c1

Harry smiled as Fred repeated, word for word, one of Oliver Wood's pep talks. The troops of the battalion he led, with Angelina, his wife as his second, grinned.

Harry did too, in spite of the coming fight. Harry was tired. The Earth was mauled, and half the population dead. The only bright spot, three quarters of that half were dark bastards. The shame was the billions of good people they had lost. Innocents and fighters.

His mind trolled back over what happened as he continued to stand and gather magic. He had won his war. He had crushed Riddle, in what should have been his seventh year of school. It had cost them though. Thousands of casualties in Britain, but it had been contained to the UK. The former Death Eaters had still had a foothold however, Harry had taken the country, and with his friends, shook it like a dog shaking a rabbit, until he broke their backs. Killing most of them in the process. Naively he believed that was all, and blithely he headed back to school and got on with his life.

The dream had lasted for three good years, and some more that were constantly ramping up in tension. Easy to see it now, looking back. Hindsight was in fact twenty twenty. He had become an Auror. Gotten married, been baffled by the women in his life, and thrown himself in his work, because if Vernon did it it was wrong so he wasn't about to take anything out on his family. So he worked hard, and then worked out, leaving all that work crap in the office, or more likely in the destroyed dueling dummies in the gym. The unspeakables and crime scene analyst liked putting them back together and reconstructing what he had done with their classes, so it was a win win. He worked hard and efficiently as he knew how. Then he went home. He wasn't a workaholic, hiding in his work. Along the way somehow, he had become the scourge of the remaining dark or rather evil wizards and witches.

Then out of the ashes of the Russian wizarding world, crushed in 1917 by that mad ass dark lord Rasputin, and never recovered because of the hell that was the war with Grindlewald, a wizard had risen that made Rasputin look a child's story. Europe had been pulled in, then when he threatened Britain, Harry had acted with a battalion of Aurors. Tonks among them. Remus had been killed fighting Riddle. Tonks had stuck to Harry. She had just moved in with her son. Andromeda her mother had moved in too. Tonks had died in the frozen horror that had been the fight in Yekaterinburg. A stray curse from a fight a block away. Harry sighed. Teddy her son, Harry's godson, was just before his first year at Hogwarts.

Harry lost it, and had ground the European dark, or rather the evil bastards among them, to a smear on the cobbles, and then, in a spectacle that had become a racial memory for the Russians, he had taken a month to kill the Russian Dark Lord on the keyboard monument. He had begged for death and named all his associates, allies, and servants, plus all his safe houses, and hiding places before Harry let him die. He, his remaining Aurors, and the replacements had spent a month rounding people up and executing them as fast as the ICW could write the warrants. He had become the head of that ICW action group by then. Mostly by default. He didn't get killed or severely injured and no one could beat him in a duel.

Peace, Harry snorted, another pause while the evil bastards rearmed, reigned for a short two years. Harry made Chief Auror. Attrition was high and most people weren't anxious to live an adventurous life. Harry chuckled, he wasn't either, but he didn't know anything else. He was much in demand killing the rising Dark Lords and Ladies. His wives Hermione, Daphne, and Luna climbed higher in their chosen professions. They developed a system of evaluating people who's governments were begging him to kill them. Sometimes the Government was what actually needed his attention. The wizard or witch might be dark, but wasn't necessarily an evil bastard. The girls had discussed it endlessly. Daphne was proof Dark didn't mean evil. Just as they all relaxed, and began contemplating the future, and possibly children. The world exploded in hellfire. Literally hellfire.

The US and its Allies had been fighting for years in the Islamic crescent by then. A rising dark lord, knowing all was lost against the mundane forces arrayed against him, tried to call Djinn. He got demons. A class two host commander to be exact. A prince of hell. Normally the class or tier twos were about ten meters tall, weighed about seven tons, were massively strong, and wickedly powerful. Theoretically, mostly because they said they served a master, there was a tier one. The other direction went all the way down to tier or class tens. Imps were class tens. About a foot tall, a good fight for a grindy low or Cornish pixie. The tier twos gained and maintained their positions by both physical and magical force. They expanded their fiefdoms in hell by fighting each other, and gathering host of the underclasses. Some of the other classes were bigger, Class fives were like buildings walking around, but the class twos were hard, smart, strong, and fast. The tier two came with his host of minions and of course the dark idiot lost control nearly immediately. The horde of demons turned on the idiot and his followers, then the mundane in the area, while parts of the horde hunted the magical.

As you can imagine none of the mundane or magical forces in the area took this well. Meanwhile alarms were blaring in every government in the world, and Auror forces from the world over gathered, and with the mundane destroyed the horde and finally its Commander.

For a year and more they worked and struggled containing the horde, pushing them back, then closing with the portal where Mecca had been, finally Luna found a way to close the portal and they did it. They lost most of a mundane division, and a combined regiment of Aurors. The only good thing was the sentient of the world all pulled together for that short time.

The world tried to go to sleep again, and of course cooperation evaporated like alcohol on a exhaust manifold. Magic was the cat out of the bag now though. Nearly got the mundane cooperating again. They had had to have a lesson in leaving magical beings alone, several in fact. Lots of little tin pot dictators had a visit from action groups of Aurors.

Luna was a seer though and Hermione had charted her as one hundred percent accurate in regards to combat involving Harry. She had five more of the devices they had used to close the portal. She told them more demons were coming. She and a team worked on them, along with Harry as he could, for a year, while the world waited and Harry and the worlds Aurors hunted stray demons, mundane megalomaniacs, and evil idiots.

Hermione worked to integrate the Magical and Mundane worlds and indulged her hobby of recovering knowledge and Daphne helped her while managing the vast estates Harry had acquired claiming them as a warrior of the light. Luna was hip deep in a propaganda campaign, maybe a psychological operations campaign, a bit of both really, to integrate the magical and mundane worlds. Harry found Gabrielle Delacour in a Demon lair during this and brought her home.

Harry smiled and shook his head, in spite of himself, listening to Fred. He could feel Fred and Angelina's eyes on him as they enjoyed his subtle reaction to their words, which was their motivation the whole time. There had been precious few reasons to smile for a long time, and one could always count on Fred and Angelina to get Harry out of whatever funk he was in at any given moment. He had gotten over his 'brooding' as the wives called it just in time for the earth to go most of the way to hell. A sigh escaped Harry's mouth as he gave in "The one we've all been waiting for," Harry said while he continued to shake his head. There was triumph clearly heard in the laughter from Fred and Angelina. Meanwhile, Harry could clearly see confused looks upon the dozens of other faces who heard the conversation. The confusion would never be explained to those who heard, because the attention of Harry, Fred, and Angelina immediately returned to the scene of nightmares in front of them. This was it. Before them lay, hopefully, the last battle of the war which had plagued Earth for the last decade or more. Harry wasn't sure. He lost track of the years.

In the times Harry wasn't chasing down an idiot or a demon he was working wonders with runes, Harry chuckled, much to Hermione's frustration as he hadn't studied it in school, and studying healing. Tonks had died in his arms and he wasn't having that again. He was celebrated wherever he went and continued to rise in the estimation of the world's population and governments. His wives rose as much. They were all powerful and accomplished and really coming to the peak of their power. They only got better as they gained knowledge.

He was the field commander of the ICW European Aurors. Field because he wouldn't spend time in Geneva doing whatever the fuck it was they did, instead of being in the field killing. He left that to those too injured to be effective in the field anymore. They needed all the combat effectives they had pulling triggers or casting spells.

Harry nodded to himself and picked up his mental thread again. Fred and his distractions. You had to love the guy. He had found Gabrielle, she had moved right in, or rather refused to be moved out. Fleur had moved in to be near her for a while. That meant Bill had been around and Harry had learned cursebreaking, warding as well.

