Harry Potter, the Grand Ruler Chapter 2
Hello everybody! Tis is I, Iskander Mandoraekon! Back with the second chapter for Harry Potter, the Grand Ruler!
I am currently out of the job, so I have plenty of time to dedicate to my stories while waiting for the douchebags that offer jobs to have their secondary companies call me for an over the phone interview. Seriously, I miss the old days where you'd fill in an application and you could go into the store or place of business and check up on the status of getting an interview. Now I have to wait for a company I don't know or know the location of to deem me as worthy.
It's fucking annoying.
Also on another note, I noticed the mistake I made in the first chapter about Azazel studying the Fuyuki Grail given that there wasn't yet a Heaven's Feel ritual created in Fuyuki by the Families Three and Zelretch. That happened nearly a century later in 1814.
I do not own Harry Potter, Fate/Grand Order or High School DxD. Those belong solely to the geniuses J.K. Rowling, Ichiei Ishibumi and Kinoko Nasu.
-Surry, England; Number 4 Privet Drive; 1986-
A six-year-old boy lay curled in a ball in his cupboard bedroom beneath the stairs and did his best not to cry despite the pain he was feeling. Crying would make his aunt and uncle angry.
His uncle had just lost his job at the drill company after being caught embezzling funds from the company, and in his drunken stupor, blamed his nephew the moment his pudgy, pig-like eyes had landed on him when he came home. The belt had come off and tanned the scared child's behind before he was thrown into the cupboard.
Who were these horrible adults and this unfortunate child you might ask?
They were Harry James Potter, the orphaned nephew of Petunia and Vernon Dursley, cousin of the small humanoid blimp known as Dudley Dursley.
Five years ago, Harry had come into the care of his aunt and uncle after his parents had supposedly died in a drunken car accident. And for some reason, his relatives loathed the very sight of him, making it their mission in life to ensure he knew that he was a 'Freak' and that he wasn't good enough to be in the company of good, normal folk.
"Why won't someone save me?"Harry mumbled as he curled tighter when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs above his head, tears of pain and misery flowing down his face. "Why does everybody hate me? What did I do wrong? Please. Somebody save me!"
Unnoticed by the boy with his eyes screwed tight, a green sheen appeared over his left wrist, followed by a smaller red glow. Unnoticed by any in the surrounding neighborhood, a tendril of pure magical energy reached out from the phantom apparition to beyond the boundaries of the world, fueled by trivial wish of a child seeking the love and nurturing care of a real parent.
A wish for protection and safety from those that called themselves his kin.
Red eyes blinked open in surprise in the shadows as a woman with an air of feral beauty shifted upon her shadowed throne. This was Scáthach, the Warrior Queen of Dun Scaith and the Guardian of the Gate of Skye, daughter of the wise king Ard-Greimne of Lethra, elder sister of Aoife and the celebrated trainer of the legendary hero of the Celts, Cú Chulainn, Hound of Ulster.
She had sat here in silent vigil for centuries on end, bound to this mortal plane by her mythic deeds performed in her guardianship of the Land of Shadows.
And for the first time in two millennia, she felt something…
A tug against her breast as a thread of magical energy attached itself to her core. It had the feeling of a hook wrapped around her heart, but not in a painful manner. It was attempting to tug her somewhere, but due to its weak power, it barely succeeded in budging her the slightest. In fact, she would say that it was barely there.
She might not have noticed it at all if her senses hadn't been forged in constant battle and weren't sharply attuned to the supernatural side of the world.
Curious at this new thing that dared interrupt her vigil, the warrior-magus extended her senses outwards along the thread that had just bound itself to her, towards where the thread originated.
It was too weak to do more than garner any interest if Scáthach chose to not allow it to perform its purpose of summoning her away from here, and she would decide whether or not she allowed such a thing as soon as she gazed upon the origin of this phenomenon.
What she found at the end of the connection surprised her.
That was why the magic felt so weak despite its ability to connect with her.
The origin of the tether was a child. One that had not yet reached the end of its first decade of life.
Using the newfound connection between them, she melded her mind with the child's consciousness with the barest of touches so as to not overwhelm and destroy such a young mind with her much older supernatural mind.
