Ascendants Wrath: Chapters 1-5 (Patreon)

I wrote these chapters for a contest and realized I never shared the chapters on patreon. So I combined them and edited them to share wih you. Synopsis: What if the HArry Potter Universe had an Akatsuki organization?

Chapter 1:

Conniving Immortals

“Voldemort is dead." Their faceless leader announced to the gathered.

He wasn't so much their leader, as he was their most senior member. Nobody else knew anything about him other than that he was literally faceless. A walking corpse coated in molten silver, like veins of metal in his mummified flesh.

The only purpose he ever seemed to serve was to keep their meetings on target and to offer advice. And as a veto.

In the shadowy chamber, far removed from the prying eyes of the world, sat all ten members of their little club. Their choice of seating was a circular table. Yes, it was THAT circular table. One seat was empty.

Xavier thought Voldemort's absence would make the place more inviting, but their youngest member was hardly the factor to make the place so unpalatable. Dark witches and wizards in their circle outnumbered light or even grey ones by far.

"A seat cannot remain empty." Said Perenelle Flamel, where she sat on her husband's lap. "Who shall replace him?"

Xavier thought it rather unfair that Nicholas and his wife could share a seat. But he also suspected therein lay a hint to the true nature of their immortality. That the two of them together counted as one human being.

The other seven seats remained quiet, though several nodded in agreement to the woman’s words.

"Does anybody have a nomination?" Edgar Stroulgar, a man who was more steam engine and piston than flesh, invited.

"I've not heard of any new immortals in the seas." Said Mirabella Plunket.

"Nor I in the skies or flames." Said Wendelin cheekily, mocking the other woman as she tended to do.

Both ladies were starting to look aged. Well into their eighties if not beyond. This meant they would both have to go through their different, but similar, rebirthing rituals soon and be useless to them for at least sixteen years.

Mirabella, the omni-animagi, could transform herself into any sea creature. Once a century she did so into the immortal jellyfish, reverting back into a larval form, then returning to humanity as a baby. Wendelin, on the other hand, was an arcano-animagi; the rare witch or wizard able to transform into a magical creature instead of a mundane beast. Her form? A phoenix.

Their methods of immortality were the more straightforward ones.

"How long until you will be leaving us, and do you have new homes planned out for us to watch over?" Xavier asked.

The red-haired phoenix animagi glanced at him.

"I have identified one red-haired family left intact in Britain after Voldemort's recent rampage. I think I can pass myself off as the child of one of their brothers. Abandoned on their doorstep." Wendelin said.

Xavier had a good idea of who she meant. He had fond memories of Fabian and Gideon, and even their mourning sister would find it easy to imagine one of them siring an illegitimate daughter to be left of their doorstep.

Mirabella remained silent.

"Either way, proceed with caution," Havelock Sweeting said. "The wizarding world is on edge, and our movements will be scrutinized. Mysterious infants showing up on doorsteps will be even more suspicious than usual."

The man ran a unicorn sanctuary. As did his "descendants". His version of immortality was also readily obvious, though the details of how he did it without the whole "cursed life" thing was beyond Xavier.

"If none of you have any nominations, then I nominate Harry James Potter." Their leader announced.

They all looked at him. They all had a similar expression of bored doubt.

"He is a baby." Dorcas Wellbeloved complained. “A year and change of life behind him.”

"He will not remain so for long, much to your disappointment, I'm sure." Said Nicholas Flamel with a grimace at addressing the woman.

The vampiress grinned at him, showing off every needle-like teeth that filled her mouth.

He wished they could just kill her, their second youngest member. But their oath forbade them from killing each-other, and the magic which bound their organization cared not for how dark or light a member was. But when even Voldemort couldn't stand the woman's presence you just knew they were the most vile of sorts. Though in his case he might have had more personal reasons for despising a woman who opened women's and children's shelters in order to prey on both, in the worst ways possible.

"What makes you think he is immortal?" Xavier asked.

"Because, Mister Rastrick, I have born witness to the prophecy around the boy." Said their second eldest member.

The legendary woman sat there with a magical bird on either shoulder, her third red and gold avian companion off spying for her no doubt. The two she kept on her were the most mysterious creatures he had ever known, matching no other magical creature description. But they must be impressive if the third pet of hers was a phoenix. There was a hilarious story about her recruit Wendelin, but he was privy to it.

So yeah, Cliodne the druid. Difficult nut to crack.

"The boy is protected by prophecy?" Asked Stroulgar. "Does it tell of how he dies?"

"It does." Said Cliodne.

"What a rare find! Prophetic immortality, temporary and imperfect though it may be, is so very interesting." Said Stroulgar as steam rushed form a nozzle on his faceplate. "But we will need a placeholder member until he is ripe for the harvesting."

"In that case, I have somebody in mind." Said Xavier. "More of an agent for our use, and not an immortal one."

"Placeholder members may be mortal. Who do you have in mind?" Asked the leader.

"Carlotta Pinkstone. Enemy to the statute of secrecy." Said Xavier.

Notes:

To summarize the plot of this story.