Then, of course, Luna was proved right. The Islamic tradition of teaching by verbal, rote memorization, as most of them in some countries couldn't read, bit the world in the ass and they had missed an imam, who had witnessed and committed to memory the ritual used to summon the demons. That ability to teach like that, it was a skill, well that and really high recall, so a skill coupled with an ability. Of course he had to run into a magical who had a grudge and a moderate amount of power. This magical had a group of followers too. The imam probably told that story as a cautionary tale. Mundane couldn't open those portals after all.

Mr Grudge rose as a dark lord. Despite Harry's best efforts, and with combat accelerated Darwinism improving both opposing forces. The ones Harry led more as they recovered their wounded and healed them. Finally pushed hard, and deciding he was called by the Prophet, led by God, found a burning bush, got a spirit animal with nine tails, or some shit, he sent a suicide group to open a portal. It worked the way he wanted and another level two and his horde was unleashed. Harry sighed, he just couldn't kill the fuckers fast enough back in those early days. He chuckled, not a problem he or the other Mage class wizards and witches had anymore. They could drop a county with a wiggle of their fingers. Or not lock Lavender in her cage once a month. Harry had to laugh. Woman was a hazard.

Anyway, the world's forces were better now, or then rather, they had done this once before, and had some tips techniques and procedures, but these demons from the new portal Mr. Grudge's minions had opened were pissed. And there was a metric fuck ton of them, several metric fuck tons. The theory was the explosion from the portal in Mecca had been much worse on their plane. On this plane it had turned Mecca into the world's deepest hole and glassed a circle of desert thirty klicks in diameter. Not radioactive fortunately. They, the worlds forces, had made a few of those spots all on their own, in the desserts of the crescent, stopping the demons from getting into Europe. Afghanistan really was a write off now. Well parts of it. China as well. The Chinese had gone nuclear early.

While the world worked desperately to contain this the evil idiot got other groups ready. As Harry and the forces he now controlled contained one, another opened. The forces got so good and practiced at containing them then dropping a Dark Sponge, the thing Luna had found and Harry had improved, in the portal Harry had time to take a group and hunt the idiot.

It had not been without cost though. Demons were hard to kill and dangerous even dead. It took a task organized battalion sized group of mundane for the level threes, the battalion commanders of the hordes, and company sized elements could handle any class below three. As the classes went lower the task organized companies could handle more and more volumes of them. The lose demons immediately oriented on dark magical, then magical, then mundane. Children were a preferred treat. The younger the better it seemed. Dead ones gave off heat at unbelievable levels for weeks. That helped and hurt. First they lit fires around where they lay but then you could chop them up and use them to generate steam to make electricity to get wherever the fight had been back on its feet. At least on the mundane side and with the technomancers from America and the Pacific rim pretty much everywhere now. They had portable and stationary steam plants hooked to generators. Power production was no longer the chief source of greenhouse gasses.

The demons actually helped Harry and his forces by eliminating the evil wizards and witches by preference. It cut down on the number of minions the latest idiot could muster. And opening portals took sacrificing minions. One way or the other. In all cases so far the Demons had killed the group doing the summoning or any left alive after the ritual which consumed most of their magic and life force.

The evil bastards of course got desperate, organized, and in an orgy of stupidity like the Kamikaze of a bygone era opened multiple portals on every major continent simultaneously. That had been a year ago? Two? More? It felt like forever. Nine of those had devolved to single combat for Harry. Was it nine? More maybe? At least nine. A few other powerful witches and wizards had gone toe to toe with them too. But then the tier twos were weaker maybe, and their own TTP had improved while the demons didn't as they were unable to share TTP, tips techniques and procedures, once the forces of Earth got the portal closed. No evolution of their knowledge. Hermione and Daphne assured him that he and the others capable of going toe to toe with the demons were getting better. Harry gave a mental shrug. It was possible he guessed, but he thought adult core sizes were fixed. Wasn't that what made you an adult?

"Alright Harry Bear?"

Harry blinked "Fine Fred."

Fred snorted "Sure. Last one though eh? Got the bastard trapped this time."

Harry observed the battle field, Morokweng impact crater, they liked to use these craters for some reason, despite the tactical disadvantage it left them. Harry sent the signal to launch and looked at his hardened smartphone to see it start the countdown timer to the preparatory bombardment. Fred looked at his as it vibrated and smiled "Luck Harry, Good Hunting. See you on the other side."

Harry nodded and went back to observing. Remembering really. Mostly those who had died. Not the evil bastards. He really couldn't care less about them, they did populate his dreams in the myriad ways he had killed them, and seen demons kill them but more as scenery, while he was focused on the friends and acquaintances he had lost. As soon as they turned evil there was no way back for them. They had learned that the hard way over the years. But his friends and comrades, the whole long line of them, that was painful. One so painful he could hardly contemplate it.

He checked his equipment as the aircraft screamed over head from all directions at all different altitudes, in a finely choreographed, well practiced, dance of destruction, the bombs from the heavy bombers above the artillery began walking kilometer wide and kilometer long strips of destruction through the demon horde below, while dedicated aircraft with the best crews dropped the sponges.

Harry turned his wrist in nearly a nervous tic and checked the holster, first one wrist then the other. Each holster had a wand and a trunk socket. Well a socket for a shrunken trunk. He carried the required two trunks but no one had said he couldn't modify them. If they ever exploded as allegedly sometimes happed when a trooper was hit they would probably cover a battalions AO a quarter mile deep with the crap he had collected. Expansion charms after all depended on the ability and power of the caster and then the runes that fixed them. He had put all his power into the expansion charms and his best effort into the rune strings. Hermione had been a bit peeved. Then she had had him do trunks for all of them, all the time, well at least one a week, and carried everything they owned or could acquire around completely ignoring the regulation. She wasn't a troop leader, and if you tried to lift her skirt to see her trunk holster belt if she didn't kill you Daphne would. Skirt, phhhttt, more dragon hide strip kilt, like the Roman centurions wore, pteruges, that's what the girls called them. He shook his head, no thinking about sexy skirts. He chuckled, everyone he knew did exactly the same thing with their trunks. The magical army of earth was like an army ant nest. When they left an area it was bare of all magical items along with anything they thought might be useful. The evil dark items were destroyed and everything else was in their trunks. As were all the resources they could summon. The trunks were how they did it. Plus, they carried ammunition for their mundane attachments or whatever else was needed. Early on Harry had carried trunks, shrunk down, in his trunks, which were then shrunk and holstered. It made keeping the crap sorted easier plus he could pick up his casualties trunks, but then several accidents or something had happened, and the edict had come down from on high, or form the REMFs (Rear echelon mother fuckers) with a load plan and everything. Harry snorted. Everyone expanded their issue trunks to the max, and carried one in each holster on their forearms. Out of fights they carried multiple trunks in belts. The trunks had top trays loaded with the load plan shit.

Harry being the boss had to set the example though so he had the regulation two, unlike the girls. Two trunks you could fit an aircraft carrier battle group each in, submarines and all, and it would have room to maneuver and launch and recover aircraft. Expansion was a function of power, and well, Harry had plenty. He helped troopers expand theirs when replacements came in. He also did one a week for the girls. About the only part of the regulation anyone paid attention too was no shrunken trunks in trunks. Which he ignored. He wasn't leaving some wounded or dead troopers stuff for the demons or idiots.

The Sergeants conducted pre-combat inspections of regulation trunk contents ignoring interiors of trunks that looked like Zeppelin hangers, or Warehouse Thirteen, maybe the archive from that Indiana Jones movie, and mountains of crap behind the formations of troopers. There was no sense in leaving anything in the areas they were fighting in because if they were operating there the demons had been there, and had killed everyone.

When they left an area it was denuded. Every few months the trunks were gone through, trash tossed, identifiable objects returned to owners if any could be found and national assets returned if someone was back in the places they had been. They left tiny guard forces, usually of the nearest to full recovery wounded. Other than that the various National Magical Law Enforcement and mundane military units rotating out of the fight for rest and refit took care of stray demons in their own areas. While they sorted their piles of crap.

