Harry Potter, Hero of Legend, Stories and Elves Part 12

"Sorry about the mess, my slime should have it cleaned up in a couple of hours," Harry offered as the pair of strangers got close enough that he didn't have to shout. 'Even with the elves having a longer lifespan, shouldn't the archmage look older?' he wondered as he studied the white haired elf that was wearing black robes and looked to be in his mid to late twenties if you ignored the white hair.

"Excellent, it's always nice when the heroes actually clean up after themselves and don't run around smashing pots everywhere," Gavin replied cheerfully as they closed the rest of the distance so they were in easy conversation range.

"Smashing pots?" Harry asked in confusion.

"Don't worry about it, some heroes are weird," Gavin replied with a shrug.

Fiona glanced at her master. "Same with archmages."

Harry glanced at the red haired young lady that was wearing a black skirt and a long sleeved black silk shirt that looked pretty respectable compared to most of the outfits he'd seen.

"Thankfully being normal isn't an actual requirement," Gavin argued.

"Do you know any that are actually normal or sane?" Fiona asked.

"Rose, Vivian and John," Gavin replied thoughtfully.

"Rose created an explosive castration spell, Vivian likes turning people to stone and John is the Archmage of Contracts, there is nothing sane about that guy," Fiona argued.

"To be fair, Rose had a really annoying ex and Vivian started turning people to stone because they couldn't sit still while she was drawing them," Gavin argued. "It's not like she didn't ask permission or turn them back."

"And John?" Fiona asked.

"He's sane enough," Gavin assured her, thinking about the previous Archmage of Contracts that used to trap people in magical contracts for fun. "Before I forget, I'm the Archmage of Storms but you can call me Gavin."

"Fiona Moonflower, Gavin's apprentice," Fiona offered.

"Harry Potter, part time hero and student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Harry said, not used to introducing himself since he rarely had to.

"Hogwarts school of magic girls and magic boys?" Fiona asked, a bit confused why they'd name a magical school something that boring. "Why not just call it a school of magic?"

"That's probably a function of my translation ability," Harry admitted. "There are a couple of types of magic users in English. Witches are generally female and wizards male but they both start with the same letter and it sort of rolls off the tongue better in English. We start when we're eleven and leave after seven years."

"What type of magic have you learned?" Fiona asked excitedly.

"Defense sort of covered how to cast shields and deal with some minor curses and dueling and mentioned some of the more dangerous monsters that we might run into. Potions covered how to follow a recipe to make a potion but the teacher is an arse so he didn't really explain the rules behind the reactions or keep some of the idiots from causing problems because they were part of his house."

"House?" Fiona asked.

"The students are split into four different houses by a sentient magical hat that can read your mind and sorts you based on personality traits. Slytherins valued ambition, Gryffindors valued courage, Ravenclaw the appearance of intelligence and Hufflepuff hard work, mostly I just think they took anyone that didn't fit."

"The appearance of intelligence?" Fiona asked.

"My friend is one of the smartest people around, she ended up in Gryffindor because she valued courage more and there are a decent number of stupid Ravenclaws," Harry explained, not particularly impressed with the house system for various reasons. "Either way, Snape was in Slytherin when he was in school so it's not a surprise that he's willing to cheat to win."

"Fun," Gavin muttered. "And the rest of the classes?"

"Transfiguration involves changing things into other things and Charms covers basically everything else. History of Magic is a joke that is taught by a ghost that has been teaching the same boring lectures for hundreds of years and Divination involves making things up because I don't have the ability to see the future."

"That sounds…" Fiona trailed off.

"Horrible? Yeah, they managed to suck most of the fun out of magic," Harry complained. "The current Defense teacher is the worst, we have a group of cultists running around killing people but she doesn't actually want us to learn to defend ourselves and she likes using cursed quills to torture students in detention."

"How come she's still teaching?" Fiona asked.

"Or alive?" Gavin asked, surprised that no one had challenged her to a duel yet and put her in a grave. "If she tried that here, people would be dueling for the right to duel her."

"She works at the Ministry of Magic which is basically the magical government for the country I live in and the Minister doesn't want to admit that the dark wizard that died because he tried to cheat a prophecy when I was a baby is back from the dead or only mostly dead so they're clamping down on what the schools can teach," Harry explained.

