Ch 5.2 Release that Witch... and Wizard?! (Patreon)

Release that Witch…

and Wizard?!

Disclaimer: All characters here are at least 18. Hogwarts starts later, so by the time Harry arrives, he’s 19. Cheng Yen (陈嫣) was in her mid-20s before waking up in the 21-year-old body of Garcia Wimbledon. Witches gain their first awakening upon adulthood, at 18 years of age.

Story Starts

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Chapter 5.2 -

Preparation for the 

Months of the Demons

After her declaration, Karl Van Bates fidgeted, raising his hand halfway before bringing it back and clenching it into a fist.

"Your Highness, how tall and how wide do you plan to build this city wall?" Karl asked.

"At least five metres—" She caught the blank look. "Three times a man's height. Wide enough for four to march abreast."

Karl's brow furrowed at the unfamiliar unit, but the meaning was clear enough from context.

Garcia watched Karl's mind work behind his eyes—the calculations, the estimates, decades of professional instinct assessing the project at hand.

"Then a trench needs to be dug about one man's height deep to stabilise the upper portion," Karl said. His voice had been hesitant earlier, careful in the presence of royalty, but now it steadied into the cadence of a craftsman on familiar ground. "If the top sits at two men abreast and three men tall, the base must be doubled at minimum. The trenching alone requires enormous manpower. If Your Highness could provide me with a hundred and fifty labourers, I could finish the trench before the Months of Demons arrive."

"A ditch won't stop demonic beasts, Karl."

He held up a finger. "Which is precisely why this becomes a multi-year endeavour. If the upper portion is masoned with proper stone, we're looking at three years to completion. However—" He paused, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "If the sole purpose is blocking beasts, we can reduce the height to two and a half men. Shrink the top width by a third, bring the base to roughly the span of a man lying down. Dig trenches and lay masonry simultaneously. Add two hundred workers to the original hundred and fifty, and I can have it completed before next year's Months of Demons."

Garcia's jaw tightened. Karl flinched—probably wondering whether he'd stepped too far.

'Next year. She needed it in three months.'

Yet he pressed on with the careful diplomacy of a man who'd spent years navigating guild politics. "P-pardon my frankness, Your Highness, but now is the worst possible time to begin construction. If we dig the trench but fail to mason it before winter sets in, the rain and snow will soak the earth throughout the season. Come spring, we'd spend twice the effort cleaning and re-softening the collapsed trench walls, digging even deeper than originally planned. The work compounds against us."

Garcia drummed her fingers on the armrest of her throne. She'd expected this. Any competent builder would say exactly what Karl was saying—the laws of construction didn't bend to royal decree. In her previous life, peers who'd gone into civil engineering instead of mechanical had swapped horror stories at reunions about project managers who thought their delusions trumped physics.

But those project managers hadn't had witches. Or wizards. Or house-elves.

"Assume we adopt your conservative plan," Garcia said. "The shorter wall, narrower base. How long for the trench alone?"

"A month and a half. Perhaps slightly more."

"Then let's take that as our framework. Trenching and masonry proceed simultaneously, and the wall stands complete before the Months of Demons."

Karl's mouth opened.

Garcia raised a hand. "I know your concerns. All of them. But before you voice another objection, I'd like you to look at something." She turned to Barov, who'd been standing stiff as a poker by the side entrance. "The sample, if you please."

Barov produced a cloth-wrapped bundle from beneath his arm and carried it forward, placing it on the small table Garcia had positioned before the throne for precisely this purpose. He pulled the cloth free.

Two common bricks sat fused together, a thin grey seam binding them with such tenacity that the join appeared almost natural—as though the bricks had grown from the same stone. Garcia had tested the bond herself that morning, dropping the pair from shoulder height onto flagstone. Not a crack.

Karl stepped closer. His fingers hovered over the seam before he touched it, pressing his thumb against the grey material. He tried to work a nail into the join. Failed.

"This is a product from an alchemical workshop," Garcia said. "A powder produced by calcining crushed limestone mixed with clay at extreme heat, then blending it with gypsum. When combined with water, it forms a paste that sets hard as stone overnight. We call it cement."

The room went still. Harry, Barov, Carter and Karl all stared at her—four different flavours of shock aimed squarely at the woman who'd just rattled off a chemical process as casually as a recipe for stew.

Harry discreetly turned his laugh into a cough. Garcia felt a blush threatening and quashed it.