What if the Harry Potter universe had an organization that served the role of the Akatsuki? All of these characters are canon to Harry Potter. If you don't recognize them, then you need to go reread your famous witches and wizards cards.

In this case it is a group of immortals, on par with Voldemort if not superior. Which is the biggest hint I will give towards their designs.

This was written to take part in a contest for heartbyteAI. And is a rewrite of a terrible story I crafted years ago. The character limit on this one allows me to actually write despite my lack of time.

Chapter 2:

Life After the Statute

Most people can't remember anything from their early childhood. Life before the age of five was a blank canvas, or blacked out memory. Not for Harry.

This wasn't because he had photographic memory or anything like that, in fact, he didn't remember much. Just a few things, but he remembered them vividly. He remembered a flash of green and a woman's scream. He remembered seeing those three bizarre birds that always followed him around for the first time. And he remembered the 1984 Olympics.

Everyone remembered the 1984 Olympics.

He remembered the sudden overcast. He remembered that woman - that witch, that terrorist- Carlotta Pinkstone appearing out of thin air. And of course, all of the blood and bodies she made from the athletes.

July 4th, 1984 was known as the day the Statute broke, and the start of Pinkstone's reign of terrorism.

Turns out, there are wizards! And witches, and vampires, and werewolves and dragons, and fairies and a whole lot of other things everybody thought were make-believe. Learning that he lived in a world where an entire separate society of magic wielding maniacs came as quite a surprise. Learning he was one of them was a but more difficult to swallow. Learning they were also just regular people with bad apples like any other race or nation took an inordinate amount of time to accept.

Over the eleven years since her attack on all Muggledom, tensions had been high between Muggles and wizards.

Integrating their two societies together was an ongoing process, which initially started with the wizards opening up charter schools, national forests and magical services to "Muggle" kind. The former to learn about their way of life. The second to let them see dragons and manticores and other crazy shit up close and personal, while paying a premium to do so. It was worth every penny.

The last of those was for simpler motivations.

Good old fashioned crapitalism!

"Come to Crispa Culpeller's Drugs and Preparations for all of your beauty needs." The face on the magical advertisement they walked past said. "Our latest scar removal cream will have your skin baby smooth in no time at all."

Dudley and Piers both guffawed at the poignant advertisement. Stopping in their tracks to laugh at him.

"Our new line of perfume comes with sweat odor elimination. Only nine, ninety-nine." The advertisement went on, this time directed towards Dudley and Piers.

That shut them up.

"At a certain point, don't you wizards figure making ads too customized to the victim becomes offensive?" Piers asked Harry.

"I mean, we are all in our league clothes and carrying our gym bags with us." Harry told him. "So I imagine we must smell like the changing room."

And it was true. Their baseball clothes were in need of a wash, and would be getting one after today's game, but they didn't smell THAT bad.

"Come on! Ignore the bint, or we'll miss the bus!" Dudley beckoned.

"Oi!" The advertisement complained as they rushed past her towards the bus stop.

They arrived with an entire minute to spare before the bus popped into existence, to find it already crowded with elderly witches. French by the look of their robes.

They stared at them. They stared at Harry in particular.

Dudley had a hairpin trigger at the best of times, but when he caught strangers staring at Harry's forehead with mouths agape it was a good idea to get out of his way.

"Yeah! That's Harry Potter. You want to make something out of it?" Dudley snapped at the women.

The women, as one, flinched from his musclebound cousin. Harry and Piers had to drag him away to reprimand him.

"Dude? Really?!" Harry said.

"I'm sorry! It's just... gross. She may have been your mother, but she was my aunt and I actually remember her. A little. They celebrate it and congratulate you and ogle you because she died." He said. "How would you feel if Mum died saving me from that Pinkstone psycho and people went around shaking my hand for it?"

That was one way of putting it. Harry didn't like it either, but he thought apathy was a more appropriate response. There was also the small matter that the guy who killed his mother being a significantly bigger deal than Carlotta.

"Well, we'll be playing against a mixed species team from France, so expect more staring." Harry told him. "Or better yet, direct some of that aggression at winning the game, eh?"

Before he could answer, the telltale BANG of a magical bus appearing at the stop announced it was time to board. They waited behind for the elderly to find their places and then boarded through the back entrance, paying with the toll setup there. Best to avoid the people with wands that Dudley just tried to start a fight with.

"Oi! Over here!" They heard a voice from the back.

Sure enough, Dean, Seamus and Malcolm were on the same bus, dressed for the game themselves.

The entire league was student run, a collaboration of different magical charter schools and Muggle schools alike.

Baseball was boring. Quidditch took up all of the mainstream these days, and football – both American and poverty versions - was boring. But magical baseball? Now that was a good time. And with enchanted gloves, balls, cleats and bats even Muggles could play. Quidditch required brooms, which Muggles could not fly on by themselves.