"So they're a bunch of cowards?" Gavin asked, having a hard time understanding why people would put up with that sort of shit.

"Basically," Harry admitted.

"I doubt I'll be able to help with Transfiguration or Charms as our magic isn't the same but I'm an excellent duelist and I can probably help explain the basics for Alchemy or at least help you figure out what questions you should be asking a qualified Alchemist when you get back."

"I'd love the help," Harry assured him, surprised that he was willing to help.

"Is there a reason you can't leave and find somewhere else to complete your education?" Fiona asked, curious what type of limits he was dealing with.

"I'm the person the dark lord tried to kill as a baby, so even if I fled to another country he'd try to find me or he'd kill one of my friends or their family to lure me back," Harry complained. "My parents died trying to stop him when I was a baby, they went to Hogwarts. My grandparents on my father's side went there and their parents, going back hundreds of years. I'm not going to let a ministry toad ruin it for me."

"There's a certain amount of honor in that," Gavin agreed.

"There's also a curse on the Defense position, I was just hoping that I could keep my head down and survive long enough for the curse to kill her so we'd get a better professor next year," Harry admitted.

"You should probably have a backup plan," Gavin suggested.

"What are the chances of the curse actually killing her?" Fiona asked.

"My first Defense teacher was incinerated at the end of the year, my second one lost all of his memories because he tried to memory wipe a student with a broken wand, my third teacher got revealed as a werewolf and had to leave at the end of the year because he 'forgot' to take the potion he used to control it on the full moon and we had a cultist using a face changing potion last year that fled at the end of the year after he kidnapped me, so it’s pretty good odds that something happens to prevent her from teaching again and one in four that she actually dies."

Gavin shook his head. "One in four odds isn't going to cut it. Anyone that is torturing children with cursed magical items needs to be put in the ground or reduced to ashes. Does your world have any magical ways to talk to the dead or divine answers about how someone was killed or turned to stone?"

"Not that I know of but the ministry doesn't like advertising that sort of thing, I didn't even know the truth potion existed until they dragged me to court because I defended myself with magic against the dementors that attacked my cousin," Harry replied.

"What is a dementor?" Fiona asked.

"Nearly indestructible flying cloaked figures that eat souls and make you relive your worst memories when they get near you," Harry explained.

"Fun," Gavin said sarcastically. "Does lightning work?"

"I doubt it, as far as I know the only thing that can kill them is starvation, they feed on people's positive emotions so if you can keep them contained, they'd probably die."

"Why hasn't the government tossed them in a dungeon?" Fiona asked.

"Because they made a deal with the dementors, they guard the prison and emotionally torture people and the government gets a nightmarish prison to threaten people with," Harry explained.

"It sounds like the Ministry needs to get overthrown," Gavin mused.

"Probably," Harry agreed. "Getting back on track, there's a spell to show the last couple of spells that a wand cast but you have to cast it on the wand so I could probably find a spare wand and burn it after getting rid of Umbridge."

"Why would you use a wand?" Fiona asked.

"My world's magic is a lot harder if you don't have a wand or at least that's the party line, there is supposed to be a school that teaches wandless magic but I don't know a lot of details just that it exists and is in another country. The main problem is the fact that the world has truth potions that force you to speak the truth and they'd probably drug me until I was seeing stars since the Minister has been running a smear campaign in the papers on me since last year."

"Are there any counters for the truth potion?" Gavin asked.

"Probably, I know a couple of people I can ask…" Harry trailed off as he realized that the mental resistance from the loincloth would probably stop the potion from working, especially since he had resistance to all sorts of stasis effects and mind control because of his resistance perk and his own natural resistance was pretty high judging by the fact that he'd managed to ignore the imperio that the fake Moody had used. "I just realized that the truth potions probably count as mind control and that I have a magical item that permanently boosts resistance to anything that affects the mind and one of the heroic perks is increased resistance to that sort of thing."

Gavin stared at Harry. "Was the resistance boosting item one of your divine gifts?"

"One of my abilities lets me turn certain demons into spells, one of the spells lets me conjure a loincloth that reduces your concern about nudity and permanently increases your mental defenses. I figured it was worth the trade."