If they had a few fighting pits set up, well that was the national governments look out wasn't it? As long as it was tier six and below. Sixes were troll sized, not very magical and about as smart as a dog. They kind of looked like trolls too. Oh and the demons died. Couldn't have the fuckers getting loose.

All that was if you didn't run from one incursion to the next. Harry tried to remember the last time he had cleaned out his trunks, besides the casualties trunks being returned to them or their families if they had any.

Harry stopped wool gathering and looked at the route he had plotted to see if it was still good. After the aerial bombardment and the artillery lifted and shifted fires, he would cast the pattern of killing curses, apparate from here to a spot of high ground five miles distant, cast the area affect killing curses and then check his next position as the others came up clearing any demons that survived his assault. Other powerful witches and wizards would do the same from their positions around the rim of the crater. His range was actually more than that but they went with what the least powerful of the mage class wizards and witches could do which was about two and half miles. Twenty-eight of them in this part of the assault. Nearly the whole population of mage level magical from the whole planet. It was a big incursion in a big crater. There was a pattern they practiced and everything. Each Mage class magical having a slice of the circle five miles wide at the start then narrowing, slightly overlapping. When it got too narrow some Mage class wizards stopped and took up guard positions. Lowest powered first. Some of the mundane units stopped with them. This usually left Harry as the last Mage in the assault. He was the most powerful of the class, and by now had the most experience. Which, of course, is how it devolved to single combat with admittedly usually wounded demons. The nine times he went head to head with a full up tier two had been more than enough for everybody to learn that wasn't the optimum circumstance. Now the best tank crews were pushed to within four kilometers of the tier twos and a depleted uranium penetrator did the honors if possible. That DU shit killed those fuckers like it was sucking out their souls. Americans were heartless bastards. The outside layer of their tanks armor was that DU crap. The demons ran from them. They tried to chase them down and run over them, recording it with go pro's, laughing like maniacs. Those tankers would need help after the war. Or locked up, one of the two. Until the US wanted someone else dead anyway. Great blokes, not nice people at all.

Killing curses halfway to his next position, apperate then a full circle of killing curses. After that it was lather, rinse, repeat until they got to the portal. Then the specialist plans for each portal happened. Lately holding the line and waiting until the sponge hanging in the portal dropped. The weight of shot accurately laid on the portals was preventing the head to head fights. The tier twos were chopped to rags and dying screaming. Find the head, give it a killing curse, then mop up. Hard to kill, tier twos, and grew pieces back, like super fast star fish, found that out the hard way.

It did make some interesting potions though. Well those that hadn't been hit with killing curses or DU. Daphne had kept that one alive, or whatever that was, in pieces in that refractory cement vessel for years now. Apparently completely dissecting one made it hard for it to do magic. It was finally dying though she said. She had found, or the mundane materials scientist had managed to synthesize, replacements and she had lost interest in keeping it alive. The goblins were just extracting heat from it now. Split its brain into separate hemispheres and separate them and it lost the ability to regrow parts. Who knew?

No report of a sponge in this one but some were close. He might have to levitate one in. That happened occasionally. No slight on the airplane drivers, that crap wasn't easy, and that was without the eddies of magic around the portals. Like another layer of winds really.

He was one of the few keyed to the wards to do it, or powerful enough to either. A sphere of flood basalt with a volume of five cubic meters shouldn't really be a problem for an average witch or wizard, but the things were strange. Then pump them full of dark energy or evil, and they got even stranger.

They would keep compressing the circle until they had killed all the demons and the idiot, then the magical units would guard, until the sponge dropped through the portal and their portkeys activated. The mundane would withdraw as fast as they could to get out of the danger area. Seven kilometers in a main battle tank. Eight in an infantry fighting vehicle and ten if dismounted.

The mundane all had emergency portkeys as well but they really didn't want to use them. It disabled mundane troops for hours. That made them easy pickings for a remnant demons if any escaped.

After that they could all go home. Harry's phone vibrated and he cast a pattern of area effect killing curses up to his next stop over lapping the mages on either side of him slightly. He looked at Fred, and Fred grinned and launched his element. Harry twisted, landed, and cast a full pattern of killing curses and then took stock.

The cameras and sensors on his gear sent readings straight to the Divisional TOC (tactical operations center) and all the TOCs close to him and the battle command blue force tracking system painted a picture in the projected translucent view in front of his vision. Everyone was filling in targets, everyone with a view that is including the battle staffs watching the images they were being fed by drones. The technomancers and developers had even managed to automate some of it. Autonomous ground vehicles skittered around in front of the troops doing the same missions as the drones and if attacked by demons exploding like the mobile five hundred pound bombs they really were. They had a skin of DU molecules thick that usually kept the demons off of them.

It was a well-executed contraction, like they had done it hundreds of times even, practice makes perfect. He stood gathering information and hurling the occasional curse at the enormous tier five's still up and moving. Some of them were enormous. He laughed as one stepped on a sponge that was out of its CEP (circular error probability) and was sucked into it. Leaving a five story tall pile of shredded, putrid, meat and bones the other live demons fell on. He let that go as those would dig to the bottom of that pile and touch the sponge and charge it right up by getting sucked into it, and he didn't have to spend any energy on them. It would activate everyone within ten kilometers portkeys just before it detonated like a ground burst nuke. Outside the portal, it could probably suck up all the demons here and not explode. Well except for the class two. Sometimes they set the things off on their own in the early years. Harry had never been that lucky, but it had happened. Hence the warning rune string, and the activation rune string he had added to the emergency portkeys everyone wore.

He continued to look at the map and his surroundings. Usually in this contraction or the next was where they found the pens with the stored live food or entertainment, if there were any. He would need to apparate and then hold the next high ground while the regiments and magical battalions came up behind him without the area affect killing curses if there were pens. The drones, air or ground, hadn't seen anything though. So the artillery and bombs were still walking forward.

Fred came up behind him and nodded once he had his attention "Well that was too easy."

Harry nodded cautiously "Yeah I'm getting a feeling. Keep moving up." He watched the barrage clear his next target, twisted, and was gone.

Fred frowned as Angelina, George's widow, now his wife and his second in command came up "Boss going fast."

Fred nodded "He has a feeling." Angelina winced and tapped on her device. The battalion surged passed in short apparitions by twos.

Harry got to the military crest of next high ground, walked up until he had a view to the center of the crater, and sighed. His HUD came up and he noticed the other big hitters moving up as well. A mundane armor unit was guarding the demon pile at the sponge. They could handle it. The other leader's instruments were confirming what he saw. There would be no pens. The whole crater floor was demons standing shoulder to shoulder.

The loitering aircraft rolled in and the party started. Fred came up about fifteen minutes later "Those tankers are playing with those demons. Well, the two that are left. They are so full of their mates they can hardly move and the tankers are herding them around with machineguns. Sick bastards." He grinned "I told them I wanted a memory and video, if they actually got them to dance."

Harry laughed. Angelina came up and looked over "That is a crap load of level sixes."

Harry nodded "They aren't real bright though. Why don't they attack and try to break out?"

Fred sighed "The idiot actually has control of the tier two."

Harry shrugged "It would be the first time one managed it."

Angelina added "He will get tired too. Let's get as many of these dead as possible before that happens."

Harry nodded and the aircraft rolled off station, ordnance expended. Thirty seconds later the artillery began to impact. And the bombs from the high altitude heavy bombers began taking out grid squares. Nice tight timing. Couldn't get much better. Harry smiled. He was having a Patton moment. It was so sad, he was so damaged. He did love this so much.

Harry went back to watching and his mind, fully capable and very sharp, also contemplated other things simultaneously. He had a set of skills second to none now. Skills that were in all probability no longer going to be in demand in the next few hours. He was well versed in equipment maintenance and operation. All of the equipment his Army had at its command. He was expert in runes and healing. He nodded to himself. Healing was good. And would always be in demand. He chuckled. He was probably going to have to learn pediatric and OBGYN healing though. If Lavender Brown had her way, just for her.

