Chaptered Fic: Challenge #29
Title: A Touch Of Genius (Chapter One)
Summary: It is 2010, in an alternative universe. Voldemort won the Second Wizarding War 12 years ago, and has taken over Britain. In the present day, he is moving outwards, his forces going into Asia to commit mass killings in the same of cleansing the world. A new Order of the Phoenix arises, drawing from old blood, lifelong conflict, unwavering love, strong friendships and a realisation that they were born to ignite a flame to end Voldemort's reign once and for all.
Characters/Pairings: Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Percy, Charlie, George, Severus, Kingsley (HP) Dr Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia, Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan (Criminal Minds)
Genre: AU, dark, crossover
Beta: N/A
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Word Count: 2112
Author's Notes: This came about when I was aiming to write a short fic for a crossover challenge at crimeland. For some reason it spiralled into a big piece. I hope to finish this fic one day :3
It was the year 2010.
It was 12 years since the Second Wizarding War.
It was a new Order of the Phoenix's first meeting in months.
"Dr Reid."
"Professor."
The two men stared at each other, both equally lanky and gaunt. The world hadn't been easy on both Muggles and wizarding folk, after all. The ex-FBI agent blinked first; he was still young, after all. And not used to gazing into the haunted eyes of Severus Snape, who had gone through so much and earned so little peace.
"You, ah, you're here early," Spencer said, flustered. He sat down on one of the hard chairs surrounding the large oval table. And removed his curious eyes from one of their decidedly heroic members, choosing instead to address the friendlier grimy walls of the temporary safehouse.
Severus nodded wearily. "It's not as if I have other places to be," he muttered dryly, sitting down across from Spencer. "Besides, I enjoy not being hunted by the forces of the Dark Lord. And the silence that punctuality permits me before the rabble stroll in."
Spencer sat very still. What could he say, after all? He was also running from the forces of Voldemort, but his fate was definitely less severe than that of the man opposite him should he be caught.
The ex-Professor hesitated, then inclined his head towards the younger man. "I do enjoy intellectual conversation as well, Dr Reid. Perhaps you could continue our previous discussion about your version of Potions. Chemistry, I believe it's called? I think we were on the subject of acids and alkalis."
The two men buried themselves in talk far removed from their situation, both relaxing even as they began to compare and contrast the validity of Potions versus Chemistry.
"Hello."
Hermione Granger's soft voice interrupted a particularly enthusiastic point made by Spencer regarding molecules of a sort that Severus didn't quite understand. The two men turned to regard the woman, who looked rather startled at their camaraderie. Professor Severus Snape, as far back as she could remember, had never looked so… friendly to another person before.
"Welcome, Miss Granger. Or is it Mrs Weasley?" Snape murmured, a sneer on his thin cruel lips.
She swallowed. "It's still Miss Granger, s- I mean, Severus." Sir. Professor. No longer a Professor, technically, but he was a Potions Master. But she was older, wiser than that schoolgirl of years past. And she had the right to call him by his first name, no? "Nice to meet you again, Dr Reid."
She stepped forward and extended an awkward hand to the lanky man who stood up, his sweater vest already smeared with dust from the dirty tabletop.
Spencer gave an equally uncomfortable smile. "Likewise, Miss Granger."
"Call me Hermione."
"Call me Spencer."
They both smiled, visibly more relaxed, and took their seats, Hermione choosing the chair next to Severus. The Potions Master gave a pronounced eyeroll and sighed, pointedly glaring at Spencer's watch.
"Ow, Ron! Stop that!"
"Harry, please do let me attend to that cut!"
"So I told that idiot Mundungus where he could shove his wand: right up his-"
"Charlie! George!"
Severus gave another long-suffering sigh. "The rabble have arrived," he said sourly, and a tad unnecessarily, for the next moment saw the Weasleys and Harry Potter enter noisily.
Still one man short - George looked lost even now without his twin - the redheads sat themselves down, as far from Severus as possible. Harry took the seat next to Spencer, grinning and introducing himself.
