-8-

Harry Potter: The Tomb Raider

The tomb of N'Jobu, an infamous African dark wizard had been the dream of treasure hunters and thrill seekers for centuries. Many had failed to return.

While he hummed a Weird Sister's tune under his breath, long used to the African climate, Harry waved his hand over the rock, letting his magic feel for the illusions underneath; many African witches and wizards who had entombed themselves used runes which were powered up by the ambient magic in the atmosphere, but to hide from muggles the runic arrays were designed to purposefully mask and shield the tombs they were protecting from muggles.

The African magical world was hidden like all other communities of magic around the planet, but thanks to the vast size of Africa, their tombs could be found anywhere and the muggles would not find them. Magical cities had also found some ease in being built and then were carefully hidden from view, and many of these cities were both on the surface and flourished underground.

The rock rippled with different colours. Harry nodded and turned towards his fellow curse breakers.

"It's another 15-layer array," Kwabene commented. The pair of them had known each other since their time in Uagadou, and they had been good friends since before they both went into curse-breaking.

-8-

Harry Potter was a wizard, well they all were. Harry had lost his parents because of a Dark Wizard called Lord Voldemort. Harry was raised by an abusive family who hated magic. He had been raised in an environment of fear and pain, forced to do chores while the Dursleys' own son was allowed to do whatever he liked and pork whatever he liked to eat.

Harry had been haunted by strange incidents that happened whenever he was angry or frightened. He didn't know what it was all about at first, but he knew when it happened, and the Dursleys always stared at him like he was a monster. Harry had taken the time to experiment with his powers, and he found he could do stuff with his powers like a comic book superhero, and he had used comics as inspiration. It wasn't hard for him to eventually become proficient enough to get his cousin away from him.

When he found out he was a wizard and got his Hogwarts invitation, he was excited to learn what it was he could do, but he approached it with scepticism. He hadn't liked the way that the letters had a precise location of where he was, the Cupboard under the Stairs, the Smallest Bedroom…it was creepy, and then he told them to leave him alone.

But they didn't. They kept coming before that lumbering oaf Hagrid came to him, and took him to Diagon Alley. Hagrid was a simpleton, he had questionable intelligence, and it wasn't long before Hagrid told him that he had brought Harry to the Dursleys, at Albus Dumbledore's request. Harry was rushed through the Alley shopping for his supplies, while Hagrid had no intention of answering his questions.

He had returned to the Alley without the brainless oaf trailing after him, and he had learnt a lot more.

Discovering that his parents had died protecting him was shocking and comforting, but he was sceptical about it and why they simply hadn't taken him out of Britain when the war had been going so badly. He had been pissed off to know he had a list of guardians to care for him, but they never did; the Headmaster of Hogwarts had put him with the Dursleys, and he had declared himself guardian and ignored the strict instructions he was never meant to go there. It was also telling that many of the so-called guardians were dead or in prison, but the others had simply listened to Dumbledore and turned their backs on him.

Harry had written them a scathing letter, when the scandal of his abuse went through, and the attempted line thefts through a marriage contract made by the old bastard to some little girl of a family of supporters, with a price being low to accommodate them, and yet with his death they would take everything. The worst part was the contract was made two days after his parents' deaths. The son of a bitch had tried to get him killed, and he had probably planned for his family to die. Voldemort had been used.

After talking with the goblins and getting himself examined, he had the soul fragment in his scar left by Voldemort's attack and the magic of the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters removed to stop them from being a threat, while Harry took their advice and moved his vaults to new ones so then he had his own access. With their help, he left the country while the magical world reeled from the scandals which rocked it. The line theft charges and illegal marriage contract were bad enough, but there were also other spells Dumbledore placed on him, and they got him in further trouble.

And since the Weasleys, the family in the contract were involved thanks to their stupid mother writing and signing the forms, she was in greater trouble. The Weasleys were driven out of Britain and the stigma was following them still, while Dumbledore was put into hotter water when the aurors discovered the abuse he'd gone through after a visit to the Dursleys.

The magicals were furious. Ignoring Dumbledore assurances, the Dursley family - Vernon, Dudley, Marge, and Petunia - were questioned and then sent back to the mundane police due to their muggle status, but they learnt the depths of their mistake. And with the magical world was left reeling from the sudden loss of magic from all of the Death Eaters, except for Sirius Black, his supposed godfather. Harry had met him later that year after he had recovered enough from his decade in Azkaban, but Harry decided to keep their meetings brief because he wasn't able to fully trust adults, and nobody could blame him after all he had gone through.

The ICW had gotten involved. They had closed down Hogwarts and had been replacing the teachers to get rid of Dumbledore's presence and they had discovered many cursed items and past cases of bullying which ended with near fatal results.

