HARRY POTTER AND THE SAVE-OR-DIE

Chapter Two: Old Friends

It was the sort of night that would have fit in late autumn: cold, wet, and dark. It had no place in early summer.

Lucius Malfoy pulled his cloak tighter around him for warmth. All this sneaking around in the dark was so... trite. And hardly fair. He doubted the members of the Order of the Phoenix ever had to deal with disastrously upset sleep schedules caused by these late-night rendezvous. Lucius glanced around to make sure no-one was watching, then blew his nose in an undignified fashion.

This was just the sort of blunder typical of the new administration. As a criminal organization, they couldn't just meet at a cafe someplace and talk about their evil plans, now could they? Ergo, they had to meet in cold, dark, wet forests on cold, dark, wet nights. Or so the logic went, Lucius supposed.

Because the simple fact of the matter was that they could just meet in a cafe someplace. Every single member of their select group was a fully capable wizard or witch. There was absolutely no reason they could not all Apparate to a gourmet coffee shop at a corner in, say, Luxembourg. Or Kyoto. Or Shanghai.

There were countless places where they could scream, in English, their intention to commit murder and sow discord and such at the top of their lungs and receive nothing more than a strange look from the locals—all the while enjoying a fine Chianti, or perhaps a latte.

Some form of furry woodland creature—Lucius neither knew nor cared which—scurried away from him as he walked to the meeting.

He half expected Riddle to appear from a bolt of lightning, or perhaps descending from the sky.

A black shadowy form appeared in front of him. Despite himself, Lucius smiled. Briefly.

He was the very picture of wholesome youth, well-dressed, clean-cut, with a serious, sincere expression on his face. Everything about him said: trust me. I'm intelligent, reliable, and not-at-all a maniac.

Only a born liar could look so honest.

Riddle smiled, wand in hand, sword belted at his hip.

"Greetings, Malfoy," he said.

o—o—o—o

Thud.

Milo hit the ground—hard.

"You did that on purpose," he muttered accusingly.

He looked around, but there wasn't much to see. Wherever he was, it was cool, dark, and had a hard stone floor. A very hard stone floor.

"Light," he muttered, but nothing happened. Of course—he'd died and come back. He shouldn't have expected his memorized spells to survive the process.

He poked himself, just to check that he was really real. Yup, he thought. Hit points, skills, feats, abilities, it's all here.

Except for his equipment.

Well. Crap.

Generally speaking, most people assume that Fighters and Paladins and whatnot are far more dependent on their gear than spellcasters. And for most spellcasters, that's true. Take away a Druid's scimitar and she can still turn into a tyrannosaurus rex. Take away a Sorcerer's spear and she probably won't recognize it, having never seen it since she bought it 'just in case' with her extra cash at level one.

But take away a Wizard's spellbook, and he's got nothing. Milo had to spend an hour every morning pouring over his spellbook just to refresh his daily spells, and without that, he's just a Commoner with a high Will save and a magic rat—saving, in Milo's case, for the rat.

What do muggles do when they need light? Milo wondered. He'd gotten so used to everyone around him being a single word and a flick of a stick away from magical illumination that he'd almost forgotten what it had been like.

Torches. Adventurers always carried torches. Even Milo did, in his Belt of Hidden Pouches, though he rarely used them. Milo wondered what would become of that belt, now. It was probably decorating the Chamber of Secrets, along with the rest of his old gear.

And his old body, for that matter.

Now there was a weird thought. He had a new body. It felt the same as the last one, and Milo knew that, if he had a mirror, it would look the same—but it wasn't.

Milo felt vaguely resentful of that. It may have been scrawny, and maybe it looked a little malnourished around the edges, and, he supposed, it had an interesting collection of scars and old injuries, but it was his body, dammit, and he was quite attached to it. So to speak.

Milo shook his head, focusing. He was on a time limit, here. An arbitrary and capricious time limit, sure, but a time limit, nevertheless.

Milo's eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. He was in a large-ish circular room that seemed slightly familiar, somehow. There were a few lumpy shapes scattered across the floor. Milo crawled his way over to the nearest one, feeling around with his hands.

He touched tough leather. He felt around, and found straps and buckles. A backpack. Milo grinned.

A few minutes later, he was holding a lit torch.

There wasn't a backpack in the whole of Creation that didn't have fifty feet of rope, a couple of torches, and flint and steel in it.

When Milo saw what the backpack was connected to, he almost dropped the torch.

o—o—o—o

Hannah Abbot lay in bed. It wasn't that she couldn't sleep. It was just that she didn't really see the point.

She idly fingered a crudely made, lopsided, slightly battered silver rose. After a few minutes, she pinned it to the front of her nightshirt.

"I'm bored," she whispered. It was a lie, but it was the words, not the meaning, that was important.

"Squeak!"

A brown-and-white hamster appeared in her hands, composed of equal parts fluff and pudge, appeared in her hands. Milo had once told her that it used magic to look deep inside her mind and formed its shape to maximize cuteness. She wasn't sure how true that was, because Milo had once told her that the smallest possible unit of measurement was five feet and that carbon wasn't a real element.