The chatter filled the room. Although jokes were cracked, they were nervous and only served to elicit hollow laughs.
"Who are we waiting for now?" Harry asked, turning to Spencer, eyes friendly from behind his glasses.
"Uhm, Emily, Morgan, Hotch and Garcia are arriving with Kingsley, I think." He checked his watch, frowning. "I hope nothing's happened."
The table fell silent, worry etched on everyone's faces.
There was a reason why the Order didn't meet all that often.
There was a cry of anguish when Kingsley arrived with one person less.
"Not Hotch!"
Morgan nodded, his face ashen. "Sacrificed himself. Shot one bastard down before the others Avada Kedavred him. Emily took another one out before we Disapparated."
Garcia was crying. Back at the bureau, she'd been unhappy enough staring at pictures and videos of unsubs committing their heinous crimes. Now she was in a full-on war, and it scared her. It scared all of them.
"We contacted JJ through the Galleon. She's safe, as are Henry and Will." Emily dabbed at her eyes, her face strong, unwilling to break down.
As the newcomers sat themselves down, the room became oppressively silent as the people within it remembered their losses.
Fred, killed in the Second War during the Battle, which also took out Remus and Tonks. Hagrid, who perished in an attempted strike on enemy giants just five years before. Rossi, who had been the one who'd ensured that the Muggle world had friends with their wizarding counterparts just weeks before Voldemort spread his forces to the USA. Hotch, who'd jumped in front of his team to protect them from Death Eaters, his dying eyes seeing only a reunion with Haley and Jack.
Grim times.
Harry stood up. "Well," he said, swallowing. "We'd better get started, since… since no one else's coming."
The occupants of the room sat up straighter, eyes trained on the man, who looked suddenly too young, too tired to be fighting his life's nemesis.
Hermione's eyes pricked at the sight of his missing left arm, then resolutely moved to Harry's steely expression.
"Now, it's been a good three months since we last… met. We'll begin with Severus, and go around the table until we cover everyone's activities. Hermione, could you-"
"I'll do it," whispered Penelope Garcia with a sniff. "I… I brought my control centre." She pulled out her handy laptop, a small smile on her lips.
Harry thanked her, then inclined his head respectfully to Severus.
"I've been in contact with several associates in Hogsmeade," he murmured. "They say that the Dark Lord has been attempting to create more Horcruxes."
A collective gasp.
"More?" Ron asked, his brow furrowed. "Didn't he split his soul seven times? Creating more would be madness!"
Severus raised an eyebrow. "And do you think the Dark Lord, as powerful as he is, has ever been sane, Weasley? He is both coldly intelligent and as mad as a balloon. It's what makes him… impossible."
"Are your associates to be trusted?" Morgan asked, looking straight into the ex-Professor's eyes.
"I trust them, but as they are not even a secondary source of information, I take their words with a pinch of salt." Severus paused. "Moving on to other news, Death Eaters have now reached Asia. Specifically, they've decimated most of the Southeast. I believe they're considering what to do with China."
Several heads nodded; this piece of information had been revealed to them before.
Hermione was one. "I've been in Australia. A month ago or so. There's a small Death Eater presence there. Threatening, but not powerful yet. A week after I'd returned to Britain, a contact sent me news of mass killings in Indonesia, the Phillipines and huge parts of Thailand."
"I was in Laos a few days before they killed there," said Charlie, grave. "It grew. A small pocket of them, patrolling the streets. Then a few examples being made. Innocents, mostly. A pickpocket or two, trying to feed their families. They Crucioed a teenage boy in the market square until he confessed in English. He didn't even speak English, so the torture… it had to have gone on for at least two hours before he could mimic their words. I left then. After that, they started on the families."
A sobering silence fell yet again, and it was minutes before Hermione cleared her throat to speak.
"When I was in Australia, I met a couple of people who were keen to join our cause. They knew the risks. I checked their minds before I left. Didn't tell them anything specific, of course."