"Absolutely, can I have one?" Fiona asked hopefully. "I'll show you around the city and I've got some old alchemy books that I don't need anymore."

"Favorite color?" Harry asked Fiona.

Fiona gestured toward her outfit. "Black."

"I didn't want to assume," Harry replied as he conjured a black silk loincloth and handed it to her. "It randomly turns invisible and you'll probably want to avoid wearing it on Fridays because it encourages people to flip it up. It also gives you a small amount of armor if you're wearing it without a top."

Gavin cast a detection spell and checked the loincloth, curious if it had any hidden costs. "That's actually a decent trade, it's not a compulsion to show off, it's just a matter of not caring as much about nudity. The magic looks cleaner than most of the demonic items I've run into but I doubt any of our enchanters would have much luck replicating it. Can I get a blue one?"

"Sure." Harry conjured a blue loincloth and handed it to Gavin.

"Do you have any plans for the night now that you've destroyed the army?" Gavin asked as he put the loincloth in his pocket.

"Not really," Harry admitted, knowing his friends were going to be busy the rest of the night.

"Excellent," Gavin replied as he started walking back toward the wall. "Let's head to the tower and I'll show you my alchemy set up and the dueling arena."

"Sounds good and thank you for the help and the barrier," Harry told him as they followed Gavin.

"You were nice enough to show up in our hour of need, the least I could do was make sure the demons couldn't run so you could slaughter them," Gavin replied with amusement. "And yes, before you ask, I could have killed a lot of them but their summoners would have just summoned most of them back and we'd be right back where we started."

"It's fine," Harry assured them. "The barrier kept them from escaping and the fog kept them distracted while my minions mopped up."

Gavin frowned slightly when he noticed several annoying government flunkies that were outside the walls and heading their way, doing their best to avoid the dead demons. He whispered a spell to magnify what he was seeing and sighed when he realized that two of the council's most annoying minions were with the group. "Great, someone let the minions out."

"Minions?" Harry asked.

"The city's council has been trying to get Gavin to enchant some defensive items and to fix the curse that keeps males from enjoying sex, they're rather insistent," Fiona explained.

"I understand that the curse sucks and that they'd like to keep fucking their secretaries but I happen to know that most of them don't have the gold to cover the ingredients for the cure without robbing the city blind."

"If you can fix it, why did the gods have to call us?" Harry asked.

"I can't fix the sterility part of the curse, I can just fix the other part but the ritual requires some expensive ingredients and that's before I charge for my time and mana," Gavin explained as he watched the group pick their way around the demon corpses. "Do you have any objections to being teleported?"

"No," Harry replied.

Gavin snapped his fingers and teleported the group up to his tower so that he could avoid the idiots the council had sent to bug him. "Fiona, can you take Harry down to the alchemy lab? I need to send a report to the temple and the council."

"This way," Fiona replied as she started walking toward the door, curious if they'd learn anything interesting by comparing notes on their respective magic systems.

"Okay," Harry replied as he followed her into the tower.

"Just watch your steps," Fiona warned him.

Gavin spent a minute organizing his thoughts then cast his message spell that would take his words to the right people, "I blew up the siege engines and surrounded the army with lightning so the hero could slaughter the demons without letting any of them escape. There are summoned demons and a slime cleaning up the bodies, do not harass them or shoot at them. The wards will be staying up for another two hours to make sure no one gets any stupid ideas about claiming tainted loot before we can get the priests to the gates so they can check everything. Do not make me come down there."

'That should cover the important bits,' Gavin mused as he headed for the stairs, fairly sure he'd bought himself at least a couple of hours of peace before someone started screaming and demanding his presence.

0o0o0

Dawn sighed when she woke up and realized that she was on the bus and not in her room in the smithy with Xander.

"We'll find him," Willow offered softly, having noticed that Dawn was awake.

"It's fine, he's safe," Dawn assured her as she turned her head and looked out the window at the hospital where they were parked.

"What do you mean?" Willow asked, wondering if Dawn was just in denial.

Dawn glanced around at the slayers that were trying and mostly failing to get some sleep or at least something approaching rest since the spell had left them charged up. "I mean, I know where he is."

"How?" Willow asked.