It did not appear that the boy had initiated this magic on purpose, and Scáthach was sure that he wasn't even aware of what he was doing.
Not to mention that from what she could gather from studying the link between them, that for some reason led to the lad's left wrist, the tether attached to her was meant to breach the veil between this world and the Hero's Throne to summon a Heroic Spirit, but had been too weak to attempt such a feat and as such had been drawn to a closer solution.
Very interesting.
She wasn't yet dead, and as such was not amongst the heroes held outside of the Soul Cycle in the Hero's Throne, but she did technically qualify to be amongst their number due to her fame in training heroes such as Ferdinand and the mighty Setanta turned Cú Chulainn, and her exploits in personally holding the Gates of Skye closed to all manner of demonic and divine beasts.
A feat that would be nigh impossible to see from the modern humanity.
She hadn't seen something this interesting since the Age of the Gods had ended with the gods of olde choosing to withdraw from Man's world.
Red eyes blinked when the child's emotions flooded into her mind. Desperation, terror, misery, and above all, a desperate plea to be saved from those that called themselves his kin. If she had been barely trained in the mind arts such as she had been when her father had first taught her the discipline, she might have been overwhelmed by the child's mind despite how young it was. But with her raw experience forged over nigh on two thousand years, she had no trouble safeguarding herself from the child's misery.
The child was in desperate need of saving.
This was not something she would normally indulge in, having cut herself off from the rest of the world for nearly two thousand years after her body had transitioned from Mortal to Immortal, with her only contact being the gods of the Tuatha de Danann that made their way to her lonely isle on occasion.
It would make for an interesting break from her boredom and give her something to focus her energies upon. It may be interesting to train another Cú Chulainn despite her reluctance to take up the title of teacher again.
Resolved to investigate closer, Scáthach gripped the magic attempting to summon her and accepted it. The tether turned from weak to strong in a moment, and Scáthach used the connection to travel from her castle to the lower half of England, where her new 'Master' awaited her arrival.
When Scáthach reappeared in the world, it was within the shadows of a short corridor that became known as a hallway when information flooded her mind, the abode and prison of her 'Master'-to-be. Dusk had turned to true Night since she first connected with the small child currently passed out in the cupboard beneath the stairs. The home she'd arrived in was quiet and still, everything concealed by the darkness of the night with the only source of light coming from the odd globe situated just outside the front door.
Scáthach frowned when information filtered into her mind, courtesy of the tether linking her to the boy. A light bulb? Mankind had certainly advanced away from the torch and candle it seemed.
Given that she hadn't left the Isle of Skye in centuries, the house she appeared in was strange to her. So distant in shape from the stone and wood round houses of her ancient homeland. Information sprang to the forefront of her mind in reply to her curiosity. This was a middle-class house common in England, the new name of the land that once belonged to the wandering tribes of the Britons, such as the Iceni.
Scáthach knelt and pulled open the cupboard door with enough force to see it opened despite the latches holding it closed. The noise from the clattering bits of metal that fell might have woken one of the inhabitants residing upstairs, just as it did for her new 'Master', but the warrior-woman cared not.
It wasn't like she intended for the child to remain with his kin for much longer anyways.
She cupped the boy's pale cheek with her hand. He shrank back from the contact, clearly afraid. If her intent wasn't to get him safely away from this place of torment, she would introduce the fear of the gods into his tormentors, it was wrong that a child would fear even a gentle touch.
Even in her ancient homeland, children had been a treasure. If they were not wanted by one family, then usually a family would be found that would take care of it.
She just might destroy this wretched squalor of a home anyways the moment she had the boy safely away.
"Calm yourself, little one." Scáthach spoke gently, keeping her anger on a tight leash for now as she applied a small glamour to keep him at ease. "You're under my protection now. No harm shall come to you."
Some of the fear left his eyes and the boy slowly slipped back into a blissful sleep as her charm took hold. "I shall guard you, child. Sleep soundly."
"A draoi?" The woman muttered in curiosity as she took a closer look at him. "But different from what I know." Information filtered into her mind again. "A wizard? Interesting." The child was untrained in the magical arts, and she doubted he even knew what magic truly was, but even untrained, he held a powerful amount of magical energy within his body.