His eyes flicked to where Lavenders battalion of weres was in their intermediate objective and laying a withering fire at extreme range. They all had M107 .50 Browning Machine Gun anti material rifles and Mark 211 armor piercing explosive ammunition. That stuff did horrible things to demons. The only thing that was worse was Mk211 Mod 4 which had nano powder DU added to it. That was just getting into wide availability though.

The normal magical troops rifles were all 7.62 NATO loaded with shrunken Mk211 projectiles, with runes on the barrels that took the shrinking charm off as the bullet cleared the barrel. They were also worked every way Harry and the other rune masters in the forces could. They could probably take down a main battle tank, and made their own ammo if you kept up an aimed fire. All the weapons, or most of them, were strengthened and had the magazines that made ammo. If you weren't a shooter in the forces you were a medic or working in an operations center somewhere, those folks got pistols. Tokarev pistols shooting shrunk down Mk211 were surprisingly effective. Not accurate at all past fifty meters, and prone to failure as all that pressure and recoil had to go somewhere, but effective. Everyone carried at least one of those, most carried two in case one failed. Harry favored a shoulder holster on the left, and a drop leg holster on the right for his pair.

Harry tapped on his phone, as the carpet of demons succumbed, and started the countdown to the next contraction. On zero, just as he apparated, the last of the artillery fell. Harry did his circle when he landed firing his pattern of area affect killing curses, and turned to the inside. He found himself looking at the portal, occasionally through a forest of tier five's twenty to fifty stories tall. He took a knee put the elder wand in the chassis and got down prone and started shooting. He chuckled. The elder wand was singing to him. It really loved killing demons. He would have to do a purge and a cleansing ritual after this for sure. It was standard practice but the wand was making a joyous noise. Never good.

Fred brought his unit up, and the tanks and IFV's came up and took up positions about five hundred meters apart. Rune engraved depleted Uranium penetrators were nearly effective as killing curses, and the tankers and mech infantry were having a party. The sabot petals were nearly as effective as the penetrators at close range. This crater would be uninhabitable for thousands of years. No matter, someone would cap it and pour in water, and Africa would have power for all those years too.

Harry looked at the now cleared path to the portal through the shimmering heat waves of the dead tier fives and frowned. There were no demons there. He looked at Fred and shrugged, then tapped on his computer, the final assault started and ran into a ward about half a klick from the portal.

Harry shrugged, dug in his pocket, and got out a handful of stone blocks about the size of dice. He pushed then up against the ward with his wand and tapped them, they expanded to their normal size of about a cubic meter and the ward pulsed. He set one every ten meters until he was out. Fred sent pairs out to put more stones down every ten meters or so.

The mundane began to withdraw, killing everything alive and not friendly, on the way while checking accountability. Half of the magical units helped them.

Harry stood watching inside the ward and frowning. Fred looked at him "Boss?"

"Something is wrong. Pull everyone back to the last contraction. Get accountability and fall back to the second line. Put up shields. I'm going to go in here by myself first."

Fred gaped at him "You're drunk. Hermione would kill me, Daphne would reanimate me, and Luna would kill me again, Then Gabrielle would torture me so much my grandkids would be screaming."

Harry laughed then sighed "If there is anything in there other than this idiot, who I can't remember the stupid fucking made up name of right now, I will bug out. The ward sappers will have the ward permeable in a few minutes and I'll check."

Angelina had walked up "If your wives kill Fred because something happens to you Potter you have to shag me."

Fred nodded then froze "Wait, what?"

Angelina shrugged "He's me back up."

"I thought I was your back up?"

"Succession of shags Weasley. Three layers like they taught us. I got your swimmers in storage along with Georges though, so there will be another generation of Weasleys. Alicia, Katie's and my eggs stored in three different places too. Harry and Neville listed for swimmers for all of ours as well as you Weasleys."

"Oh, right then. Wait a minute!"

Harry rolled his eyes "Standard signaling."

Angelina nodded and led Fred away. Harry nodded. All the witches and wizards had eggs and sperm stored. In multiple locations. As soon as this was over they were going to be cooking first their babies then babies for all their friends who had not survived. Harry had nearly objected to the amount that had been collected from him when most of the witches put a Potter baby in their will. The wives found ways to make the collection fun though.

He hit a speed dial on his phone "Neville, yeah. I pulled the magical back to the second contraction in stages. Do accountability, then pull them back to the start point. Something is wrong here. When the sappers bring the ward down I am going to check. Hold the mundane forces at the ten kilometer circle and have them dig in. Be prepared to transport them if something comes boiling out of this freaking hole." He rolled his eyes "The girls won't kill you Nev." He listened and then sighed "Fine I'll put up sensors and cameras." Harry grumbled as he set up a sensor and camera array. Everyone acted like the wives would hurt them. Harry winced remembering Sydney. Well maybe it wasn't so farfetched, but a few hours in the infirmary and everyone had been right as rain. Well besides that stripper but she had been a bit forward really. Plus she worked that limp into her act, he heard, he had deleted that video she sent, quick check, yep deleted.

Harry sighed. He was so tired. He had read a study that said the average combat infantryman in World War II had spent ten days a year in combat. By the time this started the combat and combat service support units when committed were spending three hundred days of a year long tour in combat. Outside the wire they called it. Support troops were inside the wire but the FOBs were in Indian country so no one ever got to completely relax. How many days did that make for him? Sure he looked twenty five but that was, well, a different problem.

He checked his computer. An ominous silence was holding on the Command net. The Admin and Logistics net was humming though. The girls were so going to kick his ass. Damnit!

The ward sappers glowed a dull red and Harry backed away. Finally the wards broke and cascaded down like toilet paper burning out of a tree after Halloween. Augusta Georgia, trees all over the place looking like torches. Fishing troops out of more strip clubs, loaded with strippers in vampire and witch costumes, well if four square inches of lace could be called a costume. And Americans said Aussies were crazy. At least Aussies had real lager.

Harry cast and sighed when the casting revealed nothing. So the hard way then. He looked at his computer and smiled at the units having withdrawn in good order. He walked past the line of glowing, popping, ward sappers and as soon as he stepped across the ward line another ward went up. Harry chuckled. It was in contact with the sappers. They would take it down in a few minutes. He spun into a low crouch and fired a killing curse. The idiot he was here for danced away screaming. Harry never let off the gas again. He was a bit angry. The idiot had been laying under a lead foil sheet with the edges buried in the dirt. Old trick.

The dark wizard had some talent though. He would have given Riddle a run. Too bad for him that was about a hundred dark wizards and witches of that high, or higher caliber ago for Harry. It was also too bad he didn't seem to be able to cast with both hands simultaneously. Riddle and Harry's own wand simultaneously fired strings from the killing curse, through a strangulation curse with no counter, with stops at blood effects, bone breaking and soft tissue damaging, vanishing and expelling. He hit the ground as hamburger. Harry figured out the second part of the ward set that had sprung up just as he died.

Fiendfyre sprang up about five kilometers out. Harry grinned evilly, that withdrawal had saved the Army. The cursed flame raced in both directions consuming the demon bodies and growing in leaps and bounds. It would have triggered the emergency portkeys, if anyone had been left accidentally, that close. The engineers should have gotten the containment ward up at the ten kilometer line. Harry attempted an apparition to no effect. He hit his portkey next to the same result and was backing away when the flame front crashed against the still working ward and washed over the dome of it. Harry looked up and cursed. He knew what would happen next and he had nowhere to go. The ward sappers would detonate. With fiendfyre on one side and the wards on the other, he was trapped in the center of what was essentially an implosion nuclear device.