Harry, Seamus and Dean were classmates in a charter school named Quibbler's school of Magical Arts. It had a focus on using magic for painting, sculpting and music and had somehow stolen professors from both Hogwarts and Bauxbatons. After the statue of secrecy was broken native wizards, who some derogatorily called purebloods, decided they didn't have to tolerate the immigrant class of Muggleborns or their Muggle politics anymore, so booted them all out. They kept Hogwarts, but nobody cared because any witch or wizard could create their own school in the Muggle world. And they did. A lot.

Let the Purebloods live in their isolationist country, with their own culture and religion free of modernist issues.

Harry, being a half-blood and famous, was invited to Hogwarts. But a quick comparison of their curriculum and the rich assholes that went there compared to all of the other, cheaper, and closer options sealed the deal.

There, he met all of the other Muggleborns and half-breeds of Britain with an artistic bend. Dean was excellent with penciling and inking art. Seamus? He could paint alright, but he really liked fireworks, which headmaster Xenophilius somehow allowed him to experiment with. Under their music teacher, Flitwick's, strict supervision.

"The others are coming on the ninety eight, we'll meet them at the field." Malcolm said.

Traveling by train? What a bore! Why do that when you could get on a roller coaster of a bus? Speaking of.

"Buckle up everybody." Harry told his teammates, doing the same himself.

As usual, the knight bus corporation did not disappoint. Even with the seat belts Harry and Dudley, who had been seated closest to the windows, had developed intimate relationships with the glass throughout the ten minute ride to their baseball pitch.

When they were let out they stumbled like drunkards onto the grassy edge of the fields of Devon. Their baseball pitch was just within view. A crowd of friends and family or general onlookers was already taking up the bleachers.

"Come on! We gotta get there before the others." Seamus goaded.

So they got their warmup in running towards the pitch, only to be outrun by a van painted with a white flag. On no wait! That was the French flag. Somehow he always missed the red and blue bits. It just faded into his periphery every time.

They reached the edge of the pitch leading to the pitchers just as the clowns exited their clown car. Figuratively speaking. The vehicle was clearly bigger on the inside than the outside.

"Wait. They're co-ed?" Piers asked stupidly.

No. Not co-ed. It was all girls who stepped out of that van, and their uniforms declared them as their opponents. They waved flirtatiously at the boys. For their part, they mock growled while making threatening gestures, like Dudley's finger across the throat, much to their amusement if the giggles were any indication.

They all stopped their horseplaying when the last of their players stepped out of the van.

"I thought we were playing against other high schoolers." Dudley whispered conspiratorially as the blonde woman, not girl, woman ran to catch up with her peers.

"That chick has got to be a senior in college, at least." Said Malcolm.

"That or the French are putting something stronger than flouride in their water." Seamus said.

Harry was too busy watching the woman, and the feeling of her magic washing over them like a miasma. He didn't like it, the way it attempted to grasp onto their attention and emotions. Her magic felt like a violation. And he knew what she was.

"No. She's a high school senior alright." Harry said. "And she's a Veela."

Even from ten meters away, she must have heard him, because her eyes snapped towards him, his utterance of the V word earning him a hateful glare.

Then, her eyes moved towards his scar, and her expression turned vindictive. Excited, even. Or maybe even hungry?

That was not the usual response his scar earned him.

The shorter chapter format really lets me experiment with "Tell, don't show". But this is pretty much the best case scenario of a world where the statute of secrecy is broken and the two worlds have to coexist. Glossed over most of the growing pains, but they'll play a big role in future chapters.

Chapter 3:

Bad News in Disguise

Harry took his seat on the bleachers, third in line to bat as the French birds took the field. Dudley and Seamus were ahead of him and preparing their equipment.

Everybody came equipped with their own bats, helmets, pads and - in the case of pitchers - balls. Regular baseball had regular versions of all of these things. But magical baseball?

Enchanted bats could be used by anybody, unlike brooms, and were set to add jinx effects to the ball for any fielders catching it dependent on the batter and the enchantments on the ball. It made for a lot of chaos and unpredictability. Helmets and pads were enchanted to protect, at least partially, against said jinxes. The balls themselves also usually packed a wallop, but today the pitcher was a full-blown Veela, or at least a half-breed, and she sent straight up fireballs down the plate.

Dudley was first to bat, and was consequently the first to strike out. That almost never happened to his tank of a cousin.

He retreated to the bleachers red-faced and humbled.

"A fast ball, a curve ball and an easy one straight down the plate." Dudley whined when he returned to his seat. "And I missed all of them. The honest pitch at the end really messed with my head."

"And the ball being on fire all three times had something to do with it, is it right?" Seamus goaded as he took to the plate.

Harry was next so he tried to watch closely. This proved to be a mistake, as Seamus hit the very first great ball of fire. As always, the enchanted bat had the same effect when wielded by Seamus. Firworks. It turned the ball into fireworks. Combined with the flaming ball itself, the flash that resulted was blinding. Almost literally.

Harry had to turn away and when he looked back it was to see five vibrantly colored fireworks, any of which could be the ball itself, flying into the outfield. Seamus ran as fast as he could. At first base a French girl with curly blond hair caught a dud and was floored by the flash and bang it produce. At second, the others hit the ground, the catchers being not so adamant on getting flashbanged and burned.