"Well—that was what's written in the technical document provided by the alchemist," she managed, keeping her voice level despite the stammer clawing at the edges.

'Fuck.'

She could feel Barov's gaze boring into the side of her face. Carter still stood with his mouth open.

'I got too caught up in the achievement.'

Karl seemed to accept her explanation. He turned the bricks over, tested the seam again from the other side. His hands trembled.

Garcia gave him the silence to process it. She understood the weight of what he was holding. Karl Van Bates had devoted half his life to the Masons' Guild—a life spent mortaring joints with lime putty that took weeks to cure, hauling dressed stone that cost a fortune per block, watching grand projects crawl forward at the speed of bureaucracy and budget. Cement didn't just change the timeline. It shattered the fundamental constraints of his entire profession.

Beyond adhering stones, the substance could be poured into moulds. It could assume any shape. Foundations, lintels, crenellations—all of it became possible at a fraction of the time and cost.

"Your Highness." Karl's voice came out fractured. "If what you've described is truthful—if this substance performs as you say—"

"It does."

"Then..." He swallowed. "Three months. It could be done in three months. Perhaps less, with sufficient labour."

Garcia allowed herself a thin smile. "Good. But I'm not finished showing you things, Karl."

She glanced to the right of her throne, where Anna stood in her red dress, hands folded neatly at her waist. The girl met Karl's eyes and offered a small nod. Karl returned it, his expression soft with the particular relief of a man who'd mourned someone and found them breathing.

Then Garcia looked past Anna to the tall figure leaning against the stone pillar with studied nonchalance—arms crossed, black coat hanging open over a crisp white shirt, the green-lined collar catching the torchlight.

"Karl, you already know Anna. Allow me to introduce Harry Potter." Garcia gestured. "He is a wizard of considerable and varied talents."

Harry pushed off the pillar and offered a slight bow—more performative than respectful, Garcia noted, but Karl wouldn't know the difference.

"Pleasure."

Karl blinked. His gaze darted between Harry, Anna, Garcia, and back to Harry. The word wizard settled over him like a weight.

Garcia caught Harry's eye. They exchanged a nod—the kind born of rehearsal, of conversations held in the back garden over conjured tea about exactly how much to reveal and in what order.

"You've demonstrated already that you're open-minded enough to accept Anna for what she is rather than what the Church claims she must be," Garcia said, watching Karl's face with care. "I need that same openness now. What you're about to see will alarm you. I'm asking you—not ordering, asking—not to panic."

Karl's throat worked. "Your Highness, I—"

"Poddey," Garcia called.

The crack of displaced air split the throne room like a whip. Karl flinched backward, his boot scuffing flagstone, and his mouth fell open wide enough that Garcia could count his molars. Standing before the throne—barely reaching Karl's hip—was Poddey, immaculate in his pressed tea-towel toga, enormous bat-like ears swivelling towards the stonemason with polite interest.

"Poddey is presenting himself to the honoured Princess and her esteemed guest," the house-elf announced, bowing so low his long nose grazed the floor.

"De—" Karl started, his voice cracking upward.

Harry moved. Two long strides brought him alongside Karl, one hand landing firmly on the mason's shoulder—not threatening, just present. Grounding.

"Not a demon," Harry said, calm as still water. "His name is Poddey. He's a house-elf—a species of magical creature bound to my family. Think of them as... extraordinarily helpful beings. They can move earth, shift stone, and build with a speed and precision that would make your guild weep with envy. Poddey here is the head of my household staff. There are forty-five more like him."

Karl's mouth closed. Opened again. Closed.

Poddey beamed up at the stonemason, his tennis-ball eyes bright with warmth. "Poddey is hoping the honoured mason is not being distressed. Poddey is only wanting to help with the wall-building."

The sheer domesticity of the statement seemed to snap something in Karl. His breathing slowed. He looked down at the small creature, then at Harry, then at Garcia.

"Forty-five," he repeated.

"Forty-five—forty-six if you add Poddey here," Garcia confirmed. "They'll work alongside your labourers, primarily at night or in concealed areas. Every worker assigned to this project—human or otherwise—will be bound by an oath of absolute discretion, enforced by magical means. Nothing they see or learn leaves the construction site."

She let that sink in before adding the piece that always sweetened the pill.

"And everyone will be handsomely paid. Above what any guild in Graycastle has ever offered for comparable work."

Karl looked at the fused bricks on the table. At Anna. At Poddey. At Harry, whose hand still rested on his shoulder.

Back at Garcia.

