So...it's been a while since I've posted anything. Honestly, work on my Nahida-centric Genshin Impact crossover (now retitled My Sister's Keeper, so keep an eye out for it under this name) has been slow going, though I hope it will get published in the next month or so, as will my Harry/Raynare High School DxD crossover. I'm just publishing this little number from the archives as a way of tiding you guys over.

Some years back, I got into Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. I managed to put out a Harry/Kallen story, Warlock, which, while mostly good, also has some cringey elements in hindsight (including Harry being a touch too OP for the time he would have been from), as well as an Overlord crossover, which was even more cringey. Still, I wanted to write more fics involving Code Geass. This was one of the attempts that got somewhere.

Unfortunately, despite the promise of a rather sweet Harry/Euphemia pairing, I found myself second-guessing matters. In the end, it felt too much like I was writing an OC who was called Harry Potter, and while that is true to some degree in many fanfics, including my own, I try to remain true to what I feel Harry could or would become from divergence points in my fics. In addition, another author, YDdraigGoch94, wanted to do their own take on the pairing, and I was seeing if anything would turn up. And writing for Code Geass can be tiresome, considering that I have to push it off the rails, even if by increments, without compromising Lelouch and other characters' tactics and intelligence.

I actually forgot to post it in the Cauldron, and I've been sitting on it for a few years. On occasion, I had considered posting the first couple of chapters during the Christmas mass updates, but I always had something else to post.

So, why post it now? Well, you guys have gone through something of a drought from yours truly for a while, and honestly, I should have posted this years ago. Besides, I am seriously considering revisiting Code Geass, and with a rather unexpected pairing: Harry/Cornelia. Yes, I think I can make that work, believe it or not. So it's fitting that I come back to this fic attempt and post the first couple of chapters.

Hope you enjoy...

EUPHEMIA'S MAGE KNIGHT

CHAPTER 1:

TOWARDS ZERO(1)

Cornelia li Britannia was more than a little irritated, and much of this had to do with the teenaged boy slouching in the chair across the desk from her. His seemingly insolent attitude was only a relatively small part of it, as she had gotten used to it. While you couldn't go so far as to call him a genius, his usefulness gave him a notion that he could relax the standards of protocol, at least privately. And to tell the truth, she had known him for long enough that she, albeit on sufferance, allowed it. He was one of the younger sons of one of her best commanders, surprisingly smart and perceptive, and certainly the catalyst for the organisation she unofficially and covertly ran within the Britannian military.

No, the main reason why she was irritated with the teenager in front of her was that her sister, bless her impulsive and kind little heart, had seen fit to recently make him her personal Knight.

Cornelia sighed inwardly. Euphemia needed a personal Knight sooner rather than later. Being one of the core members of that incestuous cesspool they were forced to call a family demanded it, and not just because of tradition. Euphemia was in danger from enemies both without and within, even within their own family. Cornelia didn't trust her father one jot, and Prince Schneizel was a snake in the grass, though Schneizel probably had the most sentimental attachment (Cornelia was not sure whether her older brother was capable of anything like love) to Euphemia.

Of course, there was the fact that the two clearly had some sort of relationship that went beyond what was proper for a royal and their Knight. Not that Cornelia could talk: if it weren't for her station, she would have gone further with her relationship with her own personal Knight, Gilbert GP Guilford. But Euphemia had confessed that, not so long ago, shortly after her 16th birthday, not long after they returned from their kidnapping, that they were taking their relationship further. Not quite as far as bedding each other, but still…

Cornelia knew that Euphemia's Knight would do nothing to harm her. For all his cockiness and lack of adherence to protocol, he was a fine young man, and it was Euphemia who made the first moves. Still, it didn't stop Cornelia from threatening the teenager in front of her with execution if he did harm Euphie.

"May I ask why I am here, Cornelia?" the young man asked. "If it's about Euphie…"

"No. There is an important matter to discuss. I take it you have seen the news?"

