Into the Breach
Written for the Crossover Challenge on legendland . What happens when magic goes awry and a Mord'Sith is set loose inside the Ministry of Magic? It feels a little rushed to me, but it was perilously close to the word limit. Harry Potter/Legend of the Seeker
Art by shalia74
Into the Breach
Once more into the breach, my friends, once more,
Or fill up the walls with our English dead.
-King Henry V, Act III, scene i
Hermione had done it. The thing they said couldn't be done.
After becoming the youngest Unspeakable in a century, Hermione had taken up her position in the Department of Mysteries and began to experiment.
Not in simple time magic, as her supervisor had suggested. No. She'd been there, done that. She would do something greater, something that would get her a mention in the history books.
She discovered a way to travel through time and space.
-l-
"We're going in circles, wizard."
"I tell you, Cara, that we are not! It's this way…" Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order, informed his traveling companion, Mistress Cara of the Mord'Sith.
Cara rolled her eyes. "We should return to the village and wait for Richard and Kahlan to meet with us there. We'll never find this hermit you keep talking about."
His face a grave mask, Zedd rounded on Cara, "It is possible that this hermit has information on the Stone of Tears. We must find him."
Cara huffed, but nodded sharply, indicating her willingness to follow.
-l-
"Are you nervous?" Luna Lovegood asked in that vacant way she had. Luna had only recently attained a position as an Unspeakable, and had been assigned as Hermione's assistant.
Hermione found she quite liked her, once she realized that Luna was not, in fact, loony, nor was she seeking attention.
Luna could see pieces of parallel dimensions, leaking into their own. It was in the study of Luna that Hermione had come to the conclusion that there were many worlds, all existing in layers on a plane.
It was the study of Luna that had made it possible to create the G.A.T.E or Gateway Across Temporal Existence.
The G.A.T.E she was about to present in Conference Room Z in the hope of being granted more government funding.
"No, I'm perfectly fine. Let's go, Luna."
-l-
"Wizard."
"What is it now, Cara?"
"Is that what we're looking for?"
A rift floated in the air, a blue, perfectly elliptical wave of light.
"What in creation?" Zedd murmured before stretching out his hands to probe the phenomena with magic.
Cara leaned against a tree, rolling her eyes heavenward. A sensible person would move away from strange lights that appear in the middle of forests. Especially if they didn't know why it was there.
Cara began to muse to herself that the greater the han, the larger the degree of insanity.
-l-
Lucius Malfoy stood in the back of Conference Room Z. His presence did not command the attention and respect that it once would have within the Ministry of Magic. After all, the only thing that kept him out of Azkaban was a plea for leniency from the Boy Who Lived. Apparently Saint Potter felt indebted to Narcissa for her actions during that fateful night at Hogwarts.
Indebted enough to keep Lucius out of jail.
And so he skulked in the back of the conference room, as well dressed as ever, though he received fewer compliments.
But all that was about to change.
It did not matter that he was no longer considered to be at the height of society. Money still talked. With it, you could bribe Unspeakables to sabotage the failsafes on powerful new magical inventions. With money, you could then privately fund said promising new magical devices and control the market.
With market control of such powerful new magic, once could rise to the tip of the top.
Lucius smirked as Hermione Granger stepped onto the stage with Harry Potter.
-l-
"Welcome, witches and wizards," Hermione began. She went on to explain something about advanced arithmantic theory combined with runes and some kind of astrological realignment.
Harry didn't really pay attention. He wouldn't get it anyway. He was an auror, not an Unspeakable. He was here to test the thing out, not learn how to make one.
"And volunteering to be the first to walk into the breach, Auror Potter."
That was his cue.
Ignoring the flashbulbs, though he hated them as much as he ever had, Harry checked that his wand was readily drawn and his spare was tucked into his boot, cast a quick protego hominus, and walked into the light.
It was all he could do not to flaunt his muggle upbringing with inappropriately flippant movie quotes.
-l-
"Something is coming through!"
"Get back, wizard!" Cara pushed Zedd behind her. She was better equipped than he to deal with anything that might come out of a swirling vortex.
Thinking she spoke to him, Harry Potter jumped, whipping his wand from his arm holster. "How did you know I'm a wizard?" he asked quietly, in his best auror voice.
The woman in... rather tight leather, did not seem very impressed.
Very tight leather.
Mind on the job, Potter!
