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Harry Potter Natural

Milo, a genre-savvy D&D Wizard and Adventurer Extraordinaire is forced to attend Hogwarts, and soon finds himself plunged into a new adventure of magic, mad old Wizards, metagaming, misunderstandings, and munchkinry

William777 · Película
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106 Chs

Chapter 90

"You have a talent for stating the obvious, fool! Unfortunately, it won't help you avoid joining my Legion of the Da—"

"But I thought there weren't any Elf males?"

"You will pay for your insolence!" the purple-cloaked Thamior shouted, his eyes glowing red. "When I am god-emperor of all the multiverse, I will – wait, what's going on?"

Milo felt a strange tingling sensation somewhere in his midriff, gradually growing to encompass his torso. In a panic, he looked down to find that, where his stomach should be, there was a slowly growing sphere of darkness, occasionally crackling with what looked like green lightning.

"Gah!" Milo said, the sphere growing to reach his neck. "What did you—how did—I won Initiative, damnit! This isn't fair!" but Thamior looked just as surprised as Milo felt, and was backing away slowly from him.

There was a brief flash of blindingly bright light, and Milo suddenly felt cold all over. His lungs strained painfully, trying futilely to find air, and his brain screamed at him that things were very, very wrong. Gravity seemed to tug at him inconsistently in every direction, before finally agreeing to pull him backwards. He struggled, swinging his arms wildly to try and find something solid, anything, until...

—Thud—

Milo sat bolt upright clutching his side where just a moment before, the sphere of blackness had begun to grow. To his surprise, he realized both his hands were wrapped around his Belt of Hidden Pouches.

He looked around, expecting danger, but saw instead only the depressingly familiar sights of the Hogwarts hospital wing. He blinked, realizing it was only a dream... and a weirdly vivid one, at that. Milo couldn't, this time, speak from experience, but from what he'd heard from other Adventurers, dreams that were more like flashbacks were always important to the plot. The only thing was, in this case, he couldn't figure for the life of him how this could be so.

Milo wasn't sure how long he was staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the Hells was going on, what had brought him here, and just what the significance of his dream was when he realized he wasn't alone. (Well, he knew he wasn't alone—Neville's rumbling snores, unfortunately, made sure of that. Also, Hannah. Okay, he obviously wasn't alone. What Milo meant to think was that there was someone else, awake, in the hospital wing with him. You could consider cutting him some slack, of course, seeing as how he just woke up).

"Professor?" Milo asked curiously.

"M-Milo," Professor Quirrell, standing by the door, stammered. "I w-was just checking in on y-y-you, to s-s-see if you would b-be up for the D-Duelling C-Club on Sunday."

"That's..." Milo did some rapid arithmetic. "Four days from now? Definitely. I'll be up and about by tomorrow."

"I-indeed?" Quirrell asked, surprised. "Y-your injuries l-look m-m-most severe. I s-s-see the good M-Madam P-P-Pomfrey has opted n-not to use m-magic on you?"

Milo shrugged painfully.

"I can heal anything short of death in about a day, if I have help. I think Pomfrey's afraid of how your magic will interact with my... well, with me, I guess."

"W-well," Quirrell said, glancing at the clock. "I'm afraid that I h-have to r-r-run; the D-Doxies in the d-d-dungeon won't ch-chase themselves out. I w-wish you a speedy r-r-recovery, and, to that end, left y-you a present," Quirrell gestured at a box of Chocolate Frogs on Milo's bedside table. "G-goodbye."

"Erm. Bye! Thanks," Milo said. The DADA professor walked out of the room at about a half-step faster than normal walking speed, presumably to avoid a lecture from Pomfrey. Milo waited for the door to close behind him, then turned to the frogs.

"Detect Poison," he cast, just in case. When they turned out to be clean, he stashed them in his Belt for later. Milo glanced at the heavy mechanical clock on the wall, noting that, while he could tell that the little hand was pointed at just past the six and the big hand was pointing at the three, he had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Deciding it didn't really matter one way or the other, Milo figured he ought to just go back to sleep.

Only a few minutes passed before Milo heard the door creak open.