"If by that, you mean Clovis getting shot by an unknown assailant, and the Purists have trotted out their scapegoat, the son of the late Prime Minister of Japan, then yes," he said. "I personally think that is BS. I doubt an Honorary Britannian would get close enough. It'd either be a traitor higher up in the ranks, or else a Japanese terrorist who had some infiltration ability. Though they were sketchy about the details on TV. It's blatantly false to anyone with half a brain that the terrorists set off a poison gas bomb and killed the civilians when you can see the bullet wounds on the civilians. What has Jeremiah said?"

"He's filled in the details via our covert channels. Supposedly, a local group of terrorists broke into a facility and stole what my brother and General Bartley Aspirius claimed was a chemical weapon. Given that Britannia has adhered to international treaties on biological and chemical weapons, it seems odd for Clovis to be creating poison gas for warfare, though my brother was ambitious and tended not to think beyond his own ambitions, sad to say." She didn't like to speak ill of Clovis, but while clever when it came to making connections and doing PR, he was, admittedly, not so clever on other matters.

The Knight nodded, grimacing. "I'm sensing more to this."

"Of course there is. The reports are relatively confused. However, Margrave Gottwald reported that Clovis ordered a purge of the Shinjuku Ghetto. Despite it being a hotbed for trouble with the Elevens, to say nothing of Refrain, it was also one of the more productive areas. Purging the ghetto didn't make sense from an economic standpoint. Gottwald reports that, while at first the terrorists were being beaten back, they suddenly managed to fight back in a somewhat better fashion, turning it into a rout. Apparently the terrorists intercepted a train with Sutherlands on them."

"But even giving them Knightmares wouldn't have necessarily turned things around," the Knight mused. "Then again, that might have addressed the gap in military power between them, allowing their commander to strike back properly."

"Perhaps. Clovis got desperate enough to accept the Earl of Pudding's offers of help, using a prototype seventh-generation Knightmare Frame dubbed the Lancelot," Cornelia said. "Asplund sent out Suzaku Kururugi in it. It was shortly after his deployment that Clovis was murdered. That alone shows the conceit of his being able to murder Clovis to be false, as when he wasn't within the Lancelot, he was seen by Asplund and his people. The Purist Faction, however, have decided to make an example of Kururugi, in order to scrap the Honorary Britannian system. And for all that I distrust Numbers, what recordings I have obtained of his piloting the Lancelot show him to be a superlative Devicer, on a par with one of the Knights of the Round. I despise wastage, and what the Purists are doing is utterly wasteful."

"Can't Jeremiah overrule them?"

"No. At best, he can order that Kururugi's execution be delayed until I get there. The Purists have seized power in Area 11, and Gottwald is now the temporary Viceroy, but Kewell is looking overly ambitious, and was the one who suggested Kururugi's scapegoating. They want everything to look clean before I get there, in case I blame Clovis' death on their incompetence. In truth, aside from his murderer, Clovis himself and that sycophantic fool Aspirius were more likely to be blamed in the incompetence stakes."

"Hence why you want to hurry up and turn this part of the Middle East into…Area 18, was it? Euphie told me that you were going to be the new Viceroy, and she would be assisting you as Sub-Viceroy, mostly with economic and diplomatic matters. She said we were heading to Japan soon for that reason."

"Amongst others. Unfortunately, we are no closer to finding out who murdered Lady Marianne, and while we have found Lelouch and Nunnally, we can't do anything without alerting our father, and their enemies, to their continued survival. At least until now. Though it is not the only disappearance we had to deal with. I still can't believe wizards from another world managed to kidnap both of you, even with the photos and footage you took with your phones."

"Hey, we had some help there. That old goat may have poked his nose too much into our business, but he got us the textbooks for much of what we needed. Not to mention that Hermione girl. Anyway, you still interrogated me for…how long was it again? A week?"

"It was a debriefing."

Euphemia's Knight gave her a flat look. "I was accused of kidnapping her. You wanted to emasculate me for what you thought was an elopement. And the less said about the Emperor's rather lurid threats, the better. He actually gave a crap about Euphie, who knew? Or at least he can pretend. And then there was Schneizel."