Usually Seamus' hits resulted in one firework. Harry didn't understand the enchantment, but its effects were somehow related to the hitters personality. And that was all the Firebolt company would say. So it was anybody's guess how it had reacted to Veela fire.

He made it all the way to third base before somebody picked up the burnt wreckage of a baseball to home plate. There, he stayed.

"New Ball!" The umpire yelled out.

And a new ball was tossed to that silvery-blonde pitcher that none of them could stop staring at. It was totally the Veela magic, not how absurdily hot she was. Of that, Harry was sure.

Harry got up to go to bat when Dudley stopped him.

"Your watchers just showed up." He whispered conspiratorially.

Harry looked up and, sure enough, three birds of paradise were flying overhead like vultures. One red and gold, one blue and silver, one yellow and bronze. They had tried many times to identify what species they were, but no Muggle or magical aviary book described such birds, save for the first which was clearly a phoenix. They were both quite sure that the others were magical birds crossed with tropical songbirds of some kind. They had assumed it was something to do with that Dumbledore asshole who wouldn't leave them alone, especially as he supposedly owned a phoenix, so they never reported it. Politically powerful man that he was, they knew it wouldn't amount to even an investigation.

He walked onto the pitch, keeping one eye on the birds as he readied to bat.

The first throw was almost a foul ball, but he got out of the way in time. He should have just let it hit him and gotten sent to first base. With Seamus on third he would have made it home and Piers could have carried them on from there now that he'd seen Dudley chicken out.

When he got back up he noticed his watchers were gone. He scanned the bleachers looking for them and got a first strike for his lack of attention.

"Strike!" The umpire yelled helpfully.

But Harry didn't care. What he was seeing at the far end of the pitch, just behind the bleachers, seemed more important than any baseball game.

All three birds were perched on a woman. One on each shoulder and one on her head. She was beautiful, with raven black hair and impossibly pale skin. Being stared at by her hawk-like eyes was only half as disconcerting as being stared at by her companion.

There was a robot standing out there in the open. A man made of copper, with what looked like sneakoscopes for eyes, both pointed at him.

"Time to daydream servivante boy!" The Veela pitcher yelled as she threw one right down the plate.

He came back to the game just in time to swing, and when his bat connected it shattered in an explosion of splinters and flame. Thank goodness for his glasses or else he might have gotten some shrapnel in those already crappy eyes of his.

He blinked away his daze.

"Ground ball is good! Go!" The umpire behind him yelled.

He looked down to see the ball just a few feet in front of him and up to see the troupe of cute angry French babes sprinting towards him. And not with pleasant designs, based on their expressions.

Harry ran to first base as Seamus made it to home before the pitcher managed to run up and pick up the second ruined ball. She made to throw it to second only to see Harry raising his hands in surrender. There was a certain level of courtesy in baseball. Mostly just to not waste everybody's time.

He wasn't going to second. She could be assured of that.

Harry looked into the stands in search of his watchers, only to find the woman, the robot and all three birds gone. So, not Dumbledore? One of his people maybe?

He turned back towards home plate to see Piers Polkiss entering the field and taking up his bat. The French Veela reeled back to pitch and stopped just before letting loose another fire ball when the umpire pushed past Piers, waving his hands in a timeout motion.

"Game is cancelled!" He yelled.

"Ze fuk?" Harry heard the first-basewoman next to him cuss in FrEnglish.

The pitcher sprouted feathers in readily apparent rage. This confirmed his suspicion that she was at least half Veela.

"You cannot cancel ze game! It just started!" She complained loud enough for the umpire to hear.

Harry, along with Piers and the many passionate young ladies on the pitch, all voiced similar sentiments of disapproval. As they did so, Harry's own teammates poured out onto the field. Strangely, instead of the rage he expected they were cheering.

"Dude! You're not gonna believe it!" Anthony Goldstein yelled, as many hands grasped him. "You gotta get to the radio.”

And so, his teammates dragged him, bemused and grumpy at the interrupted game, past the fence and to a van where a wizarding wireless was sat playing. A crowd had already formed there, among them a familiar bushy-haired classmate.

"Harry! It's so wonderful!" Hermione explained before pouncing on him with her trademark bone-breaking hugs.

The pain from the broken bones was alleviated by the kiss she promptly planted on his lips.

"You said you wouldn't be able to make it to this game?" He asked his girlfriend, belying how pleased he was to see her for the first time in weeks.

"I said I might not. It was not a definitive statement, Harry." She said in her usual joking condescension.

Great! Was it time for an English lesson on dangling participles again?

But then he heard the words of the radio.

"We have reporters on the scene and... yes, it is confirmed, Carlotta Pinkstone is in ICW custody and Aurors are currently escorting her into Nurmengard Prison for questioning. And now, reporter Martin Bell of the BBC who is on the scene."

And suddenly his delight at having his girlfriend in his arms was replaced by so many more emotions. Namely disbelief and more pleasure.