"Names?" Kingsley asked in his deep voice.
"Alexander and Olivia Fraser. Scott DeMarquette. All three are wizarding folk. The Death Eaters hadn't confiscated their wands yet, but I'm not too sure of the situation now. They haven't contacted me since Monday."
"They may be in hiding," Percy said quietly from a few seats down. "My Ministerial contact in Australia recently told me that while they remain in office, both Muggle and magical governments are essentially under Voldemort's control, much like ours back in 1998 and later in 2001 for the Muggle British government. As such, the Death Eaters have not (and I suspect that they are under express orders not to) carried out any mass killings in Australia itself. It seems as though Voldemort has plans for the continent. But my contact also informs me that people, both Muggle and wizarding, are either moving underground together to form safehouses just in case, or migrating in packs to Eastern Europe."
"That's a long trip," Ginny voiced, echoing several comments. "And dangerous. They'd have to pass through Asia and even the United Kingdom perhaps."
Severus leaned forward. "Sometimes, risks are taken for a endgame that isn't in plain sight, Miss Weasley. It might be a long and dangerous attempt, but Voldemort has yet been able to conquer the chill winds of Russia and the Eastern countries."
The discussion went on. One by one, they added to the growing pool of information as it was efficiently typed into the computer by Garcia.
George had been to Ireland with Ginny to learn of a possible spell to negate a Horcrux. Percy had maintained his cover as the disdainful Weasley boy at the bogus Ministry, trying to ferret out similar dissenters within the largely frightened or Imperiused group of workers there, creating propaganda of Voldemort's reign. Ron and Harry had been carrying on Fred and George's inventing work with the occasional help of Hermione. They'd come up with prototypes of several hybrid Muggle-magical devices, while doing their best to protect the residents of various towns in England where they had stayed from Death Eater attacks.
On the Muggle front, Morgan and Emily had been trekking through different countries in the Americas in disguised as refugees. They'd avoided detection as dissenters of Voldemort's regime thus far, thanks to being Muggle. The governments were under Death Eater control, but the Americas were large enough to roam undetected. Plus, they had Muggle technology at their disposal, something that Voldemort had yet to crack, based on his belief that anything born of Muggle hands was useless against magic.
"It could be his Achilles' heel," said Spencer, looking up into the eyes of the people present. (He and Garcia had been holed up analysing ancient wizarding texts about Horcruxes, Potions, spells and weapons to attempt to find out something Voldemort had missed.) "Like in Wells' War of the Worlds, when the aliens died from Earth's germs and bacteria."
The Weasleys looked nonplussed, but the rest of his audience looked interested.
"It might be that he would want to research into Muggle technology though, if he wanted weapons," Snape mused.
"Oh god… Imagine nuclear weapons… Biochemical weapons…" Emily groaned. "In the hands of a madman…"
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal." Spencer whispered, blanching. "Albert Einstein."
"Is it likely that he would undergo research into Muggle weapons? Surely, after a decade, he would have?" Hermione asked, trying to keep from panicking. She had thought of it before, but days months years passed and Voldemort seemed stubborn to quietly take over the minds of ruling parties and creating chaos via magical means. To scare the filthy Muggles and Mudbloods, using magic. A technology of sorts.
"I'm sure he has thought of it, Miss Granger," Severus said, slowly. "It is likely that he would have a few Muggles and wizards under his command to research on Muggle weapons. But you forget that he is a proud creature who flaunts his magical heritage but hides his Muggle ancestry."
Morgan nodded. "He's a classic case. Hates his father for what he did. For what he was. Now he's targeting all Muggles and anything associated with them. He's killing his father again and again. Plus, he's a terrorist. Using magic to terrify people, to torture and kill them without any harm to himself or his followers. Now that creates panic and fear. That's what he wants. A world in fear and awe for his egoistical self, removed of all filthiness a la Muggle. The vilification of Muggle and veneration of Magic."