"Can you blame us?" Cornelia asked. It had been one of the most heart-wrenching times of her life, when her sister Euphemia and her Knight had disappeared. Eyewitnesses claimed that they had vanished in a blast of blue flames that nonetheless didn't burn anything, and this certainly showed up in CCTV footage. But Euphemia's Knight had already become known for having…abilities. Abilities that were known only to a select few.

"I guess not. It's not fun to go through, though."

Cornelia had to concede that much. She looked at the teenaged boy, thin and lanky, with a perpetually untameable mop of black hair, emerald eyes flashing behind glasses, and, now faded, a lightning bolt-shaped scar snaking its way out from beneath his forehead. Harold 'Harry' Darlton, an orphaned boy from, it seemed, another world. And the one most concerned with protecting her sister. Of all her family, it was Euphie she loved most, with Lady Marianne's children a close second.

"Consider these your orders before you head to Area 11 tonight. You will make contact with Lelouch and Nunnally vi Britannia, discreetly. You will also be asked to cooperate with Margrave Jeremiah Gottwald to find the real killer of my brother. But most importantly of all, Harry Darlton, you will protect my sister, with your very life if need be."

"I will, Cornelia…"

The rather informal (by Cornelia's standards, anyway) briefing echoed through Harry Darlton's head as he sat by the side of his charge and the love of his life in the hotel room in Japan a few days later. Well, Area 11, but he was something of an iconoclast, and preferred to think of them by their original names. He only called them that with trusted individuals, like his father, or the li Britannia sisters.

That he and Euphemia were sitting close enough to be considered more intimate than people of their respective stations should be spoke to the closeness of their relationship. They'd known each other for nearly a decade now, starting a few months after he ended up in the Darlton estate. In hindsight, he learned that his magic brought him there after Vernon Dursley gave him a beating. And his first impression of the man he called Father wasn't a good one. Then again, General Andreas Darlton did look intimidating, what with the massive scar bisecting his face.

However, Darlton was, beneath a gruff exterior, a rather compassionate man. He'd adopted a number of other children before, and adopting Harry was no trouble at all, though they marked down his living in Surrey in England as delusion, given that the British Isles in this world had been conquered by the Euro-Universe. From there, he had grown to know the Britannian Imperial family, or at least part of it.

He didn't think much of most of them. Clovis was vain and more obsessed with appearances than anything. Odysseus was plump and rather weak. The less said about some like Carine or Guinevere, the better. And Schneizel, though courteous and polite, was also very much a cunning mastermind.

However, he soon befriended, thanks to his father, Cornelia li Britannia. So serious, even in her teens, though she still had some sparks of an impishness that her sister, Euphemia, retained. And, through Cornelia being in charge of their security, the vi Britannias: Lady Marianne, and her children Lelouch and Nunnally.

But then, disaster. There was an attack on the Aries Villa where the vi Britannias lived. Marianne died of her wounds, while Nunnally was crippled, left a paraplegic from a bullet wound, and struck with psychosomatic blindness. The ensuing investigation was shut down by the Emperor, and Harry almost did what Lelouch did, storm into the throne room to demand justice. Then again, Harry might have ended up punished with worse than exile to Japan.

Before they were sent off, Harry, Euphie and Cornelia managed to meet with Lelouch, and tell him about how Marianne ordered Cornelia to remove many of the guards. Lelouch looked shocked, but the scrawny boy had also looked thoughtful, before thanking them. Then, he and Nunnally disappeared during the invasion of Japan, supposedly being killed by the Japanese. However, they later found out that they were alive and well, living with the Ashfords at their academy. It was decided by the small, loose cabal that had sprung up around the Darltons, the li Britannia sisters, and a few trusted others, like Margrave Gottwald and General Guilford, to not disclose this publicly. They knew that Lelouch and Nunnally had been sent to Japan as pawns…and if the invasion was any indication, Charles zi Britannia had deliberately sent them there to lull the Japanese into a false sense of security.