The woman in red leather drew some sort of enormous wand from a sheathe at her side. It hummed when she held it, a high whine that reminded Harry of the screech of the Cruciatus Curse flying through the air.
"Expelliarmus!"
Cara held out a hand, forcing the magic back on the strange young wizard. The wand he had been holding, presumably a focus for his power, went flying backwards into the breach.
Holding his hands up, Harry decided using movie quotes wasn't so bad.
"I come in peace?"
The woman in red advanced.
"Take me to your leader?"
That got a reaction. Still holding that whining red wand, she clasped his arm in a grip that bruised.
"Maybe he knows something about the Stone of Tears."
Harry blinked. "What, you mean the Sorcerer's Stone?"
Zedd came forward, "What is this stone you speak of?"
Harry didn't answer. In that moment, he threw himself backwards, counting on the safe guards Hermione had built into the G.A.T.E to keep anyone or anything from another world being able to make it through.
As it turned out, that was a bad idea.
-l-
Hermione scrambled backwards, frantically swishing her wand in complicated patterns to disable the G.A.T.E as Harry fell backwards onto the stage, a woman in some kind of leather bodysuit landing heavily on top of him. The woman thrust a riding crop looking thing into Harry's neck, and there was a high whine accompanied by Harry's screams as dark magic crawled across his face in a pattern of veins.
The breach closed, and the woman looked up. Hermione found herself frozen in place by green eyes that reminded her strongly of her encounter with the basilisk.
Someone cast a stunner from the crowd, and the woman turned, hand extended. The red light of the stunner rebounded, flying back toward the caster.
With a speed that seemed inhuman, the woman had wrenched Hermione's wand arm behind her back, and was dragging her from the stage, that humming whining rod of dark magic at her throat.
She didn't make any threats. The look on her face was enough.
-l-
Alarms sounded, putting the Ministry on alert that there was a D Level threat loose in the building (The D stood for Disastrous). Harry kicked himself for letting the woman take Hermione as he skittered around a corner. He had just gotten authorization to use Unforgivables.
If he made it out of this alive, Ron was going to kill him.
-l-
Cara dragged the small witch along, casually deflecting all of the magic thrown at her, leaving a trail of disabled, transfigured, cursed, and otherwise damaged magic users.
It seemed that she had been transported to some sort of palace for wizards. Perhaps a place like the Palace of the Prophets, though this didn't look like the Old World.
Finding an empty room, Cara flung her captive into the desk inside.
"Open the portal. Send me home. Now."
Before Hermione could open her mouth to answer, the door flung open to reveal Lucius Malfoy, in all is splendor.
"My dear," he purred, "please don't go anywhere. We could accomplish so much together, you and I."
His light blue eyes twinkled, but Cara found him unimpressive.
She had, after all, spent years at the side of Darken Rahl.
He was a hard act to follow.
-l-
Harry turned a corner just in time to see Lucius Malfoy fly into the hall, his face a mask of rage. The woman in red leather advanced on him, her Crucio Stick held in front of her.
Taking a deep breath, disbelieving he was doing this to save Malfoy of all people, Harry raised his wand.
"Avada kedavra!"
Green light streamed from his wand, directly toward the extended gloved hand of the woman in red.
And then the light was streaming back towards him, the woman having achieved something only Harry had ever accomplished.
She deflected the Killing Curse.
At the Boy Who Lived.
Oh, Merlin's Hairy Ba-
Harry fell to the floor with a thump.
"HARRY!" Hermione screamed, running to his prone form. It wasn't possible, he was the Boy Who Lived!
She sobbed, screaming and carrying on. Lucius found it rather annoying.
Cara rolled her eyes, then pulled the hysterical woman away from her attacker. Leaning over, the Woman Who Lived performed the breath of life.
Harry sat up.
"Will you send me home now?" Cara asked the witch, whose mouth was opened unattractively wide.
-l-
Once the breach had been opened and sealed once more, Harry looked at Hermione.
"Let's not tell anyone about this."
"Agreed."
Two pairs of eyes trained on the sneering form of Lucius Malfoy, who was currently engaged in rearranging his hair.
"Obliviate!"
-l-
Cara emerged from the breach to find Zedd, Richard, and Kahlan tied to stakes will Mord'Sith all around them. Darken Rahl stood facing her, his deep blue eyes appropriately filled with a scorching dragon fire.
This was more like it.