"Dreams…" Dawn trailed off as Kennedy and Vi froze like someone pushed pause on a VCR.

Willow next twitched painfully as she turned to look at the blue skinned figure that had just appeared out of thin air sitting on the back of one of the seats, wearing a pair of overly bright Hawaiian shorts. "What's going on?"

"As much as I'd enjoy watching Dawn try to explain that she actually does know where Xander is, I think I'll save everyone some time and come clean. I needed a hero to save a world so I borrowed him," Frank admitted.

"Why did the world need saving?" Willow asked.

"Long story short, there's a demon king that is invading a nice world filled with elves and I couldn't sneak a slayer there without cracking the wards which means I needed someone like Xander, someone that understands how to fight them, someone that can help the hero step up to the plate and kill the next best thing to a dark god," Frank explained.

Willow glanced at Dawn then focused on the stranger. "Are we going to get him back?"

"Unless things go completely sideways," Frank assured her. "The future is always in motion but Xander has a fantastic team and he has Dawn helping him."

Willow turned to look at Dawn. "What is he talking about?"

"It's probably a…" Dawn trailed off, not wanting to mention the key bit in front of the stranger.

"Key thing?" Frank asked with a smile. "Only sort of, the fact that you're in more than two worlds is a key thing, the rest, not really but that's something else and above my pay grade."

"More than two worlds?" Willow asked.

"So, basically, every time I go to sleep, I wake up in one of my other lives," Dawn admitted.

"How long has this been happening?" Willow asked warily.

"For as long as I remember. Mom just thought I had an active imagination when I was a kid and Buffy had better things to do than listen to her little sister. I basically just stopped talking about it once we moved because I didn't want to end up in a mental ward."

"What does this have to do with Xander?" Willow asked.

"He's currently in the elf world where I'm Dawn Winter, an apprentice elven blacksmith," Dawn offered.

"You're a blacksmith?" Willow asked in surprise.

"I'm a lot of things but yeah, Dawn Winters is a blacksmith, which means yeah, I'm a blacksmith," Dawn replied with a grin.

"Wait, does that mean you're dealing with an army of demons?" Willow asked warily.

"Yeah, but don't worry, Harry is going to murder them," Dawn told her.

Willow glanced between the stranger and Dawn. "Who is Harry?"

"That would be the hero," Frank said as he pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and pulled up a picture of Harry talking to Fiona in the alchemy lab then handed the phone to Dawn so that the girls could see it easier. "That would be Harry."

Willow moved to Dawn's seat and looked at the picture on the phone. "Hmm, not seeing it," she mused as she studied the picture of the athletic looking young man with wild black hair and emerald eyes.

"He's not Xander but he's okay," Dawn said.

"Do you have any pictures of the other Dawn?" Willow asked.

"Sure, just don't," Frank snickered as Dawn scrolled left and brought up an image of her naked on a bed with an equally naked Xander snuggled against her, "scroll left."

"I didn't need to see that," Willow argued.

"And yet, you're not looking away," Dawn teased, rather amused by the situation.

"It's like a trainwreck," Willow admitted, her ears already turning red. "Are you bustier as an elf?"

"Just a bit," Dawn replied with amusement. "I also have muscles in all the right places according to Kara."

"Who's Kara?" Willow asked.

"Keep scrolling and you'll see," Frank suggested. "Though you probably want to scroll right, unless you want to show her you and Xander having a good time on an anvil."

"On the anvil? Really?" Willow asked.

"In my defense, I was left unsupervised," Dawn teased as she scrolled left, showing an image of her sitting on the anvil without a stitch of clothes with a naked Xander pressed up against her.

Willow stared at the image of Xander's ass for a few seconds then pulled her attention off the phone and looked at Frank. "Why do you even have these?!"

"I'm a genie, one of my friends made a wish for porn of the heroes and I figured Dawn would want some proof to help her story," Frank replied with a grin. "Besides, you have to admit, they're hot."

"Dawn's a kid," Willow argued.

"Dawn is technically older than everyone on this bus combined," Frank pointed out.

Willow glanced back at the phone then focused on Frank. "That doesn't count."