Euphemia was flicking through a file in her hands. God, she was beautiful, Harry thought. Long pink hair, violet eyes, Euphemia had the air of a fragile doll with her slender frame. But while gentle and peaceful, she also had a sharp and surprisingly devious mind, and she could be quite ruthless when the situation called for it. By contrast, Cornelia, while equally beautiful, had a stern, hard beauty. It wasn't without reason that Cornelia was called the Goddess of Victory and the Witch of Britannia. "Clovis has left a mess here, economically," she muttered, her lips pursed in a frown. "He allowed graft to spread, to say nothing of Refrain manufacture. He didn't even seem to care that Refrain manufacturers and dealers were being helped by known agents of the Chinese Federation."

"Hmm. We'll have to clean up that mess. Remember, Euphie, Cornelia will have to deal with a lot of the harsher aspects of rule, but you'll have to ensure that the Japanese will have less cause to resent you."

"I know. I want to rule a gentler Empire, not a weak one," Euphie said. She looked at the TV, which was showing live news footage of the parade bringing Suzaku Kururugi to his court martial. "It's sickening. Is that a shock collar around his neck?"

"Yeah. They don't want him to be able to protest his innocence. At least Jeremiah's had enough sense to let Kewell take the lead," Harry said. "But they've agreed to delay sentencing until Cornelia arrives. I've heard something concerning from the testimony they squeezed out of Aspirius. He claims he can't remember what happened, and while that stinks of being an excuse…well, remember, the wizards back on my birthworld could tamper with memories. And Villetta Nu, one of Gottwald's offsiders, confessed to a blank section of memory during the Shinjuku purge. She was in her Sutherland investigating the death of Clovis' Royal Guard, and the next thing she knows, her Sutherland was stolen."

Euphemia nodded. "It sounds suspicious, but…wait. What did they just say?"

Harry brought his attention to the TV, where they were showing footage of what appeared to be Clovis' ostentatious vehicle being driven along the highway towards the convoy. It slowed to a stop, and then, the top part of the vehicle, where Clovis would normally stand if it weren't covered by a box fitted with the Britannian flag, suddenly burst into flames and disappeared, revealing an extraordinary figure.

The figure was slender, but dressed in a vaguely military coat that seemed to wrap around them like a cloak. A helmet concealed their features. And then, they spoke, their voice warped and distorted by some sort of vocoder or voice changer, but nonetheless having an air of command and theatricality to it.

"I AM…ZERO!"

Harry and Euphie watched on as the Purists and 'Zero', whoever he was, engaged in exchanging threats. But then, Zero revealed a bulbous form behind him, and a dead man's switch. "A bomb?" Euphie asked.

"Not quite, it looks like the descriptions Jeremiah shared of how Aspirius described the poison gas capsule they were trying to retrieve," Harry said. "But he hasn't even said it's poison gas. He's taken the bystanders hostage."

They watched on in horror as Zero revealed that he was the one who killed Clovis, and demanded Suzaku Kururugi's release. He then put the pressure on, and threatened to reveal something from Kewell's past called 'Orange'. Just after Zero threatened to reveal Orange if Kewell didn't help him, Harry noticed something. Something seemed to slide open on Zero's helmet. Then, Kewell, who had been threatening Zero's life, seemed to do a 180 in attitude, demanding that Kururugi be freed.

"…Did you notice that?" Harry asked as chaos ensued. "How part of his helmet slid open before Kewell did this?"

Euphie nodded, frowning. "Do you think this 'Orange' thing holds any weight?"

"Maybe…and yet, there's something about that thing with the helmet that bothers me. We'll need to make sure we have tapes of this, especially if Zero wasn't bragging and he really did kill Clovis…" Their eyes suddenly widened with horror as the capsule split open, and coloured smoke wafted out. However, when it reached the crowd, all it did was provoke some coughing.

Euphie, after a moment, murmured, "Zero was bluffing. If it really was poison gas, we'd have seen more effects by now."

"Depends on the chemical, but I think you're right," Harry said. "But look…Zero's escaped, along with the driver of Clovis' pimpmobile and Kururugi. I think tomorrow morning, we need to give Jeremiah a call. Still…" He looked at Euphie, and said, with considerable understatement, "Things have just gotten a lot more complicated…"

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

Yes, indeed. So, Harry is Euphie's Knight. And it seems that some players in Code Geass are just a little more perceptive.

1. This is a bit of a bad pun on the Agatha Christie novel Towards Zero.