"Your Highness," he said, and his voice no longer trembled. "When do we begin?"

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The following afternoon found Garcia in the castle's back garden, where Harry had—with characteristic excess—transfigured the sparse flagstones into something resembling a proper courtyard. A round table of pale oak sat beneath a canvas awning, ringed by cushioned chairs.

"Didn't you say that transfiguration is not permanent?"

Harry just waved the princess off and said, "Beauty is fleeting."

"…"

"…"

"What?" Harry said, his grin widening as he flicked his wand with a showman's flourish. A towering pointed hat materialised atop his head—deep midnight blue, wide-brimmed and conical, stitched with silver stars and crescent moons that shimmered as though catching light from some unseen celestial source. A robe of matching splendour billowed around his shoulders, heavy velvet pooling at his feet. From his chin sprouted a long grey beard so voluminous it nearly reached his waist. He stroked it with theatrical gravity.

Then, with a final sharp jab of his wand, a great boulder erupted from the flagstones before Garcia—a broadsword buried to its crossguard in the stone, its pommel gleaming like polished silver.

"If I'm going to be the wizard adviser to the future King—or rather, Queen," he said, spreading his arms wide as the robe's hem swept the ground, "the Merlin to your Arthur—or maybe Artoria, no Artoria's dumb, it's Arthur with a 'u' so it should be Arturia."

"…"

"…"

"Oh, where was I? Oh yes, the Merlin to your Arturia, then I might as well speak in riddles, mystery, and needlessly cryptic prophecy."

'He's enjoying himself far too much.' Though Garcia couldn't quite suppress the twitch at the corner of her mouth. There was something disarming about it—this ridiculous boy playing dress-up in a garden that hadn't existed yesterday, conjuring Arthurian legend as though it were a parlour trick. She wondered, not for the first time, whether the theatricality was a deflection or whether Harry Potter simply couldn't help himself.

Anna perched on one of the cushioned chairs, her thin hands wrapped around a cup of tea as though drawing warmth from it. She had been watching the garden gate, but at the commotion she turned towards their exchange, her pale blue eyes tracking the conjured spectacle with quiet interest—the faintest crease at the corner of her lips that might, on a less guarded face, have been a smile.

Garcia raised an eyebrow as she stepped forward and gripped the sword's hilt. The leather wrapping was warm beneath her fingers, unnervingly real. She pulled. At first the blade held fast, and she felt a flicker of irritation—'If he's made me look like a fool in front of—'—but then it slid free with a crystalline ring, smooth as a hot knife through butter, the weight of it settling perfectly into her palm as though it had been forged for her hand.

She raised the blade skyward on instinct. It caught the light—no, it made light, a golden radiance that poured down the fuller and bathed her face in warmth.

For a single absurd heartbeat she felt it: the pull of the image, the weight of the symbol. A queen drawing a sword from stone.

'Don't be ridiculous,' she told herself sharply. But something in her chest stirred all the same—something that had nothing to do with Cheng Yen's pragmatic engineer and everything to do with Garcia Wimbledon, fourth princess of Greycastle, who had been sent to the edge of the kingdom to die quietly.

Anna and Harry both clapped. Harry's applause was slow and deliberate, his grey beard wobbling with each impact; Anna's was softer, almost tentative, as though she weren't entirely certain she was allowed. Garcia narrowed her eyes. She felt distinctly as though she were being mocked.

The gate opened.

Karl Van Bates stepped through first, one broad hand resting on the shoulder of a young woman who looked as though she'd been crying recently but had since resolved—with visible, brittle effort—to stop. Behind them trailed two others Garcia didn't yet recognise, their eyes still red-rimmed and wary.

The newcomers looked up. Every one of them froze.

Garcia became acutely aware of the picture she presented: standing in a conjured courtyard beneath a canvas awning, golden sword aloft, bathed in ethereal light, whilst a man in a wizard's hat and false beard beamed beside her like a deranged court jester. Harry, never one to leave well enough alone, gave his wand another subtle flick—and a shaft of warm sunlight broke through the clouds at precisely the right angle to crown her in a halo of gold.

It would not have been possible at this time of day. It was not, in fact, real sunlight at all. Garcia knew this.

The newcomers did not.

'I'm going to kill him.'

"Harry," Garcia said, her voice perfectly level, her smile perfectly fixed.