Nadia/Ravenclaw/75
Summary: It is 2010, in an alternative universe. Voldemort won the Second Wizarding War 12 years ago, and has taken over Britain. In the present day, he is moving outwards, his forces going into Asia to commit mass killings in the same of cleansing the world. A new Order of the Phoenix arises, drawing from old blood, lifelong conflict, unwavering love, strong friendships and a realisation that they were born to ignite a flame to end Voldemort's reign once and for all.
Characters/Pairings: Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Percy, Charlie, George, Severus, Kingsley (HP) Dr Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia, Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan (Criminal Minds)
Genre: AU, dark, crossover
Beta: N/A
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Word Count: 2112
Author's Notes: This came about when I was aiming to write a short fic for a crossover challenge at crimeland. For some reason it spiralled into a big piece. I hope to finish this fic one day :3
It was the year 2010.
It was 12 years since the Second Wizarding War.
It was a new Order of the Phoenix's first meeting in months.
"Dr Reid."
"Professor."
The two men stared at each other, both equally lanky and gaunt. The world hadn't been easy on both Muggles and wizarding folk, after all. The ex-FBI agent blinked first; he was still young, after all. And not used to gazing into the haunted eyes of Severus Snape, who had gone through so much and earned so little peace.
"You, ah, you're here early," Spencer said, flustered. He sat down on one of the hard chairs surrounding the large oval table. And removed his curious eyes from one of their decidedly heroic members, choosing instead to address the friendlier grimy walls of the temporary safehouse.
Severus nodded wearily. "It's not as if I have other places to be," he muttered dryly, sitting down across from Spencer. "Besides, I enjoy not being hunted by the forces of the Dark Lord. And the silence that punctuality permits me before the rabble stroll in."
Spencer sat very still. What could he say, after all? He was also running from the forces of Voldemort, but his fate was definitely less severe than that of the man opposite him should he be caught.
The ex-Professor hesitated, then inclined his head towards the younger man. "I do enjoy intellectual conversation as well, Dr Reid. Perhaps you could continue our previous discussion about your version of Potions. Chemistry, I believe it's called? I think we were on the subject of acids and alkalis."
The two men buried themselves in talk far removed from their situation, both relaxing even as they began to compare and contrast the validity of Potions versus Chemistry.
"Hello."
Hermione Granger's soft voice interrupted a particularly enthusiastic point made by Spencer regarding molecules of a sort that Severus didn't quite understand. The two men turned to regard the woman, who looked rather startled at their camaraderie. Professor Severus Snape, as far back as she could remember, had never looked so… friendly to another person before.
"Welcome, Miss Granger. Or is it Mrs Weasley?" Snape murmured, a sneer on his thin cruel lips.
She swallowed. "It's still Miss Granger, s- I mean, Severus." Sir. Professor. No longer a Professor, technically, but he was a Potions Master. But she was older, wiser than that schoolgirl of years past. And she had the right to call him by his first name, no? "Nice to meet you again, Dr Reid."
She stepped forward and extended an awkward hand to the lanky man who stood up, his sweater vest already smeared with dust from the dirty tabletop.
Spencer gave an equally uncomfortable smile. "Likewise, Miss Granger."
"Call me Hermione."
"Call me Spencer."
They both smiled, visibly more relaxed, and took their seats, Hermione choosing the chair next to Severus. The Potions Master gave a pronounced eyeroll and sighed, pointedly glaring at Spencer's watch.
"Ow, Ron! Stop that!"
"Harry, please do let me attend to that cut!"
"So I told that idiot Mundungus where he could shove his wand: right up his-"
"Charlie! George!"
Severus gave another long-suffering sigh. "The rabble have arrived," he said sourly, and a tad unnecessarily, for the next moment saw the Weasleys and Harry Potter enter noisily.
Still one man short - George looked lost even now without his twin - the redheads sat themselves down, as far from Severus as possible. Harry took the seat next to Spencer, grinning and introducing himself.