Harry was not a subscriber to the Kobiashi Maru scenario however, and turned whirling the invisibility cloak over himself, snap changing his holly wand for the elder wand in his right hand and casting at the portal. He was casting shields at the sponge with one hand and runes with the other trying to somehow affect its performance or really its destination when he felt the ward fail. The sponge was glowing white and dropping and Harry leapt toward it never quite touching it but falling through the event horizon of the portal just as the compression above him detonated as he expected it to.

Harry turned in his fall and cursed as he saw what was either the biggest tier two ever or the theoretical tier one open its mouth and gulp down the sponge. Harry rolled in a ball snapping his wands into their holsters and willed a shield over himself. His final thoughts were "The girls are going to kill me."

SSDV

Hermione looked at the live feed from Harry and growled "That Man!" She looked out the side of the TOC at the enormous mushroom cloud.

Susan Bones blinked. Luna sitting near her patted her hand "It's Harry. He's fine. He's just on vacation."

Susan looked at them amazed, and then it changed to a glare "You knew this was coming! You expect me to take over! Oh hell no!" Hermione, Luna, Daphne and Gabrielle looked at her and she leapt to her feet, or her peg and her foot "Neville!"

SSDV

In another place Jedi Master Aayla Secura was winding up a planning session with the latest update from the Scouts. Jedi Knight Bariss Offee would take one section to the water plant. She would lead the rest of the element against the droids base to give her time to secure the water plant and then she would fall back to it. Aayla froze for a minute as the Force sang briefly then she led the others out.

Bariss shuddered a bit then led her section away. She was thinking it was a bad omen, whatever she had felt in the Force. Secura as always looked confident and buoyant. She was also displaying, again, for her clones. One minor gaff and she had been sent to exile with the 327th, Secura's collection of worshippers. Skywalker had needed another Jedi for the 501st, since his little padawan resigned in her fit of pique, but did she get that? No.

SSDV

Palpatine, Chancellor of the Republic, and Darth Sidious, writhed on the floor of his office burning all over, then he lost control of his bodily functions, and the shroud was ripped from him for a moment. He regained control, but it took a great effort, and the shroud was not as it had been.

SSDV

Yoda was meditating. He did that a lot. He sensed the Sith lord. Very powerful and very close. In the center of the capitol! He opened his eyes and called for Master Mace Windu.

AN: The original idea was Plums. Plums, consider it an homage. Some of this will be close to his/theirs but I have tried to extract it all. If you recognize it, it is someone else's and they deserve the credit.

Out of the Fire

Harry traveled in his tucked position, like he was being fired from a sixteen inch naval rifle. He felt himself moving through some type of something sluggishly then was ejected into air. He uncurled and blinked as the ground receded under him. He sighed. This was new and different. Hell was apparently a jungle. Some of the older veterans had said somethings about a green hell, but he thought they were telling war stories.

Hey wait, Hell had ships on land? Holy fuck! How was that thing flying? It was the size of, hell bigger than the Eye! And round. Holy crap I'm really up a ways. Those squares are troop formations then. Crap that was a lot of troops, corps sized element. Oh shit falling!

Harry looked around frantically for a few seconds then settled into it. He was a wizard after all. He cast a few charms, windshield for one, and saw a line of troops, or rather several lines, approaching the regimented squares of troops. He sighed and coasted trying to come down off to the side of the closest line, and hoping the smaller line to his right was flankers. He softened his landing as much as he could, short range apparated to a dead stop a few times to kill his velocity, and grunted when he hit the ground, or rather the mud. "Just fucking perfect. And in the middle of somebody else's war. If it weren't for bad luck..." Harry thought about lying back in the mud and just staying there. The girls would be trying something and would be angry, angrier, if they had to come find him once they got here. He sighed. He couldn't not do something. Well he could sleep, in a year, after this adrenalin charge wore off. Fuck, that was bizarre. It was like Dumbledore was alive and dreaming up demented mad hatter crap again.

He sat up after rolling over, cleaned himself, and apparated to the top of a giant mushroom. "I've landed in Alice's Wonderland." He sat for a moment and noticed how magical this place felt. The air seemed to hum with magic. His reserves were filling rapidly, or refilling rather. Nearly painfully rapidly. He had spent nearly everything between protections on himself, and trying to make the portal do something other than transport him to hell. Both had apparently worked, but he needed a minute. He took up a cross-legged seat and tried to clear his mind.

He got flooded with magic. He struggled and then sighed and just let go. That worked after a few minutes, he managed to clear his mind, then set about what he wanted to do in the first place.

The first thing he tried to do was feel for his links with the girls. He got a vague feeling of anger and winced. That was going to hurt when he got home. OK so they are alive at least.

Second he pulled back a little and got a bit of a feel for a vast array of places that had powerful magic. It was dizzying, things rushed in on him a bit and he took a while to get control of it. Withdrawing further, or would that be closer to himself? Anyway he, finally, after a bit of a tour of the galaxy? Could that be correct? He felt this planet. The whole thing. Like he was connected to it, and the magic was singing to him. He was amazed, magic in this place shouted and sang and begged to be used. That first feeling before he had started withdrawing his conscious must have been the whole plane or new Universe. Luna would be pleased. All those arguments she had with Hermione about the 'multiverse', turns out she might have been right.

He explored the magic for a while until he felt two magic users close. Others too, lots of others. Further away though and the usual mix of normal, he refused to call them good, because they could still do some bad things, and just fucking evil bastards. Surprisingly few of those. A horde would go after the good folks here nearly immediately. Wow, unless they could eat things. Holy crap there were whole planets that were just freaking evil. What the hell had gone on here?. He had developed some finely honed sense during the demon wars. Probably hunting dark idiots too but especially in the demon war. He could feel them anywhere on the planet, the last planet he was on. Well the upper level ones. He snorted. The last planet he was on. Man he was going to hear about this for a thousand years. Hermione already brought back shit from first year during 'discussions', the fucking train ride even. He zeroed in on the two close magic users and determined they were in the lines of troops moving through the jungle. Golem troops? No, something else. Not normal though. He felt around and blinked when he could only get the feeling of magical devices from the ranks of regimented troops they were approaching. Machines? As troops? DARPA gone mad perhaps. Well madder than they were normally. The boffins were a bit head in the clouds all the time. The Yanks would indulge them as well. Liked their shiny toys the Yanks. They did come up with some beauties though. Well the Army and Marines. The Navy and the Airforce spent all their money on airplanes. Phhhttt. Drones could land on carriers, turn tighter, and carry more ordinance for the fuel as they didn't have to support a pilot. Hmm he might have been hanging out with the ground forces a bit long. Seriously though the Warthog and Buff drivers were the most reliable of the air forces. Well Marines, but then, they were grunts too, sort of.

Harry shook his head. OK, so magic users in the area. Jungle. A fight going on. He was suppressing his aura after that wild first flight and then feeling around and they weren't. That probably meant there were no demons here. Aura suppression was something that he, and almost every magical person on Earth, was required to perform on instinct. The primary prey of demons were magical people, Dark oriented first, evil shits at the top of the menu. So, in a city full of six million people, if there was only one magical person out of all those six million, the demons would immediately attack and try to kill that person first. They would even do this if faced with more dangerous threats. Then they oriented on the mundane evil bastards. No one had figured out how they did it. The acquisition of the ability to suppress an aura around the clock, even while sleeping, became a tiring exercise, but eventually everyone learned it, or did not stay alive long. They had some aids, but they weren't as good as occlumency barriers completely locked down. You could feel the devices. The smarter demons figured that out after a while. Of course they were then killed, and didn't transfer the knowledge, but it could have happened.

He took another look turning in a slow circle on top of his mushroom and took in his surroundings. And the two moons in the sky. "Well we are definitely not on Earth. Talking to yourself already Potter. Not good."

Harry looked up at the sky as it lightened and gaped. That was not the kind of sky he was used to. It had a purple tint. He nodded, felt in the magic of this place again, and located the closest magic user. He was going to have to do some recce.