"Thank you Daily Prophet." Said Martin Bell, who seemed nonchalant about not knowing the name of the witch he was talking to. "I am here in the Austrian alps where the terrorist know as Carlotta Pinkstone is literally being dragged in chains into the wizarding castle prison Nurmengard, famous for previously housing the Dark Lord Grindelwald, their version of Hitler."

That wasn't quite accurate, or at all really. He was more like their version Ilse Koch crossed with Nelson Mandela, but that was neither here nor there.

"The prison has remained empty since his death but British intelligence, and Aurors, are being called onto the scene for interrogation. It will not be televised or recorded but we can only hope the British citizens will be umarred my magic in their supervision and participation of events so as to report on it properly later." Martin Bell explained.

Harry didn't appreciate the emphasis that the Muggle reporter put on the word "citizens" as if to insinuate non-Muggles weren't deserving of the moniker. Near as Harry had heard, the legal debate on that distinction was still ongoing.

"Wait. What does zis mean for us?" One of the French girls, a brunette with a slightly Spanish bend to her accent asked.

"Party?" Seamus asked, shrugging.

They all shared glances.

"We shall get ze vine." Said the Veela.

Wizarding Austria:

"Auror Interrogator Severus Snape, on deck." Said a British officer.

His peers all stood at attention as he entered the room, flanked by his companions. Kingsley Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody continued on nonchalantly, unbothered by the respect these men gave.

Snape, for his part, was uncomfortable and suspicious over the deference these Muggle soldiers were giving him.

He looked at them, and they looked away.

Ah, so they were briefed on legilimancy. Which meant they knew a lot of things about his abilities that just weren't so. The age old saying of "it is better to be uninformed than misinformed" range true as always. The latter of which they were.

"Right this way, gentleman." Said an Austrian wizard who could have very well been Albus' senior.

They walked through several vault doors that were so heavily enchanted that he could actually feel the magic from them despite not being a sensory-type wizard himself. Each had a different locking mechanism, ranging from fingerprint scanners, to code entry, to retinal scanners. Even by his standards, it seemed like a bit much.

"The prisoner is through here." Said the officer who had led them this far.

Their agreement to have magical and mundane soldiers or police officers function codependently in all things proved useful in many things - moeso for the Muggle side than for the wizard - but when it came to security it proved such a hassle. And yet Severus couldn't complain, because for the life of him he couldn't determine if this way of doing things was more efficient or less.

He opened the last vault door with an actual gold key that Severus would have sword was goblin-made to reveal a regular interrogation room. The right wall held a double-sided mirror behind which he could feel the presence of several powerful wizards and an equal number of Muggles. In the center was a steel table, handcuffed to which was the witch in question.

"She didn't put up a fight or struggle as we brought her in. She just went limp, allowing us to drag her." Said the same officer.

Captured by Muggles without putting up a fight? This stank of a trap from every angle he could look at it.

"So... will you be reading her mind?" The Austrian officer asked in a whisper.

Snape gave him the most forlorn look he could manage without outright glaring.

"Reading minds is impossible. I..."

"Yeah, yeah, and Pentathol and all the rest aren't truth serums. Get in there and give us all some closure to why all this madness happened!" The officer ordered as if he were Severus' superior.

Needless to say, Severus already liked the guy. He hoped the man would stay alive long enough for him to get to know him. His nametagged dubbed him officer Mosele.

Severus walked in and sat down opposite Pinkstone. Her expression was inscrutable. Her lack of hesitance to maintain eye-contact with him meant she was either unaware of his nature as a legilimens interrogator, or lacked fear fear of men with such abilities. He presumed the latter.

"Miss Pinkstone. Are you able to speak, and if so do you have anything to say for yourself before we begin?" He asked.

It was her previous behavior of not speaking at all that made him phrase his question as such. His particular choice of words must have amused her, because her inscrutable expression changed into a knowing smile.

Then, she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. When she did so, his own calm exterior vanished. Her entire tongue was carved up and tattooed with runes. And not runes of any language, but what was very obviously gibberish. An invented runic language, which is easy to identify even for novices. Like the Voynich manuscript or the devil's handwriting.

Its meaning was clear though. That was a seal. Her tongue and throat were sealed. And on close inspection, runes of a different but equally indecipherable script were carved into her eye balls.

He didn't know of a single legilimens stupid or suicidal enough to try and peer into the mind behind those.

He turned to the two-sided window.

"We aren't getting anything out of her." He said to his superiors on the other side.

Albania, Unnamed Forest:

Xavier Rostrick floated through the densely packed trees doing his best to ignore his cheerful, humming companion.

Dorcas was humming a terribly out of tune rendition of some German lullaby he vaguely recognized from his life before annihilating himself with antimagic in front of a cheering crowd. He couldn't pin a name to the song, but he was sure it ended with children dying horribly. All German children's stories, poems and songs did so, so it was a safe bet.

The vampiress was dressed in all black as if attending a wake and carrying a parasol to match. He didn't see the point, as the trees were so tall and lush with leaves in the summer as to not permit a single ray of sunlight to the ground.