The chatter filled the room. Although jokes were cracked, they were nervous and only served to elicit hollow laughs.
"Who are we waiting for now?" Harry asked, turning to Spencer, eyes friendly from behind his glasses.
"Uhm, Emily, Morgan, Hotch and Garcia are arriving with Kingsley, I think." He checked his watch, frowning. "I hope nothing's happened."
The table fell silent, worry etched on everyone's faces.
There was a reason why the Order didn't meet all that often.
There was a cry of anguish when Kingsley arrived with one person less.
"Not Hotch!"
Morgan nodded, his face ashen. "Sacrificed himself. Shot one bastard down before the others Avada Kedavred him. Emily took another one out before we Disapparated."
Garcia was crying. Back at the bureau, she'd been unhappy enough staring at pictures and videos of unsubs committing their heinous crimes. Now she was in a full-on war, and it scared her. It scared all of them.
"We contacted JJ through the Galleon. She's safe, as are Henry and Will." Emily dabbed at her eyes, her face strong, unwilling to break down.
As the newcomers sat themselves down, the room became oppressively silent as the people within it remembered their losses.
Fred, killed in the Second War during the Battle, which also took out Remus and Tonks. Hagrid, who perished in an attempted strike on enemy giants just five years before. Rossi, who had been the one who'd ensured that the Muggle world had friends with their wizarding counterparts just weeks before Voldemort spread his forces to the USA. Hotch, who'd jumped in front of his team to protect them from Death Eaters, his dying eyes seeing only a reunion with Haley and Jack.
Grim times.
Harry stood up. "Well," he said, swallowing. "We'd better get started, since… since no one else's coming."
The occupants of the room sat up straighter, eyes trained on the man, who looked suddenly too young, too tired to be fighting his life's nemesis.
Hermione's eyes pricked at the sight of his missing left arm, then resolutely moved to Harry's steely expression.
"Now, it's been a good three months since we last… met. We'll begin with Severus, and go around the table until we cover everyone's activities. Hermione, could you-"
"I'll do it," whispered Penelope Garcia with a sniff. "I… I brought my control centre." She pulled out her handy laptop, a small smile on her lips.
Harry thanked her, then inclined his head respectfully to Severus.
"I've been in contact with several associates in Hogsmeade," he murmured. "They say that the Dark Lord has been attempting to create more Horcruxes."
A collective gasp.
"More?" Ron asked, his brow furrowed. "Didn't he split his soul seven times? Creating more would be madness!"
Severus raised an eyebrow. "And do you think the Dark Lord, as powerful as he is, has ever been sane, Weasley? He is both coldly intelligent and as mad as a balloon. It's what makes him… impossible."
"Are your associates to be trusted?" Morgan asked, looking straight into the ex-Professor's eyes.
"I trust them, but as they are not even a secondary source of information, I take their words with a pinch of salt." Severus paused. "Moving on to other news, Death Eaters have now reached Asia. Specifically, they've decimated most of the Southeast. I believe they're considering what to do with China."
Several heads nodded; this piece of information had been revealed to them before.
Hermione was one. "I've been in Australia. A month ago or so. There's a small Death Eater presence there. Threatening, but not powerful yet. A week after I'd returned to Britain, a contact sent me news of mass killings in Indonesia, the Phillipines and huge parts of Thailand."
"I was in Laos a few days before they killed there," said Charlie, grave. "It grew. A small pocket of them, patrolling the streets. Then a few examples being made. Innocents, mostly. A pickpocket or two, trying to feed their families. They Crucioed a teenage boy in the market square until he confessed in English. He didn't even speak English, so the torture… it had to have gone on for at least two hours before he could mimic their words. I left then. After that, they started on the families."
A sobering silence fell yet again, and it was minutes before Hermione cleared her throat to speak.
"When I was in Australia, I met a couple of people who were keen to join our cause. They knew the risks. I checked their minds before I left. Didn't tell them anything specific, of course."