Both Anna and Harry rose from their seats. With another languid wave of his wand, Harry reverted everything he had conjured in the past minute—the hat dissolved, the beard evaporated, the robe folded into nothing, the boulder sank back into the flagstones, and the sword in Garcia's hand shimmered once and vanished, leaving her fingers curled around empty air. The false sunlight winked out. The garden returned to its modest, truthful state.

Harry smoothed down his untidy hair and offered the stunned arrivals a courteous nod, as though absolutely nothing unusual had occurred.

Nana Pine was shorter than Anna by a handspan—compact and sturdy where Anna was willowy and sharp. Her honey-blonde hair sat cropped to her jawline in soft, uneven layers, held back from her face by a pair of small clips, practical and girlish in equal measure. It framed a round, open face dominated by wide green eyes that darted across the garden with barely restrained alarm. She wore a plain linen dress that spoke of minor nobility on a modest budget—well-made but unadorned.

Those green eyes found Anna.

The colour drained from Nana's face. Her lips parted. She swayed on her feet, and Karl steadied her.

"Have I already died?" Nana whispered.

"You're very much alive, Miss Pine." Garcia's voice was measured, deliberate—the tone she'd learnt to use when delivering impossible truths. "As is Anna, who—as you can see—was never executed. The hanging was staged. A necessary deception to protect her from the Church."

Nana didn't appear to hear a word. She pulled free of Karl's hand and crossed the courtyard in five quick strides, stopping just short of Anna's chair. The two young women stared at each other—Nana's face crumpling, Anna's lake-calm eyes developing the faintest ripple.

"You're real," Nana said. Not a question.

Anna reached out and took Nana's hand. Placed it against her own cheek. Warm skin, undeniable.

Nana burst into tears.

Garcia allowed the reunion its moment. Karl excused himself with a graceful nod—the man had a wall to build and an army of house-elves to coordinate, and Garcia suspected he was grateful for the excuse to flee before his own composure cracked further.

When Nana's sobs had subsided to hiccups and Anna had guided her into a chair, Garcia spoke.

"Miss Pine. Karl tells me you've awakened as a witch."

Nana stiffened. Her fingers tightened on Anna's hand.

"I'm not going to harm you," Garcia said. "Nor is anyone in this garden. But I'd like to understand what you can do, and I think you deserve to understand it as well." She paused. "First—a demonstration of what Anna has learnt since her awakening. Anna?"

Anna released Nana's hand and stood. She extended her right arm, palm up. A flame bloomed above her fingers—not the wild conflagration Garcia had witnessed during early training sessions, but a controlled tongue of blue-white fire that twisted and shaped itself at Anna's silent direction. It split into five threads, one dancing above each fingertip, then merged back into a single sphere that hung motionless in the air before Anna closed her fist and snuffed it.

Nana's jaw hung slack.

"And this," Garcia said, turning to the pillar where Harry had been watching with arms folded, "is Harry Potter. A wizard."

Harry stepped forward with a crooked grin, pulled his wand from his sleeve, and flicked it at the empty chair beside Nana. The chair rose three feet off the ground, spun lazily, and settled back without a sound. Then he pointed the wand at the table, and a spray of golden sparks erupted from the tip, dissolving into butterflies that circled Nana's head before fading.

"Pleasure to meet you," Harry said.

Nana looked from Harry to Anna to Garcia and back, her green eyes impossibly round. "You're all—"

"Different," Garcia said firmly. "That's the word. Not evil. Not cursed. Different." She leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Miss Pine, the Church teaches that witches gain their power through demonic bargains. That the abilities you possess mark you as fallen. Tell me—did you seek out a demon? Did you sign a contract in blood?"

"No!" Nana's voice cracked. "I never—I've never even seen a demon, I swear it—"

"Of course you haven't. Because that story is a lie. A convenient one, designed to make ordinary people fear what they don't understand." Garcia kept her voice measured, clinical. No passion—passion could be mistaken for fanaticism, and she needed Nana to hear logic, not rhetoric. "Consider this: a person born with sharp eyesight isn't called evil for seeing further than their neighbour. A man with strong arms isn't damned for lifting heavier stones. Your ability is a trait—remarkable, yes, but no more inherently moral or immoral than height or hair colour."

Nana's brow furrowed. Garcia pressed on.

"Any person—witch or otherwise—can choose to do harm. A baker can poison bread. A blacksmith can forge a blade and plunge it into someone's chest. Does that make baking evil? Does that make smithing the devil's work? A witch who murders is a murderer. A witch who heals is a healer. The magic doesn't decide. You decide."