"Back, Professor?" Milo asked, sitting up despite his protesting muscles and various grievous wounds.

"Front, Student?" came an aged, grandfatherly voice.

"Headmaster?" Milo asked, genuinely surprised, as Dumbledore walked calmly up to his bed, dressed in his signature purple robes and half-moon spectacles. "I thought Madam Pomfrey—"

"What the good mediwitch said to me was, in fact, and I quote, 'you won't be bothering any of my patients tonight, Headmaster, Supreme Mugwump or no.' As it is, in fact, now the morning and not, in fact, the night, her prohibition is no longer in effect." Dumbledore paused for a moment. "But, ah, it is entirely possible that she would not, in fact, see eye-to-eye on my interpretation of her command, so if you would be so good as to keep your voice down...?"

"Sure," Milo responded quietly. "What brings you here? And, more importantly, why did you say 'Front, Student?'"

"I was taking, as it were, a shot in the dark at what I had guessed—incorrectly, as it would appear—might be a social custom from your homeland. You see, you said, 'Back, Professor,' so I thought that, perhaps, the correct response was to, as is the custom among a small tribe of Merfolk living in a pond in Kashmir, to say the precise opposite. Alas, as is so often the case when one ventures into the murky grounds of speculation, I was incorrect. And as to your first question, I am here, as you can surely guess, to question you about the events of yesterday."

"Oh, that. It's fairly straightforward," Milo said, and gave Dumbledore a rather more accurate version of the story than the one he gave Hagrid (lying to Dumbledore's face seemed, to Milo, about on par with kicking a Lantern Archon). To his credit, Dumbledore sat patiently, listening to the entire story through until the end before asking questions.

"—and then Fang led Hagrid to us, and he carried us back to the castle," Milo finished. "Speaking of which, I'm going to need to go back at some point to get my rope and stuff. Made by Elves, you know." Or at least the sign had said so. In truth, it was hard to find rope anywhere that wasn't claimed to have been made by Elves.

"By Elves? One day, when we both are free from the constant pressings of urgent business, I would greatly enjoy listening to you tell me all about the strange land from which you hail. But, until then, some much briefer answers to more specific questions will have to suffice. First, could you explain to me exactly what the effects are of the Charm you cast on Hannah to free her from the effects of her mental control?"

"Sure," Milo said. "Protection From Evil. Right now, it lasts up to five minutes, but I can push that to seven with these gloves," Milo held up his gloved hands, wiggling his fingers somewhat, "and for the duration, the target can't be affected by any form of mental control. When the spell ends, the control starts up again. Also, they can't be touched by summoned non-Good monsters."

"Fascinating," Dumledore said. "That little spell of yours would have saved the Ministry a great deal of trouble over the years."

"May I counter with a question of my own?" Milo asked.

"Of course you may," Dumbledore said, "but whether I shall answer or not is, I am afraid, another matter entirely. I can promise this: everything I say shall be the unblemished truth."

"Can you tell me how Hannah was being controlled, who did it, where they live, and how well protected they are?"

Dumbledore laughed softly.

"That was four questions, you realize, and I am afraid that I am only able to answer the first. I cannot be sure until I question Miss Abbot directly, of course, but I am quite certain that she was the unfortunate victim of one of the darkest forms of magic known. You already have, unfortunately, witnessed the use of the most terrible of the three Unforgivable Curses, the Killing Curse." Milo nodded. It was the first spell he'd seen cast by the wizards of this world, in fact. "The curses are so-called because the use of one on a human being is enough to warrant a life's sentence in Azkaban, the wizard prison. Normally, the specifics of the Unforgivables are not learned until a student's Sixth Year, but in your case, I fear you may well be in danger without being forewarned. Along with the Killing Curse are the Cruciatus Curse, which causes extreme pain in its victim, and the Imperius Curse. This last one, despite being the most pleasant for the unfortunate victim, has caused more disasters, deaths, and crises than the other two put together, directly or indirectly. The Imperius curse allows direct mental control over the target for, if necessary, years at a time. Used by a skilled wizard or witch, is almost impossible to detect and even harder to resist."

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