"Ah, Cara," he said, his voice a steel sword wrapped in velvet, "I've been waiting for your return."
Cara found she was very glad he wasn't blonde.
Art by shalia74
Into the Breach
Once more into the breach, my friends, once more,
Or fill up the walls with our English dead.
-King Henry V, Act III, scene i
Hermione had done it. The thing they said couldn't be done.
After becoming the youngest Unspeakable in a century, Hermione had taken up her position in the Department of Mysteries and began to experiment.
Not in simple time magic, as her supervisor had suggested. No. She'd been there, done that. She would do something greater, something that would get her a mention in the history books.
She discovered a way to travel through time and space.
-l-
"We're going in circles, wizard."
"I tell you, Cara, that we are not! It's this way…" Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order, informed his traveling companion, Mistress Cara of the Mord'Sith.
Cara rolled her eyes. "We should return to the village and wait for Richard and Kahlan to meet with us there. We'll never find this hermit you keep talking about."
His face a grave mask, Zedd rounded on Cara, "It is possible that this hermit has information on the Stone of Tears. We must find him."
Cara huffed, but nodded sharply, indicating her willingness to follow.
-l-
"Are you nervous?" Luna Lovegood asked in that vacant way she had. Luna had only recently attained a position as an Unspeakable, and had been assigned as Hermione's assistant.
Hermione found she quite liked her, once she realized that Luna was not, in fact, loony, nor was she seeking attention.
Luna could see pieces of parallel dimensions, leaking into their own. It was in the study of Luna that Hermione had come to the conclusion that there were many worlds, all existing in layers on a plane.
It was the study of Luna that had made it possible to create the G.A.T.E or Gateway Across Temporal Existence.
The G.A.T.E she was about to present in Conference Room Z in the hope of being granted more government funding.
"No, I'm perfectly fine. Let's go, Luna."
-l-
"Wizard."
"What is it now, Cara?"
"Is that what we're looking for?"
A rift floated in the air, a blue, perfectly elliptical wave of light.
"What in creation?" Zedd murmured before stretching out his hands to probe the phenomena with magic.
Cara leaned against a tree, rolling her eyes heavenward. A sensible person would move away from strange lights that appear in the middle of forests. Especially if they didn't know why it was there.
Cara began to muse to herself that the greater the han, the larger the degree of insanity.
-l-
Lucius Malfoy stood in the back of Conference Room Z. His presence did not command the attention and respect that it once would have within the Ministry of Magic. After all, the only thing that kept him out of Azkaban was a plea for leniency from the Boy Who Lived. Apparently Saint Potter felt indebted to Narcissa for her actions during that fateful night at Hogwarts.
Indebted enough to keep Lucius out of jail.
And so he skulked in the back of the conference room, as well dressed as ever, though he received fewer compliments.
But all that was about to change.
It did not matter that he was no longer considered to be at the height of society. Money still talked. With it, you could bribe Unspeakables to sabotage the failsafes on powerful new magical inventions. With money, you could then privately fund said promising new magical devices and control the market.
With market control of such powerful new magic, once could rise to the tip of the top.
Lucius smirked as Hermione Granger stepped onto the stage with Harry Potter.
-l-
"Welcome, witches and wizards," Hermione began. She went on to explain something about advanced arithmantic theory combined with runes and some kind of astrological realignment.
Harry didn't really pay attention. He wouldn't get it anyway. He was an auror, not an Unspeakable. He was here to test the thing out, not learn how to make one.
"And volunteering to be the first to walk into the breach, Auror Potter."
That was his cue.
Ignoring the flashbulbs, though he hated them as much as he ever had, Harry checked that his wand was readily drawn and his spare was tucked into his boot, cast a quick protego hominus, and walked into the light.
It was all he could do not to flaunt his muggle upbringing with inappropriately flippant movie quotes.
-l-
"Something is coming through!"
"Get back, wizard!" Cara pushed Zedd behind her. She was better equipped than he to deal with anything that might come out of a swirling vortex.
Thinking she spoke to him, Harry Potter jumped, whipping his wand from his arm holster. "How did you know I'm a wizard?" he asked quietly, in his best auror voice.
The woman in... rather tight leather, did not seem very impressed.
Very tight leather.
Mind on the job, Potter!
The woman in red leather drew some sort of enormous wand from a sheathe at her side. It hummed when she held it, a high whine that reminded Harry of the screech of the Cruciatus Curse flying through the air.