Harry made it about a half mile before he was sweating like he was around a dead demon. One of the problems of fighting them. If you killed one it radiated heat and all kinds of bad stuff for days, years really but the first days were the worst. They had burned Lisbon to the ground fighting the things before they broke the code and made adjustments to their techniques. Los Angeles too. Then the chopper teams got made up, and demons became fuel. They had drawn, or rather started to draw or push the demons to the sites the choppers, who were mostly goblins, wanted them in before they dropped them if they were outside a portal zone. The Goblins had flipped out over demons, and either ran screaming away from them, or at them. Nothing in between. Very few ran from them though, and those not every time.

He applied a cooling charm under the cloak, and kept moving in the direction he was feeling the magic user in. He was making good time when he finally saw the lead elements and thought they were probably a few hours from the other army in this jungle. He settled in to follow and observe, moving from tree to tree, as hidden as his magic could make him.

Harry was a bit amazed when he finally identified the magic user. First it was a she. Her clothing, such as it was, left no doubt of that. A skin tight leather top, just barely covering her large breast and toned arms, and skintight, extreme low rise leather pants, firmly packed with a magnificent arse and great legs. If she was human he was about a millimeter from seeing her slit, and the crack of her, magnificent, ass, unless she was like some of the trans troops. nah no bulge, a mound, but no bulge. In between were acres of thick abdomen and back, like a MMA fighter with a chest. He did mention the large breast didn't he. Large, tight looking, high mounted breast. Holy fuck she turned him into a tit man. Even Gabrielle hadn't managed that, and she had a rack that was unbelievable. The weirdest affectation? Difference? Whatever you wanted to call it, was a set of tentacles, or maybe wrapped hair that leapt off the back of her head, and trailed over her bust or behind her back depending on where she moved them too. Oh well, maybe the weird part was she was blue. Woad maybe? Not like he hadn't seen troops every color of the rainbow. Usually wearing active camouflage however, not quite so much of them to look at, well between that and the helmets, body armor, knee and elbow pads, gloves, helmets, ballistic eye protection, boots, like that. Lots of different colored faces though.

The soldiers with her were in white armor with shaded eyes. Harry snorted. Troops and sunglasses. They would probably wear them in a cave. At least the ones they had used in the earth armies offered ballistic protection, and dozens of charms, plus a translucent VR image of the battlefield from the battle control systems, as well as looking cool. Plus he shouldn't complain. A lot of wounded had jobs making those things, the sponges, the suppression runestone necklaces for the children, Mk 211 projectiles, all kinds of stuff. No one got to just sit around. White though? Were they from a cold climate? His troops spray painted everything in earth tones as soon as it was issued to them. No need to huff just walk by a group of troops not on mission. The paint fumes would get you high.

Harry dropped into the magic around him as he traveled and observed. Something felt off about the other magic user, the farther away one. Blue felt great, erh, in magic, crap that wasn't better. The girls were going to kill him. If he was going to make an approach this one would be the best. He had felt ones like the other before. Those who had been evil but swore they weren't. The demons order of dining had sorted them for the whole planet.

The incursion in southern England had wiped many a former Death Eater family, who were 'reformed' according to the government, right off the map. Odd how the demons went after a lot of the allegedly noble English pillars of the community first. Gold wasn't as tasty reckon?

Notably the Malfoys and their vassals. Except for Astoria who was at the Greengrass estate being mad at Draco and running home to mother for a few days when it happened. And Narcissa who lived at Harry's house with Andromeda most of the time. Just to cause trouble, he was fairly certain. Now Astoria lived at home with the Greengrasses raising Malfoys. One a year for at least the last five years. He wasn't going to ask where she got the swimmers, or why the kids had black hair and green eyes when they were born. Nope certainly not. Nor was anyone asking about that blood that was under stasis in her dressing table. Flask after flask. Draco must have thought he was being attacked by a vampire. The demon probably had to wash him down with a keg of lager, like he was pub jerky.

Harry chuckled thinking of Vampires. Boy those fucks and demons did not get along. Viktor Krum, and Maria his wife, had sent some footage of the fight in Romania. Cured two problems that incursion did. Of course Harry had to go down there for the class two after it killed Vlad, or whatever the current elder vampire was named. but it was so beat up it really wasn't that hard. He had tried to tell Viktor. Maria had stomped on that for some reason. Hermione got pretty growly at her about it too come to think of it. He would have to check those memories later.

Anyway they, the Death Eater families', had railed about how the Aurors and military had responded to slow to help. At least the survivors, those few, had whinged about it. Tough to help when you couldn't get in the wards and had to use sappers. Somehow Daphne shut them up eventually, after a year or close to it. Fucking whiners. They tossed killing curses around like beads at Mardi Gras for Tommy boy, but forgot how looking at a demon?

Harry chuckled, humans found out why elves were enslaved too. Little Buggers went completely psycho on demons. It was shocking. Of course none of them were unbound after that and if someone thought you were abusing one a lynch mob was liable to show up. Little buggers were scarier than the demons. Hermione had been totally smug for months over it. Of course until a demon showed up at an elves house they just went along as they always had. Then demon, and wham, Kujo! Something about demons not being human so they could take all their rage at being bound on them. That was the theory. More like it was a demon that bound them if you asked him, as they didn't do that to Goblins. No use asking the elves. They acted like they didn't hear the question, you couldn't even order them to answer because then they played like they misunderstood and your dinner was cold. Your boxers turned pink too.

Veela weren't much better, whole flocks of them slaughtered demons at every opportunity. Of course Gabrielle had found out why. Veela weren't dark at all. They were other. At least in their thinking. Like the goblins. A wholly alien thought process humans had learned to work with. And demons wanted them for other than food. The ladies objected. In large calibers or with swords and fire and with deadly intent. Once they transformed the heat seemed to fuel them too. As long as they were with a flock they were fine. If their flock was taken out, and they were wounded, the demons swarmed them.

A few fights had developed when the Veela elements threw everything in to recover wounded. Of course everyone did the same, but the demons didn't fight quite so hard to hang onto a snack, as compared to keeping a Veela. That drug in the units near them and then the reserves, air forces, all the arty. Harry and a couple of heavy hitters, It had been bloody.

While he was sunk into the magic he was constantly being fed by the planet, or something, like he was at Hogwarts. The whole planet acted like a ley line interstice and the magic sang. His reserves were filled, and he was amazed sparks weren't shooting from his fingers. Some of the plants glowed with it. If he stayed here he would have to get samples. He could also feel magical animals moving about. Harry was pretty sure he could apparate anywhere on the planet blind, and tried a few short hops to test the theory. Up in the canopy, so it wouldn't be quite so hard to extract himself if he missed. Nothing like having to phase your foot out of rock to teach that lesson.

His thoughts led back to the portal and what had happened. He was fairly sure that was a tier one, or rather, the tier one. The actual king of that hell plane. The most powerful magic user they theorized. If Luna's theories were right, and there were other planes like that, he didn't want to know about them. He went through the memory again and noted the blasted barren terrain behind the demon. It was alone as well. Had they finally won? He hadn't been there long enough and had been a bit busy to be feeling around, busy not pissing himself, as well as trying to avoid having to cut himself out of a demons gut. He wasn't so worried about the hell plane, there was magic there after all. Not that he wanted to go, but he could have survived it. Probably. He snorted, definitely, if anything could he would have.

Harry nodded to himself. So here he was, not on the hell plane, though it was hot as fuck, and muggy too. He didn't know about portals or enough to know how to make one other than for summoning. He had some books, who knows how many, Hermione stole and copied from the Unspeakables. At least one a day and all the libraries he, she, and they had access too. All in a library trunk you could put a fleet aircraft carrier in, and very illegally and in contravention of regulations, inside one of his trunks. Regulations be damned, he had never seen a cascading expansion charm failure and the idiot Unspeakables could kiss his ass. They had produced one hitting a trunk with a finite then a killing curse with the lid and the compartments open. They were just seeking relevance. Anyway everyone copied all the books and gave out copies to everyone they knew. That was aside from that technomanced kindle thing constantly uploading books that were translated and loaded into that web site Hermione had set up. A bunch of the wounded worked on that too.