And that was simply as a child in an untrained and weakened state. With the proper instruction, her new master could be a powerhouse to rival even some of the most powerful sorcerers and druids she'd known in her early life before the Age of the Gods had come to an end.
With practiced ease borne from helping take care of her nephew Connla, Scáthach picked the child up in her arms, cradling him as she stood back up, barely noticing the increase in weight. He was quite malnourished and most definitely not at a healthy weight for his age.
The woman turned away from the mess in the hall just in time for a massively over-weight man to come charging down the stairs, the fat of his face an outraged purple, and a wooden club in his hand that she later came to know was a baseball bat.
"Who ar-?!" The child abuser wasn't able to get more out before he found himself frozen stiff when the sharp blade of her spear lightly pricked the blubber of his neck.
"This child will be coming with me." Scáthach stated calmly as her crimson eyes bored into the fat man's brown gaze, the sheer gap in their strength causing visions of various, horrifying ways he would die if he tried to assault the superior predator. "You will not stop us from leaving lest you wish to join your ancestors in an early grave."
She resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose.
Vernon Dursley soiled himself.
Pathetic. Mankind had surely fallen far from grace. No wonder the gods of old had decided to withdraw from the mundane world.
Deciding she didn't want to spend any more time than necessary in the presence of this waste of flesh, her spear flashed with a speed that Vernon would never be able to track least of all notice, lightly carving a small rune into the flesh over his collarbone. ISA. The rune of Clarity, Stasis, Challenges, Introspection, Watching & Waiting.
"What is this child's name and how did he come into your possession?" Scáthach asked smoothly as the power of the elder rune overtook Vernon Dursley's pitiful willpower.
"Harry Potter." Vernon answered, his face blank and his voice projected in a dull drone. "He is my wife's nephew from her sister Lily. Some bloke named Albus Dumbledore left him on our doorstep on the first of November five years ago, in a little basket with a letter that said that his parents had been killed and that we were the closest relatives. We didn't want to keep him. But whoever wrote the letter threatened to punish us if we didn't."
"Where is this letter?" The woman asked as her eyes flickered down to the small child in the crook of her arm.
"We burned it." Vernon answered dully. "It was bad enough to have to take care of Petunia's freak of sister's freak son. We didn't want any other freakishness in the house."
Scáthach sneered at the man's view towards gifted individuals and simply released the grasp she held over the rune, making him drop to the floor like a sack of overripe potatoes. He would awaken by the first light of morning none the wiser of the events of this night with a headache akin to a hangover.
With a last contemptuous glance at the fat lard, the warrior queen stepped out the front door, cocking an elegant brow when she emerged onto a row of nearly completely identical dwellings.
What a horrid place to call home. Even in her time when coin was not as abundant to the commonfolk, there was usually some individuality to be found in the homes of commoners.
Here, though? It was like they all desired to be clones of one another.
A glance up to the sky brought another frown to her lips. She couldn't see the stars, the distant twinkling lights that had never failed to appear to her before were hidden by the afterglow of the city lights miles away from here.
It was saddening.
For all of mankind's advancements in recent centuries, they were still woefully foolish.
It was as she was leaving the property's boundary line that she felt something else that immediately demanded her attention.
A Ward.
A powerful one at that. It was bound to the property itself through the act of sacrifice and spilled blood, relatively new in only being five years old. Whoever had left this child here with his horrid kin, this Albus Dumbledore, had crafted a blood ward.
While she could only assume it had been done so in order to protect the child, it was poorly crafted. A properly crafted ward would have protected the child within its boundaries from all dangers, in and out. Instead, from what she was feeling as she studied the ward sequence, it had been putting pressure on the minds of those within, likely causing the already bad feelings directed towards the child from his kin to grow ugly.
That wasn't to mention that a ward of this size would need quite a bit of blood to erect and given that he'd been placed with his maternal kin, such blood would need to have come from his mother.
Scáthach scowled before glancing down at the child. She would need to investigate this further, but already she was quite sure that she didn't trust Dumbledore to have her new ward's best intentions at heart.