Anna's voice came quiet but clear. "My father sold me to the guards for twenty-five gold royals."

Nana turned to her.

"He knew what they'd do," Anna said. "No magic told him to betray his daughter. No demon whispered in his ear. He chose." Her pale blue eyes held Nana's without flinching. "He was ordinary. And he did an evil thing. I am a witch. And I saved him from a collapsed mine. Which of us does the Church call wicked?"

Silence pooled in the courtyard. A sparrow landed on the awning's edge, chirped once, and departed.

Nana drew a shuddering breath. "I healed a bird," she said. "It had a broken leg. I just... wanted to help it, and something came out of my hands, and the leg mended."

"Healing." Garcia let the word sit. She'd been hoping—planning—for this confirmation ever since Karl had mentioned Nana's abilities. A healer changed everything. Border Town had no physician worthy of the title, no herbalist beyond a half-blind grandmother who prescribed poultices of dubious efficacy. The Months of Demons would bring injuries. Construction accidents happened daily. And beyond the immediate crisis, a healer represented the kind of irreplaceable value that could justify an entire political platform.

Garcia filed those calculations away and smiled. "Would you be willing to show us?"

"I—yes, I think so. I'd need something injured to—"

"Harry." Garcia turned to him. "Could you conjure a chicken? A wounded one, so Nana can demonstrate."

Harry's hand went to the back of his untidy hair—Garcia recognised the gesture; it meant he was about to deliver caveated news. "I can conjure one, sure. But a conjured chicken is a magical construct. Nana's healing magic might interact with it differently than it would with a living creature. The results could be unreliable."

Anna spoke before Garcia could respond. "Then test both."

Garcia blinked. Simple. Elegant. She caught Anna's eye, and the girl looked back with that quiet steadiness that belied her age.

"Bring a live hen from the kitchen," Garcia ordered the guard stationed at the garden entrance. The man saluted and disappeared through the gate. She turned back to Harry. "Conjure yours as well. We'll compare."

Harry twirled his wand between his fingers, muttered something under his breath, and a plump brown hen materialised on the flagstones with an indignant squawk. It ruffled its feathers, pecked at the ground, then froze—head cocked—as though suddenly aware that it hadn't existed thirty seconds ago. But then it resumed its previous motions, wandering about the garden as if the question had answered itself. Garcia studied it. Every feather sat in place, every talon gleamed. Indistinguishable from the real thing, at least to her eyes.

While they waited for the live hen, Garcia's mind ran ahead of the conversation. Nana Pine—a healer, daughter of minor nobility, still frightened but pliable. If her abilities worked as described, the girl could staff an infirmary single-handedly. Construction injuries, combat wounds during the Months of Demons, the everyday ailments that culled Border Town's population like a slow plague—Nana could address all of it.

And Anna. Garcia watched the fire witch sip her tea with careful, deliberate hands. Anna's value to the cement production alone justified everything Garcia had risked. But cement was the beginning, not the end. The Newcomen engine prototypes needed consistent, controllable heat far beyond what any conventional forge could deliver. Iron smelting, steel production, glasswork—each required temperatures that Anna could provide with a gesture. Garcia's mind spooled through a dozen industrial applications, each branching into further possibilities like cracks spreading through heated stone.

Harry, meanwhile, represented an arsenal she'd barely begun to catalogue. Transfiguration for precision moulds. Conjuration for raw materials—temporary, yes, but useful for prototyping. His house-elves alone constituted a labour force that could reshape the town's infrastructure in weeks rather than years. And the wards. If Harry could eventually establish proper defensive enchantments along the wall, the Months of Demons became not a siege to survive but a season to endure.

And then there was Nightingale.

Garcia's jaw tightened. The woman drifted through Border Town like smoke—present but uncommitted, watching but never joining. Garcia had extended her invitation twice now. Twice, Nightingale had declined with that infuriating half-smile, as though Garcia's ambitions were a show she'd paid to watch but not participate in. The woman's abilities—invisibility, infiltration, truth-discernment through that peculiar sight of hers—would have made intelligence gathering trivially simple. Every noble in Longsong Stronghold, every Church operative passing through the region, every merchant with divided loyalties—Nightingale could have mapped the entire web in a fortnight.

Instead she lurked. Observed. Kept her own counsel.

'One day.'

The guard returned with a rust-coloured hen tucked under his arm, its legs bound with twine. He set it on the table and retreated. Garcia drew a knife from the sheath at her belt and looked at Nana.

"Ready?"

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END 

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