Anyway, to get home was going to take some studying and a shed load of power. He was going to have to bone up on arithmancy too. Hermione and Luna had everything they knew about every portal in a self-updating book all in arithmancy. Runes were easy compared to Arithmancy. Particle physics were easy compared to Arithmancy. Maybe he could open one, ride a sponge to the demon plane and make it take him home when it exploded? Erh, maybe save that for a last desperate gasp. The girls weren't that mad yet.

Meanwhile he had to survive here, and while he could do that, he didn't particular want to do it stuck on this steam bath of a planet, and he had felt people moving around on ships in space, or at least magic users. Some that needed killing out there too. He frowned and wondered how many had felt him when he made his uncontrolled entrance to this world. He had had the cloak on though and the blue girl seemed not aware of him.

A mental light came on for Harry then. He could let up on his shielding a tiny bit and gain her attention! He slipped off his cloak and as they progressed he let up on his suppression. She was suddenly much more cautious and looking around.

Harry had years of experience fighting and being around troops and the body language of the troopers near her said she was the leader. And respected, maybe adored. At least lusted after. There were a lot of helmets turned to that ass, when she wasn't looking. He was now shifting from mushroom to tree branch to giant flower to stay abreast of her, and looking at the odd equipment these troops had. Something that looked like a tank on legs, another that looked like APCs both open and covered. All on those weird legs.

An aircraft flew over and Harry nearly fell off his mushroom. Fucking thing was quieter than a Hog, even once it had passed him. It had a weird buzz too, like it had shed a turbine blade. When the strafing run began he did jump down. All tracer. Bit of overconfidence there. Airdales were all the same. Heavy sounding though thumps though. Thirty millimeter or better.

Suddenly the blue girl turned directly toward him, and took off running at incredible speed, making prodigious leaps. Harry froze and clamped down on his aura suppression and she stopped about fifty meters away. His magic was singing for sure now, and those were some kind of tentacle. Somehow it all worked for her though. Why did she have a torch in her hand?

Harry watched as the twelve troopers who been with her most of the day came up behind her. Her personal protection detail probably. He heard radios, then suddenly the body language shifted. Harry watched in horror as a mutiny happened right in front of him. They had mutinies early in the war, and then later some troops broke and fled, killing their officers and NCO's or rather letting them get killed. He had never seen one until now, and seven of the twelve got off shots before he snapped their necks, on instinct really.

Meanwhile he felt a lot of pain and betrayal as the magic he had felt earlier screamed. He also felt it from the other force user on this planet, before he felt nothing from her. Harry concentrated and focused himself, and went into battle mode. He flicked a stasis charm on the now wounded, severely, blue girl and looked at the troopers hopefully. He found one still moving, breathing on his own, but it was movement, and smiled. He dropped one of his trunks, fished out a polyjuice potion, got some of her blood in it, she didn't have hair on her head, or under her arms, and he wasn't checking downstairs, and watched as the potion bubbled and turned blue. He shrugged and switched it into the soldier who then nearly disappeared in the armor. He shrugged, chuckled and vanished the armor. He conjured fake Blue clothes from the sweat soaked undershirt and boxers he had been wearing, flipped him over and matched what he remembered of Blues wound pattern. He flipped fake blue back over. He looked at the troopers and collected on e of each type of weapon and a radio thing. Then he dropped the radio. On Earth networked communications told the TOC where they were. He put the trunk away after getting another vial and tapping it with his wand. He cleaned up the area of as many traces of him as he could find.

Then he picked up the Blue, summoned her torch, concentrated on a safe place, and apparated away. Dropping a vial of erumpent fluid in the middle of the dead troopers, or between them and dead fake blue really. At least that was his intention but he had arms full of Blue and was concentrating. He did see it spinning the direction he wanted.

SSDV

Harry landed in a field in front of a cliff and walked forward, smiling as he saw the cave. He checked it with a wave and walked into it. He conjured a concrete floor, dirt was impossible to sterilize, and an operating table with a flick and lay the girl down. He needed emergency treatment first or she was going to die, stasis or not. He stripped her, cleaned her and got her situated on the table and draped. He scanned her quickly and got out a vial of near golden fluid. He dripped a bit in each wound, thankful she had not been injured in the head, or in those tentacles that contained part of her brain, according to his scan. He was also glad the tears apparently worked with no side effects. He watched for a minute as they bubbled or rather the wounds did and at least stopped bleeding. That would hold her for a few minutes.

Harry stripped off his armor, put his trunks down, laid out his wands on another conjured table and got wards up. The stones were already carved, he just had to add his blood and hers, of which there was plenty around, and then set the stones. A tap of a summoned wand and they were up and running. They would charge slowly, but it would be enough for now. He didn't dare exhaust himself full charging them, not when he had no idea how much work he was going to have to do on Blue.

Several dozen charms and transfigurations and the cave was an operating theater. Sterile too. Now Harry really got to work. He looked at the first scan he had run, ran another and noted what was changed then went to his potion supply. He switched three potions into her and took the stasis off. He scanned her again and didn't like her volume. He wasn't going to do tilts, but her pressure should not be that low. Not in a fast moving warm blooded animal anyway. He got out an unfixed blood replenisher, dropped some of her blood, he cleaned, into it swirled it gently for a few seconds, and switched it into her superior vena cava or rather what looked like it and was full of blood. It worked on all magical species on Earth and it worked here, thankfully. He nodded, and started a large bore IV drip of normal saline, she had both water and salt in her blood in approximately the same quantities as human blood, while he still had a vein, in case she went real low.

He worked over his patient, examining her in minute detail, including injuries that were probably old, or surgical, while he thought and the tears he had used on her worked. She hadn't had foreign matter in the wounds, so they were easy, like burns really. Excise the damaged tissue and then some healing charms and a drop or two more of tears and that was good. He didn't really want to get to invasive, or heavy on the potions, without some more in depth knowledge of her species. The tears she had tolerated. The old injuries were the normal thing. Mundane surgical fixes. Some charms and some tears would fix those. It was all kind of the same as the wounded troops after a incursion really. Well, he wasn't a mind healer, and she wasn't awake, so really it was the same. The only way it would have been better was if he had had the elixir and she had been dead or dying.

Harry had taken Dumbledore's vaults, or rather Daphne had, and there, in the main vault was the stone he allegedly destroyed. It didn't give immortality, but it did transmute lead to gold and produce a liquid that would heal people. If you didn't mind inflicting pain on them like Voldemort's cruciatus. Oh, and making them sterile. As nearly everyone had eggs and sperm in stasis though, all the field surgical teams carried several vials of the elixir, and vials of tears. Daphne was close to duplicating the stone as well.

He had no idea if she had her eggs saved though, so the elixir was out until her last breath. Tears though, well he had plenty of those.

Phoenix didn't like demons either. Worse than the elves. Everyone knew now why the flipping birds had that reputation. Phoenix song apparently drove the fucking demons mad as well. Bit of a surprise that. Really if there hadn't been so many of the fucking things, and the tier fours and up hadn't been more powerful than the average magic user, it wouldn't have been that bad. Well, if the fives hadn't been the size of tall buildings. Well, if there had been more elves and phoenix. Harry shook his head as he finished up examining the Blue girl, who appeared normal in all respects, aside from those tentacles and some deviation of her internal organs, two stomachs for instance. Oh and being blue, which was her skins pigmentation. No looking at her color to tell her oxygen saturation. He set a charm working on vitals. He had to twist it a bit but he got it to work. Goblins and the other species had taken a twist or four hundred as well. Not to mention elves, a whole different charm for them. Their magic was different, fundamentally different.