But, for one reason or another, it felt hollow, now. Like it was trying too hard. It didn't seem... real.

Maybe the magic was fading. Or maybe it was just her. Cuteness didn't seem to have the same appeal that it used to.

They'd never found Milo. The Daily Prophet said, in a tiny footnote on the fourth page of section H, that he'd run off. But when Hannah had asked Hermione if she knew anything, she'd seen the look on her face.

And that was the last time Hermione had talked to her.

Hermione obviously knew something, but just as obviously wished she didn't.

Was Milo... had something happened to him? Had someone taken him? Or was he... could he be...

He wasn't dead, was he?

The hamster froze for a moment, staring her dead in the eye. Like it was... listening for something. It was uncanny; it had never done anything like that before. It seemed to make some kind of decision, then it did scurried off of her bed.

But it didn't fall. It just sort of... floated there, looking around. It glanced back at her, and she got that feeling again, as if it was ruffling through her thoughts. Then it floated over to her bedside table, pulled open a drawer, and found a pen. It was a practical, Muggle ball-point design that could write for ages without running out of ink; being a halfblood had some advantages. She hated writing with a quill.

It looked around again, then fixed on a poster of a map of the world she kept on her wall. Without warning, it ripped it off the wall.

"Oi!" she hissed. She didn't want to wake her parents. "Put that back!"

The hamster ignored her, and floated the map down next to her. She noticed that it wasn't actually touching the map with its paws. The map just... floated.

The pen floated up, searched around for a while, then stabbed down on England with enough force that it tore clean through the paper. The hamster stared at her, as if expecting something.

She looked at the map. The pen was pointing at a seemingly-random point in North Somerset, twenty or so kilometers away from her home in Bristol.

"Okay..." she said.

The hamster flipped the map over. It moved the pen rapidly in a line straight across the page, lifting it from the paper seemingly at random. Then it moved down slightly and started it again. And again. And again.

As it continued, she realized it was drawing a map of sorts, although it looked more like a photograph someone might take from airplane, or possibly broomstick.

There was a big 'X' drawn over an innocuous-looking hillock.

Hannah had pulled her school robes over her head and was climbing out the window, Cleansweep Seven in hand, before the ink was dry.

o—o—o—o

It was Gerard.

There wasn't much left of the big Fighter himself, but Milo would recognize the scale mail and greatsword anywhere. They'd bought it together, years ago, after Milo had persuaded him that dual-wielding Bastard Swords was lunacy. He'd been skeptical of the idea until he'd Cleave'd his way through a dozen or so goblins and a gnoll shaman without breaking a sweat. Then he'd taken to it like an otyugh to a municipal composting program.

And now he was lying on Thamior's floor.

Dammit.

Milo looked around.

Zook, the gnome cleric, lay on the far side of the room. Well, what was left of Zook, anyway.

There was one more body. Milo didn't want to look. He didn't want to see Wellby.

How had this happened?

Sure, he'd disappeared in a critical battle, but... seriously. Had Thamior done this? How had Thamior done this? He was evil, sure, and he had a few levels on them, but... experience or not, he was such a two-bit villain. He was cartoonishly evil. Milo couldn't believe that he'd actually won.

Maybe it was that his standards had been altered by his time in the other world. Pain and darkness there was... well, more darker and more painful. More real. It wasn't quite so... funny. Maybe he'd taken the new world so seriously that he'd forgotten that his world could be cruel, too?

He looked at the bodies around him.

Was this his fault? Sure, he hadn't chosen to be summoned away by Lucius and his cronies, but... if he was honest with himself, he hadn't tried all that hard to get back, either. He could take the Death Eaters that stayed out of prison. He'd done it before. He could have gotten the answers out of them, one way or another.

Sure, for part of that time, he hadn't been completely in control of himself, but that was just making excuses. He'd barely even thought of returning. He'd gotten so wrapped up in the new world's—

Milo's eyes narrowed.

That wasn't Welby's body. Welby was a halfling, three and a half feet tall in thick-soled boots.

The third skeleton was at least two feet longer.

Milo rushed over to the skeleton, holding the torch over it for close examination.

It was Thamior.

o—o—o—o

"We've been over this before! We agreed you mustn't tell him!"

"I agreed to no such thing! He has a right to know!"

Ron sighed, and tried to distract himself flipping through The Rise and Myriad Painful Falls of the Chudley Cannons. It wasn't working. His parents had been fighting on-and-off all week when they thought he and his siblings couldn't hear.

Any kid can tell you how much that sucks, but this was almost worse.

Because they weren't fighting about him or his brothers, and they weren't fighting about each other, or about Dad's hidden flying car that he was working unreasonable hours.

"But Harry's just a boy!" Molly Weasley protested.

There it was. Harry Potter. Sure, he was Ron's best mate, and he wouldn't trade him for anyone in the world, but... It wasn't always easy, being best mates with the most famous boy in the world. Not that Ron would trade; nobody would want to be famous for the reasons Harry was.