"Expelliarmus!"
Cara held out a hand, forcing the magic back on the strange young wizard. The wand he had been holding, presumably a focus for his power, went flying backwards into the breach.
Holding his hands up, Harry decided using movie quotes wasn't so bad.
"I come in peace?"
The woman in red advanced.
"Take me to your leader?"
That got a reaction. Still holding that whining red wand, she clasped his arm in a grip that bruised.
"Maybe he knows something about the Stone of Tears."
Harry blinked. "What, you mean the Sorcerer's Stone?"
Zedd came forward, "What is this stone you speak of?"
Harry didn't answer. In that moment, he threw himself backwards, counting on the safe guards Hermione had built into the G.A.T.E to keep anyone or anything from another world being able to make it through.
As it turned out, that was a bad idea.
-l-
Hermione scrambled backwards, frantically swishing her wand in complicated patterns to disable the G.A.T.E as Harry fell backwards onto the stage, a woman in some kind of leather bodysuit landing heavily on top of him. The woman thrust a riding crop looking thing into Harry's neck, and there was a high whine accompanied by Harry's screams as dark magic crawled across his face in a pattern of veins.
The breach closed, and the woman looked up. Hermione found herself frozen in place by green eyes that reminded her strongly of her encounter with the basilisk.
Someone cast a stunner from the crowd, and the woman turned, hand extended. The red light of the stunner rebounded, flying back toward the caster.
With a speed that seemed inhuman, the woman had wrenched Hermione's wand arm behind her back, and was dragging her from the stage, that humming whining rod of dark magic at her throat.
She didn't make any threats. The look on her face was enough.
-l-
Alarms sounded, putting the Ministry on alert that there was a D Level threat loose in the building (The D stood for Disastrous). Harry kicked himself for letting the woman take Hermione as he skittered around a corner. He had just gotten authorization to use Unforgivables.
If he made it out of this alive, Ron was going to kill him.
-l-
Cara dragged the small witch along, casually deflecting all of the magic thrown at her, leaving a trail of disabled, transfigured, cursed, and otherwise damaged magic users.
It seemed that she had been transported to some sort of palace for wizards. Perhaps a place like the Palace of the Prophets, though this didn't look like the Old World.
Finding an empty room, Cara flung her captive into the desk inside.
"Open the portal. Send me home. Now."
Before Hermione could open her mouth to answer, the door flung open to reveal Lucius Malfoy, in all is splendor.
"My dear," he purred, "please don't go anywhere. We could accomplish so much together, you and I."
His light blue eyes twinkled, but Cara found him unimpressive.
She had, after all, spent years at the side of Darken Rahl.
He was a hard act to follow.
-l-
Harry turned a corner just in time to see Lucius Malfoy fly into the hall, his face a mask of rage. The woman in red leather advanced on him, her Crucio Stick held in front of her.
Taking a deep breath, disbelieving he was doing this to save Malfoy of all people, Harry raised his wand.
"Avada kedavra!"
Green light streamed from his wand, directly toward the extended gloved hand of the woman in red.
And then the light was streaming back towards him, the woman having achieved something only Harry had ever accomplished.
She deflected the Killing Curse.
At the Boy Who Lived.
Oh, Merlin's Hairy Ba-
Harry fell to the floor with a thump.
"HARRY!" Hermione screamed, running to his prone form. It wasn't possible, he was the Boy Who Lived!
She sobbed, screaming and carrying on. Lucius found it rather annoying.
Cara rolled her eyes, then pulled the hysterical woman away from her attacker. Leaning over, the Woman Who Lived performed the breath of life.
Harry sat up.
"Will you send me home now?" Cara asked the witch, whose mouth was opened unattractively wide.
-l-
Once the breach had been opened and sealed once more, Harry looked at Hermione.
"Let's not tell anyone about this."
"Agreed."
Two pairs of eyes trained on the sneering form of Lucius Malfoy, who was currently engaged in rearranging his hair.
"Obliviate!"
-l-
Cara emerged from the breach to find Zedd, Richard, and Kahlan tied to stakes will Mord'Sith all around them. Darken Rahl stood facing her, his deep blue eyes appropriately filled with a scorching dragon fire.
This was more like it.
"Ah, Cara," he said, his voice a steel sword wrapped in velvet, "I've been waiting for your return."
Cara found she was very glad he wasn't blonde.