"Okay, let's just talk about the days she's experienced as her current incarnations. She's older than you, she's older than everyone on the bus put together other than me. Let's skip the first nine years of each of Dawn's lives because she was basically being a kid and go with the last seven, she's still older than anyone on the bus other than me."

"I don't feel that old but I don't really feel like I'm sixteen either until my hormones get away from me and I realize that the hardware is crazy," Dawn offered.

"Is that why you and Xander?" Willow asked.

"Fucked like bunny rabbits?" Dawn asked with amusement, causing Willow's blush to get worse.

"Yeah," Willow admitted.

"No, the reason we were fucking like bunnies is because I enjoy it," Dawn told her.

"There are risks," Willow warned her.

"Covered by magic and by magic items several times over. The reason I managed to talk Xander into it is because the demon king hit every male elf with a curse that made them sterile."

"Every elf? On an entire world?" Willow asked, trying to figure out how much power you'd need to use that sort of curse and coming up with a Hellmouth opening amount.

"Yeah and no one can fix it, not the priests or the mages or even their god, it's nasty as hell and the only way we have to save the elves involves the heroes having a lot of sex. So yeah, when I had a chance to have children with Xander I took it. It's not fair and it's going to hurt like hell if we can't figure out a way to let him visit but the last couple of months have been hell, both here and there."

"Jumping between worlds should get a lot easier once the Demon King has been destroyed or driven off," Frank offered.

"That's a relief," Willow admitted. "What about the rest of your lives?"

"They're all pretty different. Dawn Frankenstein is a bit of a mad scientist in a cultivation world that just got a new job at a previously abandoned sect that a group is reclaiming."

"Frankenstein?" Willow asked warily.

"It's a family name and yes, they're all a bit weird. Dawn Skywalker lives in a temple and gets to fly starships which is all sorts of awesome."

"Now I know you're messing with me, starships?" Willow asked Frank.

"She's not lying, she's a remarkably good pilot," Frank assured her.

Willow blinked as she connected the dots. "Wait, starships and Skywalkers, are you in Star Wars?"

"I'm in a version of Star Wars where I'm Anakin's twin sister," Dawn replied with a grin.

"You know he goes evil, right?" Willow asked, thinking about the movies.

"The future is always in motion and we know about Palpatine being a sith lord that can influence people so we're trying to limit our exposure to the lunatic. We'll probably end up better off than the original and we've got plans for dealing with the crap from the second movie but life isn't a movie so, yeah, it's a work in progress."

"Were you ever going to tell us?" Willow asked.

"Things kept coming up and I didn't think you'd believe me and then you were sort of crazy for a bit so I sure as hell wasn't going to tell you. I figured I'd turn things into a book but I'd probably have to ignore my life as Dawn Skywalker because of the movies but Dawn Falls, the normal girl in cape land is probably fine." Dawn scrolled through a couple of images of her and Xander before she got to an image of Hermione and Kara sprawled naked on a bed in Kara's treehouse. "That's Kara and Hermione."

"Hermione?" Willow asked, looking at the attractive bushy haired girl.

"Hermione Granger," Dawn replied. "She's not nearly as bossy as the books describe."

"Books… are you telling me the hero is Harry Potter?" Willow asked in disbelief, not taking her eyes off the naked girls.

"Yeah," Dawn replied with a grin. "Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom, Nymphadora Tonks but don't call her Nymphadora and Sirius Black are the other heroes along with Xander."

"And that's my que, feel free to keep the phone," Frank said then snapped his fingers and vanished, causing everything to unfreeze.

Kennedy blinked when she realized that Willow was now across the aisle where Dawn was sitting. "Did you just teleport?"

"Nope, a genie froze time and she moved over here," Dawn offered.

Kennedy rolled her eyes then stretched out on the bench so she could take a nap, figuring she needed it if she was hallucinating. "Wake me when we get to the hotel or if we stop for food."

"Sure," Willow replied as she stood up. "I'm going to check in with Buffy and get an update on Rona and Robin, do you want to come?"

"No, I'm good," Kennedy replied, deciding that sleep was more important than providing emotional support in this case.

"Okay, Dawn?" Willow asked, giving Dawn a reason to follow her so they could finish the conversation.

"Sure," Dawn replied as she stood up, a bit giddy now that she was finally talking about her other lives.

0o0o0