While there had been many schools he had liked the look of, Harry had planned to spend a few hours going through the different school prospectuses and their histories before spending a couple of days making his decision, but in the end he had made his decision after finding Uagadou's prospectus and reading the details; he had been interested in Ilvermorny, Beauxbatons and Castelobruxo at first, and he had planned on spending a while thinking it through. Harry had gone to Uagadou, Africa's largest magical school after he had learnt of how excellent the school was. According to many sources the school lay in the continent where magic originated from, and since the school taught and used wandless magic it had been a no-brainer.

For the next seven years, he studied there, mastering runes, charms, transfiguration, alchemy and DADA before he went to become a curse breaker although he had also studied healing and had become a qualified healer and potions master and a tomb raider.

-8-

"Come on, let's do it," Harry said.

Together, Harry and the other curse breakers lifted their hands. Closing their eyes they used their magic to probe the runes and carefully study them; they had been taught a long time ago by their goblin employers to never play games, but none of the African wizards and witches of the team were stupid enough to even try, and neither was Harry; they had all learnt many witches and wizards had lacked the softly-softly approach adopted by many modern wizards. The traps on some of the tombs were capable of transforming human beings into living dead mummies or zombies, with no desire to do anything but consume anyone stupid enough to cross their paths.

And they were enchanted to hang around the entrance to the tombs. Not a nice way to go.

The curse breakers were there for two hours, not letting go with their magic as they slowly undid the runic arrays. Behind them, keeping an eye on both the team and the surrounding environment, were three other curse breakers. All of them were alert.

Finally, the team opened their eyes and the tomb entrance opened. The rocks all around them began transfiguring into the tomb entrance; a high arched doorway, decorated with exquisite African artwork, with statues of warrior wizard figures with stone swirls and balls depicting fire.

"Beautiful," Harry whispered. His sentiments were repeated by the others and agreed on.

The rest of the tomb contained other booby traps; there was a nest of scarab beetles which tried to attack the team, but they were burnt in a massive fire before they could attack. Afterwards, one of the curse breakers was nearly burnt with a really nasty caustic defence potion, sprayed in the form of fine black-green dust.

Keeping vigilant throughout, the team continued with their exploration of the tomb, uncovering many other traps including mummified humans tied and bound to the tomb, before they immobilised the rest of the traps permanently. They discovered an ancient library, and a cache of spiritchrons, portable libraries which used similar enchantments to the magical portraits which preserved the memories and personalities of the wizard or witch they painted, but unveiled all of their knowledge. After making sure they were safe, spiritchrons were sometimes hexed with nasty enchantments that could kill or lull someone into an everlasting sleep, Harry and the others played them. The spirit avatars were stunned by how long they'd been undisturbed and were horrified and angry that the wizard who'd kept them in the tomb for his own pleasures. Finally, the curse breakers learnt the rest of N'Joba's story. They also discovered this place was actually his private home.

N'Joba had spent many years finding, collecting, cataloguing and stealing the spiritchrons from thousands of people, deeming that knowledge was fit only for himself while he used his magic to twist life, which resulted in many trying to kill him. In the end, he had been hit by a curse that ate his organs slowly and transformed them into slush. Unable to use any form of cure, and running out of time, N'Joba had tried to kidnap witch doctors, healers, and shamans in the hopes he could still live, but he swiftly gave up that idea.

One of the Witch Doctors had been incandescent with rage and she had hit him with a voodoo hex which made him hunt down a unicorn, and make him believe the blood would help provide a cure. N'Joba knew the dangers of harming unicorns in that manner, but the voodoo hex was just too powerful. He found a unicorn foal, and he was only just able to steal some of its blood and drink it before he was attacked and gored in the chest by a very angry herd of unicorns.

Wounded, with the organs in his body shutting down faster than he could try to stop it, and the voodoo hex accelerating the unicorn curse, the two curses fought for dominance and he eventually died after being paralysed and was hopeless against the curse's effects. Finally, his body started to rot, while his magic, exhausted by its efforts to keep him going, gave out before he could use essence transfer to escape his fate.

After hearing the story, Harry walked carefully towards the pile of bones. His trained vision showed there were no scarab bites nearby, and he guessed the magic of the curses had been so strong they'd kept even the hungriest scarab at bay. He wasn't sympathetic towards N'Joba; he had been one of the most notorious dark wizards of his time, using alchemy to twist life even to the point of transforming hundreds of people into zombies and mummies, and other classic examples of the undead, simply for his own pleasure and twisted amusement.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, still, this tomb was found and opened and it would be stripped by the goblins.

As they left, they contacted the goblins and the African Ministry of Magic, who'd had a vested interest in uncovering N'Joba's remains for centuries.

Author's Note - Yes, I took the name N'Joba from Black Panther. I don't own the Harry Potter, Tomb Raider, or Marvel franchises.