid or macabre in almost any other person. In truth, her interest was almost purely intellectual, even if her habit of collecting bones in a sack had given rise to (or at least revived) an urban legend about a bone-collecting hag with a sack full of them.

She heard a cawing noise from nearby, and she turned to where a raven perched in a nearby tree. "It's okay, Shadow," the girl said. "I'm not going to linger here. I should be fine in Dadaupa Gorge, at least in this part of it. I don't intend to go too close to the Hilichurl settlements. And if any get too close, my Vision should be enough to hold them off long enough to make an escape."

The caw Shadow emitted seemed to hold a note of concern, though Sucrose wondered whether that was wishful thinking. She remembered the joking comparisons Lisa and Kaeya made to that rather overly-imaginative girl, Fischl (or, as she loved to dub herself, Fischl von Luftschloss Narfidort, the Prinzessin de Verurteilung of the Outer Realm Immernachtreich), which mortified her. Shadow was not like Oz, Fischl's companion. For one thing, Oz could talk, while Shadow could not. Oz often flickered with dark energy and Electro discharges, looking born from the very shadows. Shadow, on the other hand…his most remarkable features were emerald eyes and a strange marking above one of them, like a lightning bolt.

She'd found him a few months back. She had been going on a walk around Cider Lake (more as part of a routine break mandated by Grandmaster Varka, shortly before he left on his expedition) when she found him, washed up on the shoreline. It was as much curiosity as it was compassion that led her to pick up the bird and, on realising he was alive, nursing him back to health. She soon found that she had a pet, of sorts, one that seemed unusually intelligent, even for a raven.

Her experiments showed that he did have some residue of magic or something similar. Different to what was used by Visions or alchemy or anything else she could name, but still unmistakeably magic. But what was he?

Her musings were interrupted when she heard a familiar snarl. "Ika ya!"

She whirled to find a group of foes approaching her from behind, a small group of Hilichurls. They themselves were not the problem. The goblin-like masked creatures were dangerous, true, but nothing she couldn't handle. The problem was the creature directing them: dumpy, wearing a mask very different to the Hilichurls, vaguely beaked, wielding a staff, and floating around with a shield around it. An Electro Abyss Mage! Oh no, was it directing the Hilichurls?

The Abyss Mage snickered, a horrible thing in its distorted tones. It may look comical, but their kind was nothing but. "A long way from home, aren't you, girl?" it asked.

Sucrose didn't bother replying, at least with words. Whatever it intended for her wasn't good. Instead, she pulled out a flask and hurled it at the group. Her Astable Anemo Hypostasis Creation-6308 was a useful experiment in bio-alchemy…and as a weapon for defending herself if need be. The artificial Anemo Hypostasis would send out a blast of wind that would knock foes off their feet, enough time to make a quick getaway. The Abyss Mage was floating, but the Anemo attack would help kick up some dust, and that, plus the flying flailing bodies of the Hilichurls, would help obscure her escape.

Unfortunately, in her understandable panic, she forgot that Abyss Mages could teleport.

"Ypocc, vumt cbyla mega byban!" And suddenly, the Abyss Mage popped out of the very air in front of her, placing its mask back on its hidden face. As Sucrose froze, startled by its teleportation, the creature raised its wand, ready to attack…

…Only for Shadow to come between her and its attack. The raven screeched as the electricity made him convulse, and he dropped to the ground, feathers smoking slightly. "No!" Sucrose cried.

"Stupid feather-duster!" the Abyss Mage snarled. "Now, let's see if the Golden One will come running if we have its protégé as a hostage…"

Sucrose readied another flask with an artificial Hypostasis, but would it be enough? She could potentially take on an Abyss Mage, but she was alone, and if those Hilichurls recovered and attacked, well, it'd be tricky at least. But she wasn't going down without a fight. Though what did the Abyss Mage mean by 'Golden One'? Surely it didn't mean her master and teacher, Albedo?

But before she could put her plan into action, the convulsing form of Shadow suddenly seemed to grow, until where a raven had been…there was a boy about her age. Lanky, perhaps a little too thin, with a wild mop of black hair which had a few glossy black feathers sticking out of it. He was dressed in near-rags.

The Abyss Mage, thankfully, had been as bamboozled as she was by Shadow's metamorphosis, so it failed to react in time before the boy raised what looked like a wand…and snarled, "Incendio."

A blast of flame spat from the wand, and whether by serendipity or design, Sucrose recognised the flare of an Overload reaction from when Pyro met Electro. The Abyss Mage's barrier shattered, and it collapsed to the ground, stunned. Sucrose, after a moment, called out, "Stand clear!", and hurled her flask as the boy leapt away. The artificial Hypostasis manifested and hurled the Abyss Mage into the air.

The Abyss Mage crashed to the ground, twitching, possibly unconscious. The boy, after a moment, fired another jet of light from that wand at it, hissing, "Stupefy." The Abyss Mage went still.

With that, he turned to face her, only to frown and look past her. "Those…masked things, Hilichurls, I think you called them…are they going to be any trouble?"

Sucrose turned in time to see them backing away, and then fleeing. "…No, they won't be. Umm…Shadow, is that you?"

She turned back to him, and she was struck by his emerald eyes, no longer set in a raven's head, but in the face of a boy about her age. The lightning bolt-like patch of white feathers had now become a scar on his forehead, partly hidden by his messy mop of hair. And while she still felt a thrill of anxiety through her, he helped her.

"…Yes and no. I was the raven…I could barely remember myself until now…but Shadow is not my name," he said. "I'll explain what I can once we're back in Mondstadt…but my name is Harry Potter…"

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

So, Harry's ended up in Teyvat. And Sirius is nowhere to be found.

Now, I wrote the prologue like I did because…well, as much as Paimon annoys the shit out of me sometimes, she seems like the sort to try and comfort Harry. I'm of the view that Paimon isn't secretly evil, or at least knowingly so, amusing videos like that one where Nahida read Paimon's mind notwithstanding.

As for the pairing, well, for a teenaged Harry, it's not that tough. The options, IMO, boil down to Sucrose and Collei, though Amber, Noelle, Ayaka, Shinobu, Yanfei and Yomiya are also distinct if lesser possibilities. In case you're wondering who I'd pair with an adult Harry, Ei is the main frontrunner, along with Lisa, Ganyu, Shenhe, Ningguang, Beidou, Yelan and Jean. For a female Harry, it'd be a much shorter list, with Tighnari (especially now that Elliot Gindi has been replaced, and hopefully his sins have been removed from the role) at the top of the list.

My prior version was different to this one, but I thought the 'Animagus Lover' challenge by whitetigerwolf would help Sucrose and Harry bond before I get to the angsty stuff.

The Hilichur's utterance is actually from the game, but for the Abyss Mage casting its teleportation spell, I used my old standby for a conlang in using an Al Bhed translator.

Now, my original attempts at the story would have both Travellers involved with the Abyss Order, as a couple of fanfics have done, but in truth, I think it works better if Harry goes with one of them, in this story at least. Why? This version of Harry wants to go home, if only to stop Voldemort, and the Traveller regaining their abilities is his best bet. For the sake of this story, the Traveller is Lumine rather than Aether, and she'll be a big sister figure to Harry, and Sucrose.

No numbered annotations this time.