Whoever had enslaved elves must have been the magic user who created the god myths. That had been a powerful motherfucker. Or like he thought a demon, class two at least. He chuckled as he cleaned his hands, or a tricky magical like Daphne. Phoenixes? Who knew where they came from and there would be no enslaving them while the planet was still inhabitable. Squawking and flaming. Flames coming from their talons like they had after burners, thank god it wasn't the cloaca right? How much would that hurt? Wonder their feathers stayed on when they got up to mach three and dove through a demon, or a line of them, like some demented, autonomous, kinetic energy weapon.

Harry used a vial of tears in the drip and conjured a chair. He sat watching the blue woman for a reaction after a scan and laying all the results side by side, on a low table in front of himself to see any changes.

He had heard the radio but hadn't understood the language. Translation spells were intent based, and you had to have some idea of what the other person was saying, and some other aspect of the language. A frame of reference sort of. When she woke up she was going to freak. She had been strong, sure, and fast. Brave too, coming right at him like that. Unless he figured out a way to communicate, it was going to be a fight, and she might be reinjured.

He now had two sure apparition points on this world and could get back quick if she stirred. He had an hour or two before she needed, or could tolerate, more potions. Harry cast a monitoring charm on her in addition to the charm displaying her vitals, along with placing a set of four stones that had her in a hundred percent oxygen environment at .5 bar overpressure, which at home promoted healing and helped keep the patient areas sterile. He also gave her a big dose of vitamin C as an antioxidant, because of the one hundred percent oxygen environment. She already had some ascorbic acid in her system, about as much as a healthy human, percentage wise, so probably a thousand mg wouldn't hurt her. Turn her urine orange maybe.

Harry put the monitoring charms on her, and checked the cushioning charms and containments, so she wouldn't either roll over, or off the table. He draped her as best as he could leaving the wounds exposed, and brought the temperature of the space in the wards up a few degrees to what appeared to be her normal body temperature. He had never subscribed to that freezing operating theater theory.

Now he could look around a little. He concentrated turned and went to where he had picked her up arriving disillusioned, silenced, and scent suppressed, with the cloak on so he didn't need the full suite of stealth charms, including thermal signature suppression. Somehow the cloak did that. Surprise! Death apparently saw near and far infrared, like some animals. Who would have thought?

The troops were gone. Dead and all. He followed the crushed path through the understory, no stealth used by those troops at all, just a straight line and running over everything, in short apparitions and found them at an airfield? He poked around for a couple hours, got the lay of the place and then pulled back and apparated away.

He scanned Blue again gave the next series of potions, including a nutrient potion, as her body would be burning calories like mad as the tears worked, and massaged Blue's knee with some tears in an oil base potion that was good for connective tissue. The potions had to go in her in a certain order at specific times. Soft tissue regeneration then nerves then bone and he didn't need others influencing them inside her when her metabolism was already slightly different. The topical potion was great for sore muscles and joints. Rucking eighty percent of your body weight taught you quick. Better than Ibuprofen, which the mundane called 'Light Fighter Candy'. The tears would help too, and never interfered with other potions except for some of the more questionable ones, which had better counterparts anyway. He examined her wounds and nodded to himself. He scanned her again and compared the sets of scans smiling. He would need to move her, and get some clothes on her in an hour. Right now she was face down, on a customized to her operating table, those breast had to go somewhere and he didn't want them interfering with her breathing so they were in two dents in the table. Blue was still in a hundred percent oxygen environment thanks to the specialized ward and charms. He looked at his supplies and shrugged, he had one renewable resource. He switched a full vial of tears into her superior vena cava. While she was in a coma that would cure what ailed her if nothing else did. He would work on restoring her fully over time. The tears would keep her alive nearly no matter what.

Then he sat down and started on his project. Dean had taught them to make flip books which were kind of movies on paper in first year, and then had found a charm to do it with a memory or been shown it in third year, by then they could all draw fairly well. Well not Ron, but his stick figures had gotten better. They had made some movies from memory with it. It was clumsy and had none of the three dimensionality of a pensieve, that he learned about later, but it was cool for a thirteen year old who never really got to watch the telly. Well, watching Deans memories of shows had been. Everyone had made the books in a kind of fad and Seamus along with Ron had made porn flip books. Ron's drawing improved then. He never really got into those, but they were pretty detailed. Which of course made them make them in private and hide them after Neville pointed out they remembered some john thomas's in excruciating detail. Harry smiled. Everyone had tortured Seamus and Ron endlessly over that. The flip books were great for scouts and operations reports though. More secure than digital video storage and required no power. A few runes and they could be impervious too. A charm Seamus had found trying to make them, erh, liquid proof, lets say.

Harry had nearly perfect recall now, occlumency at a high enough level to suppress an aura came in handy for lots of things, and was amazed at how good the story turned out. In color even. He went from his last battle to now, him sitting here making the book, and put a few of his visions or insights of this plane, place, time or whatever this was, in it. He rested a moment and then added a whole section of him making this going backwards after a scene of a time turner with a clock counting backwards. He had managed to decipher the symbols for numbers from the shelf aisle labels in that big arse warehouse at the airfield. The numbers had started in single digits and gone up with a different lead digit every ten until it got to a hundred and seven so he was pretty sure it wasn't an alphabet. He had seen what had to be a clock too. Two digits, a space, two more digits changing every minute going up by one.

Harry busied himself drawing a map of the compound out of his memory and onto a large engorged parchment. He then ended the enlarging charm and marveled at the detail. He worked on his plan to empty the base into his trunks for a while. He would make another book of that when he had it in his head.

Last he checked the monitoring charm on her and got some rest. He set an alarm for an hour.

He woke up when the wand he had set the alarm on was just starting to shock him. He must have been tired. The vibrating normally woke him. He checked Blue and found her still in the coma but pretty much healed besides some scarring.

She was still in a coma though. He sighed and gave her a millisecond burst of cruciatus and checked her again. He nodded as her levels changed. She was sleeping now.

He lay back down after resetting her monitoring charms. The cruciatus had broken the original ones.

He snapped awake what felt like a few minutes later and checked the time. An hour. Wow, trips to, or through hell were tiring apparently. She had stirred but not woken up. He conjured a large t shirt and some track shorts onto her like Hermione liked to sleep in, well boxers, his boxers but he wasn't doing that with some girl he had never even spoken to. He levitated her, banished the operating table to the side and flicked a bed out, then levitated her to that with the wards still on and ran another charm. He lay back down on the couch he had conjured and waited. Sleeping in his alert mode.

His mind was busy working on all the problems he had right now. He had seen some amazing technology. Those walking things were pretty fucking retarded when you apparently had antigravity, but to each their own. So he had a language to learn, or more than one. He had technology to learn. He had to learn the lay of the land here and he had to figure out how to make a portal work to get home. Plus he wanted to see if they could affect these magic users dying all over the place. To do all that he was probably going to have to kill a few of these evil bastards, enough so that the others learned to leave him the fuck alone. No sweat. Same song different 'verse, universe in this case. He laughed at himself over that. Fuck the girls were going to kill him.

SSDV

Mace Windu lay on the floor of the office, dying. His regret were the Jedi masters who were dying with him or were already dead. He and they had been arrogant. They had never expected a Sith Lord of Palpatine's power, and now he had led them to pay the price. Worse, the younglings, knights and temple masters were paying the price now.

SSDV

Yoda sighed and winced feeling the loss of so many Jedi. He ordered the guard to alert and meditated on what else he should do while sitting in a treetop on Kashyyyk. He had been so wrong for so many years. How had that been? Admittedly, in the last two hundred years the shroud falling across the force had made things more and more difficult. Really though it was his, and through his training, the Jedi Orders arrogance.

SSDV

Darth Sidious cackled as the reports rolled in. Jedi were dying in droves. Soon the Empire would rise from the Republics ashes.