"We are certain he is here?" Xavier asked, internally bemoaning his status as a noncoporeal being.

Only he and Stroulgar were ever assigned as her partner for missions like this. As both were immune to vampirism and her... other, abilities. In addition to being good counters to her. That everyone else in the organization saw the need to keep her in check as paramount amplified his own concern towards her.

"Cliodna confirmed it herslef. Voldemort is hiding in this forest. Though even they had not ascertained the state he is in. Two of us should suffice against him." Dorcas said.

Pride cometh before the fall. It had been thirteen years since he vanished. There was no telling what he had picked up in that time, especially as incognito as he had so successfully become.

They spent the entire morning wandering through these long-forsaken woods. Humans had not walked here in centuries, and he suspected fae bullshit was at hand in these parts. God he hated fae.

Then, as if by design, they passed a final row of trees to enter a meadow, with clear rays of noon sunlight illuminating the center. There, standing at the center of the clearing, was a stag.

It was a sickly stag covered in scales and with dark tree-roots vining along it’s sides and into its skin, creating infected, moldy wounds.

It had a human face sticking out of its neck.

"Dorcas. Peeves. I have been expecting you." Voldemort greeted them.

Next time:

Voldemort's Evolution, and a battle of immortals.

Chapter 4:Voldemort's Evolution

"Well, not you two in particular." Voldemort corrected himself. "But when somebody has been a member of the Ascendants, they know you always work in pairs. With me gone that must make things difficult."

"Opposite actually." Said Xavier. "Good old Nick and Perenelle are their own pair, that left eight people to partner up for missions. Now perfectly even."

Voldemort's face grew further out of the deer's neck, with a human neck of its own. He had an inquisitive look on his face.

"That would mean the mummy must be coming down off of his throne to take part in some dirty work." Voldemort said. "I would have liked to have seen that. Any new clues on who he was or why the Goblins saw fit to give him the Ghengis Khan treatment?"

That was their only clue to the identity of their oldest member. Goblins drown thieves in molten Goblin silver. This permanently mummified them, trapping their souls in a permanent state of torment on earth. How he regained the ability to move at all, let alone escape Gringotts and their special vaults for said thieves, was yet another impossible mystery to solve.

"Still no developments on that front, we are all still as curious as you. But I think you know why we are here." Xavier turned the topic back to the situation at hand.

"Ah, yes. You have replaced me with a new member." Voldemort said.

"Not officially, we can't without your membership ring." Dorcas said. "Hence why we were able to wield her like a flaming sword. Ostentatious, conspicuous, and out in the open. All without a risk to us."

"But we do need the ring back from you. You have failed to participate in the requisite number of PTA meetings, nor have you paid the mandatory HOA fees. So if you would kindly return the ring to us." Said Xavier, cheekily.

Voldemort chuckled, a strange sound coming from his current form.

The tail of the mutated and rotting stag grew and straightened before growing scales and curving. The head of a viper appeared at the end of it, and when it opened its mouth it was to reveal his membership ring like an engagement ring box, with it's fangs bared and dripping venom.

It then grew another pair of fangs from the bottom. Then more from the sides.

"Come and take it." Voldemort invited.

"Cute." Dorca groused.

She took to walking around the meadow, staying clear of the burning sunlight which fully enveloped Voldemort.

As she circled around him to better box him in a new head grew straight upwards out of the stag's back. It was the head of a golden eagle.

Xavier had already been baffled by Voldemort's showing off of his ability to perform self-transfiguration without a wand. As a disembodied shade he must have been possessing animals ceaselessly for the last thirteen years now for the physical manifestation of his soul to be able to shape-shift like that. He would have had to posses and consume dozens, no, hundreds of snakes and eagles and presumably stags to achieve this evolution. Now he was operating as soemthing similar to an omni-animagi, a true one, capable of transforming or partially transforming into any animal, as opposed to Mirabella’s affinity to ocean-life to the exclusion of land and air-based animals.

But it was wrong. An animagi can partially transform, sure, but only the body part in question with the synonymous body part of an animal. So an omni-animagi could turn his right arm into a duck wing, his legt leg into a stag’s hoof, and head into that of an eagle. But to sprout any body part of any animal from any place in his body? This was something Xavier had never seen before.

Not to mention, if he had a phylactory, as he had told them when asked about his form of immortality, why would he do all of that? He could have simply built for himself a new body, or one of his servants could have.

Perhaps the ending of the statute and the resulting societal changes also lost him his supporters? Without the problem of Muggleborns in their society refusing to integrate, and bringing their braindead modern politics with them, what need was there for Voldemort? Xavier had thought their resorting to the nuclear option of a genocidal maniac was bit premature, to be sure, but he understood their reasons.

The more obvious answer was that he had remained as a shade in order to also remain hidden. If he regained his body he would have been much easier to track. As a disembodied spirit possessing random animals, he could move unnoticed by wards, spies or their other resources. He could go anywhere in the world, and probably had over the last decade and change.

This begged the question. What other animals had he absorbed the souls of and incorporated into his being?

"Wait a minute." Xavier said. "That doesn't add up."