"With that lunatic on the loose, nobody can afford to be 'just a boy' any longer."

Both of Ron's parents were silent for a moment, or at least not talking loudly enough for Ron to hear through the floor.

"What happened, Arthur?" Molly's voice was quiet. Serious.

"You'll read about it in the morning Prophet," Arthur said. "I'm not supposed to—"

"That's never stopped you before," Molly said.

Arthur sighed. "He's killed again. But it gets worse. He—"

o—o—o—o

"I left the Mark!" Riddle said angrily. Petulantly, even. "Of course it was me!"

He had not taken Lucius's news well.

"Perhaps they don't want to believe you've returned, my lord," Lucius said in a low, reasonable voice. Dealing with Riddle was always like this. "It's much easier for them to blame someone more... mundane." Lucius had taken advantage of this very fact many times in his career. People would believe anything other than that the Dark Lord, or his followers, were still active.

"Mundane? Mundane?! I'll show them mundane! I'll usher in an era of darkness like the world has never seen!" Lucius flinched. It was like reasoning with a viper.

"Of course, my lord," Lucius said. "But perhaps, for now, it is efficacious to remain outside of the spotlight. After all, what they do not know cannot be defended against. If they instead believe that Sirius Black—"

"Who the Hell is Sirius Black?" Riddle asked. "Was he a Death Eater?"

"No; he was a member of the Order of the Phoenix."

"Then why on Earth would people think he would leave a Dark Mark?"

"We framed him for..." Lucius paused for a moment. Talking about the Dark Lord's previous defeat was... a tricky subject. "... treachery. And a little murder. They threw him in Azkaban."

"Azkaban? Azkaban? Then what's he doing out here taking credit for my work?"

"He escaped," Lucius shrugged.

"How?"

"I do not know, my lord." He could have used the same method Lucius had used to spring Black's deranged cousin, perhaps, though it didn't quite seem to be the Order's style. Of course, prison could change a man, and he wasn't certain the Order was even involved in this one. He felt no reason to share this with Riddle at this time, however.

Riddle thought about this for a moment. Then he had... a Look. As if his eyes flashed red for a moment. And then all traces of anger and frustration were gone, and it was back to handsome, honest, trustworthy youth.

"So you're saying that people will jump to blame this... Sirius Black... for whatever happens in the next few days?"

Lucius realized the danger in that question, but he'd backed himself into a corner. "Yes, my lord. Within reason."

"Within reason. Of course."

And then he was gone.

o—o—o—o

An hour and a bit later, Milo left Thamior's tower behind him. He'd given his comrades the ceremonial adventurer's send-off (a touching ceremony consisting of rifling through the deceased's pockets for gold and magic items, followed by a hastily-dug grave, as is tradition).

Milo may not have had his companions.

He may not have had his magic items.

He may not have had his spellbook.

But he didn't need them. He'd prepared for this exact circumstance.

Well. Close enough. With Uncanny Forethought he could cast any of a select few spells—Benign Transposition, Feather Fall, Shatter, and Shadow Conjuration—even without a spellbook. He could also spend a little time concentrating to cast any spell in his spellbook, of course, but he didn't have his spellbook—evidently it didn't count as 'his' if it was in another universe. Or, for all he knew, Riddle had burnt it after killing him. Of the few available spells he could still count on using, many would be quite use-impaired here; they were rather highly specialized for taking down wanded wizards.

He didn't have his spellbook.

But he did have Thamior's. Technically, he couldn't 'prepare' spells from it—but he wasn't preparing them, was he? He was casting them spontaneously.

It was a technicality, and a flimsy one at that, but it was one he intended to exploit to its fullest.

"Phantom Steed," he muttered, testing his assumption.

A quasi-real, horselike steed flashed into existence next to Milo, wearing what looked like a saddle, bit, and bridle. It looked like a horse, but it probably could have given the Hogwarts Express a run for its galleons.

He'd found the spell in Thamior's book, which, irritatingly, seemed to be primarily made of spells that seemed sort of 'dark' and 'evil.' In addition to the questionable practicality of picking abilities based on their aesthetic and thematic value, most of them were Necromancy and Enchantment, schools forbidden to Milo. This one, though sort of ghosty looking, was a bog-standard Conjuration. Milo could have cast it in his sleep.

Milo climbed onto his smoke-coloured mount.

Boccob hadn't chosen him for this task because of his interesting collection of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. He had skills that weren't written on a character sheet, and he planned on using them.

o—o—o—o—o—o—o

Author's Notes: I have a blog now! Fanfiction doesn't like links, but I think you can figure it out. It's my penname and it's on tumblr. There are .pdf and .mobi versions of Harry Potter and the Natural 20 and Harry Potter and the Confirmed Critical for download. I'll also post announcements and things there, and maybe, if I feel like it, the occasional blog post about DMing or optimizing or RPGs or whatnot, sort of like when I put D&D tips in my stories. I'm new to the whole blog thing, so I'm not sure how much I'll end up using it.

I'm changing the release day to Fridays. We're well on schedule for next week's release.