So, I have some good news at least. My Witcher 3 crossover Zireael ui Dewin is getting close to being publishable, with twelve chapters finished and a thirteenth nearly ready. I do intend to write a few more before I publish it, assuming it gets into a state where I believe it ready to be published, but I hope this will be my first real hat into the ring of The Witcher. Well, aside from that oneshot crossover I did with the James Bond franchise, You Only Live Thrice, anyway.

In any case, this new sample chapter is my first, but hopefully not my last, foray into Genshin Impact fanfics. I'm not sure whether this particular take on the story will work out, but hopefully it will. It has a Harry/Sucrose pairing, and hopefully, you'll enjoy it...

EDIT: Sorry, but I've decided to change how the story goes. The new chapter will be posted soon...

SWEET ALCHEMY (ORIGINAL)

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.

However, their seemingly soft attitudes made them, on the whole, welcoming to the new and novel. Albeit not without some due caution, even if that wasn't in the manual for the Knights, anyway. And when an unknown person showed up, unconscious, in the nearby Cider Lake, it was to the Church of Favonius they were brought to to be healed, and then to the Knights, to be kept under watch until he would wake up.

They suspected that this person wasn't native to Mondstadt, which was true enough. What they didn't realise was that this person had come from further afield. In fact, he hadn't come from any part of Teyvat at all…

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.

In any case, while she was far from the only one qualified to tend to the sick and injured, she was probably the one with the least demands on her time. Her master and teacher, Albedo, had many tasks he needed to deal with, never mind his own hobbies and research, while the languid librarian and mage Lisa was more concerned with her duties in the library, though both came to check up on Sucrose and her charge from time to time. Jean's half-sister Barbara had done the initial healing when the boy had been pulled out of Cider Lake, but she had her own duties at the Cathedral to attend to.

And there were other issues involved. The Fatui had started sniffing around, and they often did so in matters that didn't concern them, even when they told others to mind their own business. A somewhat less-unwelcome nosy parker had been a former Knight of Favonius and current owner of the Dawn Winery, Diluc. For all that he decried the Knights of Favonius' ineffectuality, he still cared about Mondstadt in his own brusque, sardonic way, and he at least held back his tongue when dealing with the younger members of the Knights of Favonius.

Still, the increased attention did not help Sucrose's nerves. She wasn't at the mysterious boy's side 24/7, she had time enough for rest and performing her own experiments. But she was ultimately responsible for his well-being, until such time as he woke up, and could answer their questions.

Sucrose began her morning examination of the boy. Nothing really had changed. The boy appeared to be about her age, with a messy mop of dark hair. He wore glasses, and his eyes, when she opened them to examine his pupillary responses, were emerald. He had a rather nasty scar on his forehead, shaped like a lightning bolt. A touch on the scrawny side. While his effects didn't include a Vision, it did include what looked like a magic wand, like the Catalysts mages of yore were supposed to wield. There was certainly magic residing inside it, given her analyses.

Not long after she did so, Acting-Grandmaster Jean walked in. The tall blonde sighed when she saw the supine form of her patient on the bed. "So, he hasn't woken yet?"

"No. It shouldn't be long, I don't think there's anything keeping him asleep, at least in terms of his physiology," Sucrose said in her quiet tones. "I'm just not sure whether forcing him awake might cause any damage. I even asked Lisa whether we should have her jolt him awake with a slight application of Electro, and she told me it was a bad idea, and quite seriously. She's almost never serious, so when she does be serious…"

"…You know to pay attention," Jean said. "I have nothing urgent needing my attention, for a change. No doubt someone will be along, with news about how the Fatui are causing problems at the hotel, or Klee's escaped her room, or Rosaria is bringing me more suspicions about Albedo…she's a good worker when she puts her mind to it, but she's as suspicious as Diluc is, which means occasionally beyond a reasonable level. And the Darknight Hero made themselves known again last night."

Sucrose nodded. Jean was a hard worker, and even before Grandmaster Varka left on his expedition with the majority of the Knights of Favonius, she was known for her diligence and adherence to duty…even to a fault. More than once, Sucrose had to help her after she collapsed from exhaustion.

Before she could make any further remark, the boy lying on the bed stirred and groaned. His eyes were flickering open. He tried to speak, only for it to come out as a croak that degenerated into coughing.

"Take it easy," Sucrose said gently, trying to muster up her limited reserves of social ability to bring to bear. "We fished you out of Cider Lake, you were half-drowned."

"…Cider Lake?" the boy asked. "I…where are…my glasses?'

"Here," Sucrose said, handing them over from where they were on the bedside table. He put them on, and then looked at the pair of them, staring at them.

"…Where am I? Who are you two?"

Jean cleared her throat. "I am Acting-Grandmaster Jean Gunnhildr of the Knights of Favonius. And this is Assistant Alchemist Sucrose. You're currently in the Knights of Favonius headquarters in Mondstadt."

"Mondstadt? Is that in Germany? Switzerland or Holland, maybe? No, you guys are speaking English," the boy remarked, frowning.

"Germany?" Jean asked, shooting Sucrose a look. Sucrose shook her head. She'd never heard of a country called that. "In any case, may I ask what your name is and where you hail from?"

"…Harry Potter, and I'm from Britain." His eyes widened in shock, even as Sucrose and Jean digested his rather plain name, and the unknown name of his homeland. "No, Sirius!" He looked at them, urgently. "Listen, there should've been someone else with me, someone called Sirius Black?"

"…We found nobody else but you, Harry," Jean said, before adding, "I'm sorry. If you're feeling up to it, I think we need to ask you a few questions. In fact, given what you were saying…I think you have some of your own…"

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 (eventual) 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.

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.