"Names?" Kingsley asked in his deep voice.
"Alexander and Olivia Fraser. Scott DeMarquette. All three are wizarding folk. The Death Eaters hadn't confiscated their wands yet, but I'm not too sure of the situation now. They haven't contacted me since Monday."
"They may be in hiding," Percy said quietly from a few seats down. "My Ministerial contact in Australia recently told me that while they remain in office, both Muggle and magical governments are essentially under Voldemort's control, much like ours back in 1998 and later in 2001 for the Muggle British government. As such, the Death Eaters have not (and I suspect that they are under express orders not to) carried out any mass killings in Australia itself. It seems as though Voldemort has plans for the continent. But my contact also informs me that people, both Muggle and wizarding, are either moving underground together to form safehouses just in case, or migrating in packs to Eastern Europe."
"That's a long trip," Ginny voiced, echoing several comments. "And dangerous. They'd have to pass through Asia and even the United Kingdom perhaps."
Severus leaned forward. "Sometimes, risks are taken for a endgame that isn't in plain sight, Miss Weasley. It might be a long and dangerous attempt, but Voldemort has yet been able to conquer the chill winds of Russia and the Eastern countries."
The discussion went on. One by one, they added to the growing pool of information as it was efficiently typed into the computer by Garcia.
George had been to Ireland with Ginny to learn of a possible spell to negate a Horcrux. Percy had maintained his cover as the disdainful Weasley boy at the bogus Ministry, trying to ferret out similar dissenters within the largely frightened or Imperiused group of workers there, creating propaganda of Voldemort's reign. Ron and Harry had been carrying on Fred and George's inventing work with the occasional help of Hermione. They'd come up with prototypes of several hybrid Muggle-magical devices, while doing their best to protect the residents of various towns in England where they had stayed from Death Eater attacks.
On the Muggle front, Morgan and Emily had been trekking through different countries in the Americas in disguised as refugees. They'd avoided detection as dissenters of Voldemort's regime thus far, thanks to being Muggle. The governments were under Death Eater control, but the Americas were large enough to roam undetected. Plus, they had Muggle technology at their disposal, something that Voldemort had yet to crack, based on his belief that anything born of Muggle hands was useless against magic.
"It could be his Achilles' heel," said Spencer, looking up into the eyes of the people present. (He and Garcia had been holed up analysing ancient wizarding texts about Horcruxes, Potions, spells and weapons to attempt to find out something Voldemort had missed.) "Like in Wells' War of the Worlds, when the aliens died from Earth's germs and bacteria."
The Weasleys looked nonplussed, but the rest of his audience looked interested.
"It might be that he would want to research into Muggle technology though, if he wanted weapons," Snape mused.
"Oh god… Imagine nuclear weapons… Biochemical weapons…" Emily groaned. "In the hands of a madman…"
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal." Spencer whispered, blanching. "Albert Einstein."
"Is it likely that he would undergo research into Muggle weapons? Surely, after a decade, he would have?" Hermione asked, trying to keep from panicking. She had thought of it before, but days months years passed and Voldemort seemed stubborn to quietly take over the minds of ruling parties and creating chaos via magical means. To scare the filthy Muggles and Mudbloods, using magic. A technology of sorts.
"I'm sure he has thought of it, Miss Granger," Severus said, slowly. "It is likely that he would have a few Muggles and wizards under his command to research on Muggle weapons. But you forget that he is a proud creature who flaunts his magical heritage but hides his Muggle ancestry."
Morgan nodded. "He's a classic case. Hates his father for what he did. For what he was. Now he's targeting all Muggles and anything associated with them. He's killing his father again and again. Plus, he's a terrorist. Using magic to terrify people, to torture and kill them without any harm to himself or his followers. Now that creates panic and fear. That's what he wants. A world in fear and awe for his egoistical self, removed of all filthiness a la Muggle. The vilification of Muggle and veneration of Magic."
Nadia/Ravenclaw/75