"What doesn't, Peeves?" Voldemort asked innocently.

Xavier ignored the moniker of his secret identity.

"If you had created a phylactory, then the you that is here now would just be a mind." He said. "But you are living a parasitic existence feeding on the souls of animals, but not people. A mental construct without a soul cannot do that... you created a horcrux!"

Voldemort laughed. That high pitched, victorious and humorless laughter he always made.

"Oh. None of you can fathom the lengths I have gone to for immortality. All of your methods are so... surface level." Voldemort boasted. "I have delved further than any of you."

Xavier knew he was being vague on purpose, and that he wouldn't get any more out of the abomination opposite him. But this meant he wasn't only excommunicated, he was never a full member to begin with. In order to join the Ascendants one had to reveal all they knew about their form of immortality; among other requirements. If he lied about it, then even their unanimous vote to eliminate him was moot. His membership was null and void from the start.

That made things significantly less complicated.

"You seem rather confident that you can take us?" Dorcas, who by now had circled completely around and was standing behind him, said.

"Well. I have three advantages that you don't seem to appreciate." Voldemort said.

He grew a monkey's hand out of the shoulder of the stag and began listing fingers.

"One. It is a beautiful, summer day near the Mediterranean." He said, raising the first finger.

"Two. You both know little to nothing about my new abilities." He said, raising a second.

"And third, I know all about yours, stagnant and satisfied with your current level. Unwilling to delve further. Unwilling to evolve!" He declared, raising a third.

He then paused and considered his next words.

"There is also the small matter of you being the weakest members of the Ascendant anyways." He finished.

Xavier let loose a blade of diluted antimagic directly at Voldemort's face. One percent antimagic to ambient magic. He aimed at the human one, and his transparent blade was tall enough to reach the highest leaves of the trees sliced right through where it had been.

The bizarre chimera of his body split in two before the blade reached it. One half was the deer head leading all the way to the viper tail, the other held Voldemort’s head, one leg, and the eagle head sprouting from the back.

Xavier focused on the form of Voldemort, now hopping in place like a will-o-wisp.

This turned out to be a mistake, as the deer operated autonomously. The open and exposed flesh and organs of its form erupted into hundreds of new, slithering snake bodies. Vipers, cobras, rattlesnakes, mambas and more all swarmed towards him, fangs bared.

He recalled Voldemort's earlier boast of having contingencies for them, and so he retreated from the wall of snake heads despite the venom posing no threat to him beyond pain and a long recovery. This also proved to be a mistake, as the snake heads continued to multiply like a hydra as they pursued him. Their numbers must have been in the thousands for he could see nothing in front of him save the soft pink of their gaping mouths.

Xavier decided to up the ante then and there. He placed both hands in front of him as if pushing back a boulder and let loose a 10 percent pure blast of antimagic like a wave in front of him.

The pulse blew right through the wall of serpents and the internal, normal magic, of living things inside of them annihilated against his antimagic. Much like when matter and antimatter met. In fact, exactly like that, but lessened by the deliberate impurity of his blast.

The explosion of bone and viscera was temporary, as the force of it was so great the that the friction of protein and liquids against the air ignited within a millisecond of the reaction. The force and heat obliterated the forest around them for hundreds of meters.

Him? Oh, he was fine. Being incorporeal had its benefits. Unlike with ghosts, he did still feel the heat and force of it and was knocked onto his ass so hard he was buried three entire meters into the ground. But pain for him was an illusion, so he merely ignored it and floated back up through the hole he had just dug on accident.

The flash heat of the blast, instead of igniting a forest fire, merely charred every surviving tree into black charcoal and turned much of the ground to glass. Little pockets of flame did sprout from the broken remains of what trees surrounding the two hundred meter crater he had created, but they wouldn't prove too great a risk to the surrounding nature preserve.

He flew out to the epicenter. There, he found the ring encased in charcoal. Charcoal that had once been the flesh of the autonomous construct of animals that Voldemort had created.

He looked around for the will-o-whispomort but saw no sign of him. Had he been vaporized or blown too far away to spot? Even with the ring recovered, letting him escape was unthinkable.

He reached down and retrieved the ring from the still open viper mouth. It was entirely unharmed, though hot to the touch.

"Thanks a lot Xavier!" He heard Dorcas' voice yell out.

He turned his gaze northward where, in the treeline barely shaded from the sunlight, stood what looked like a woman's corpse charred as thoroughly as the stagmera he was standing over.

"I quite liked that body!" She bemoaned.

She then opened her mouth to reveal those rows of angler-fish like teeth. Her mouth opened wider. And wider. And wider still until her body was bisecting by a gaping maw of needle-like teeth.

She spat out a charred, human heart which disintegrated when it hit the ground.

Her mouth-body then sealed shut like a zipper, before her burned form reshaped itself. The wide hips of the Thai harem girl she had consumed to masquerade as became narrow. The narrow shoulders widened and bodacious chest shrank inwards, then grew sideways. She now wore the body of an African man. A Dinka tribesman by the looks of it.