Maneuvering the child so that a hand was free, Scáthach placed her palm upon the spot where the grass met with the concrete of the sidewalk and forced her magical energy into the ward. It was a powerful bit of magic, done by a powerful wizard. However, no matter how powerful Albus Dumbledore was, she was much older and much stronger than a paltry wizard of the modern age. Had he come from her era, then she might have had a harder time undoing his work.
In a fashion that only those trained in the magical arts could see, the ward began to glow a bright red, dying the surrounding houses in a blood-red color before it slowly dissolved into motes of light that rose up into the night sky before fully dispersing.
One last thing to do before she left this accursed place.
"Tha mise, Scáthach, a rugadh do shìneadh Lethra, a' cur mallachd air an àite-còmhnaidh seo agus orrasan a tha ga ràdh mar an cuid fhèin. Blaiseadh am biadh de luaithre, agus blasad an deoch air eabar cho fad 's a tha iad a' tagradh an àite-còmhnaidh seo. Biodh iad air an cràdh mar a chràidh iad an càirdean agus an càirdean fhèin. Ach na ceadaich dhoibh socrachadh air teicheadh o'n bhuaireadh. Leig leotha fuil a phàigheadh air ais le fuil gus an tèid na fiachan aca a phàigheadh air ais. 'I, Scathach, born of the line of Lethra, place a curse upon this dwelling and those who claim it as their own. Let their food taste of ash and their drink taste of mud for as long as they claim this dwelling. Let them be tormented as they have tormented their own kith and kin. But allow them not the solace of flight from their turmoil. Let them repay blood with blood until their debt is repaid.'"
In a similar fashion to the ward collapsing, the dwelling glowed once again, though this time in a lime green color that wrapped around each blade of grass, every stone and every inch of the house before fading away. Scáthach was amused to witness all the small animals and even the bugs flee from the property, repulsed by the curse the Dursleys were now held under. Mice, toads, birds, the cat that had been lounging on the fence. All creatures that did not bear the name Dursley fled from the coming torment the humans had wrought.
Satisfied with the vengeance done on behalf of her ward, Scáthach strode away from the now cursed dwelling.
-Hogwarts Castle, Scotland; Headmaster's Quarters; 1986-
Albus Dumbledore was awoken from his rather peaceful slumber to the troubled trilling of his long-time comrade and beloved phoenix, Fawkes. Moving like a man a third his age, Albus roused himself from the comfort of his bed and moved to assess what was causing the firebird stress.
"Fawkes." Albus called as he gripped his wand and moved out into his office, the candles around the room springing to life to give light to his vision. "What is the matter, old friend?"
Blue eyes peered over half-moon glasses as Albus searched for the phoenix when he discovered that Fawkes's usual perch was empty. It didn't take long for him to lay eyes on the firebird's back where Fawkes sat on the edge of a table pushed off to the far side of the office.
A table that held very important instruments dedicated to one of Dumbledore's important projects.
Worry creasing his brow, Albus strode over to the table, making eye-contact with Fawkes for a moment before glancing at the surface of the table that had consumed the phoenix's attention.
His breath caught in his throat at the sight of the instruments that were usually spinning and dancing as they performed their purpose. They were not broken, and Dumbledore could tell that their enchantment had not worn off, nor should it have for at least five more years.
However, there was one problem…
They were not moving.
Each device he had personally crafted and enchanted to monitor the wards protecting a certain child in Surrey, England, had ceased their movements and sat still on the table's surface.
Albus's face paled as he quickly strode to the fireplace, snagging his pouch of Floo powder on the way and throwing a handful into the flames, desperately calling for Arabella Figg.
Something had happened to Harry Potter!
And that's a wrap. Thank you for reading, and most importantly, thank you for waiting for this lousy writer to bring you the next chapter. I know Scáthach isn't quite a proper Servant considering she has yet to die and join the others in the Throne of Heroes unless we were in the Fate/Grand Order world, but Harry was going to need a proper teacher in survival, fighting, magic, etc. before he rejoined the magical world, and who better to do it than the beautiful reaper of the Land of Shadows?
I make no promises when I will update, though I have been putting a lot of work into other stories I've posted or am in the process of making.
Til next we meet, Iskandar Mandoraekon.