This was the other reason they were so often paired together. She was the only member of the ascendant that could just walk off damage like that.

"So funny story." He heard Voldemort's voice call from above.

He looked up to see the one-legged form of Voldemort now flanked by six wings flying above them. His body was now encased by a sea-turtle shell, he head atop the long neck of the same.

He also noticed the hoof of the deer foot coming from where the tail of the turtle should be had been replaced by a bear paw. He didn't know why that stuck out to him when the man was clearly trying to emulate biblical descriptions of an angel.

"You know how snakes have their own form of magic only available to parseltongues called parselmagic? Well, turns out all animals do! Each their own brand of magic only available to wizards through potions or abilities like parseltongue." Voldemort monologued. "Allow me to introduce you to ursidaemagic!"

All of a sudden the gravity around Xavier amplified a millionfold and he was crushed. As was the earth around him. Were he of flesh he would have been liquefied by the force of it. It lasted all of a split second, and when he picked himself up from the ground it was discover himself in a mini-crater withing the crater he himself had made. The crushing force of the stirke had been so great that the earth beneath him had been compacted into sandstone.When he finally stood completely up he saw the shape of the crater.

It was a pawprint. A bear paw print.

Voldemort goaded further from above him

"I have had so much time to learn them all, but never to test them fully. I so look forward to seeing what you make of these new and interesting magics." He said.

New? No. Interesting? Yes.

They had come here expecting a battle between three people bereft of wands, and incapable of using spells. Yet Voldemort had all of the spells of the animal kingdom at his disposal.

This significantly re-complicated things.

Notes:

Okay. So, I have some explaining to do.

First, neither Quirrel nor Wormtail ever found Voldemort. So he remained disembodied, parasiting off of animals for an additional four years.(This story takes place in the summer after 4th year) That extra time made him accustomed to this state of existence, and allowed him to begin experimenting.

As for animal magic, that is easier to explain. The mutation that makes muggles give birth to witches and wizards is not unique to humans. Animals go through it all the time! And when two of them mate you get a new magical species. But as with human magic, the magic is unique to each animals. Human spells are very suited to human needs or nature. Snakes magic is unique to them, suited to venom, antivenom, shedding and repairing skin, and all kinds of stuff like that. But being animals they don't have these advanced human brains to really harness and master this magic, using it instead instinctively as defense mechanisms.

Now, Voldemort stumbling across these "wizard animals" and possessing their bodies? He can. He hasn’t yet, but he could. He is already a master of human magic and parselmagic. It’s like an instrument. Once you master one, learning a second is much easier. After that, a third is easier still.

Chapter 5:

Witnesses to the Impossible

Albanian Auror Gur Duka sat playing chess with officer Zaiman Nano. The two were stationed on forest watch near the outskirts of a wizarding nature sanctuary for griffons and snidgets, the last breeding population of the latter.

Their partnership was one of many programs meant to develop cooperation between muggle and wizarding nations. Especially those that shared borders. In their case, it was working out fairly well.

The biggest hiccup they had was Ziamon's being appalled out how secular wizards in his supposedly Islamic nation were. Learning that many of his fellows wizards and withces of the region more often wore crosses instead of hijabs, was born from him not knowing the wizarding half of Albania formed long before the Ottoman invasions. Despite this initial cultural shock their friendship was quick and long-lasting. It was hard to hate somebody different from you when you both spent most of your days in the gorgeous wilderness of the Mediterranean playing board games and sharing love for books all day.

"I still do not understand how seven hundred years of incorporating Muggleborns hasn't resulted in at least a few mosques in wizarding Romania." Zaimon said as he took Gur's knight with his queen, leaving her open to being taken be three of his pieces at once. "I mean, even eleven year olds when adopted sometimes keep their parents faith."The Romanian, wizarding government still hadn't told their muggle counterparts the truth. They were working from the assumption that wizards in Islamic countries adopted Muggleborns into their families. They inferred from this that they did it at the age of magical maturity, eleven.

Fact of the matter was they outright kidnapped them days after they were born, leaving dying homunculi in their place. Said children seldom even knew they are muggleborns in the first place, raised no differently than children born to wizarding parents. It was called changling policy. Non-muslim countries used to have them too, and some very poverty stricken African and South american countries still do it. It was much more common back before Christians went through that whole enlightenment thing and stopped burning Muggles they thought were witches. Muslim parents continued to prove a threat to their wizarding children's lives well into the twentieth century, and they only put an end to their changeling policy with the breaking of the statute of secrecy.

It was a secret that pretty much everyone over the age of thirty at the time was made to swear an oath of secrecy over with the end of the statute.

"I don't know what to tell you without starting a fight. The history of Islam, and the Prophet Muhammad, is very different for magicals. Our books on the topic weren't censored by, admittedly overzelous, wizards who wanted to hide our existence from muggles." Said Gur.

The got Zaimon's attention.

"Are... are you telling me there are lost books or sections of the holy Quran, Tawrat, Zabur and Injeel?" He asked.

That was not the reaction Gur was expecting."Um. Yes but we are forbidden from sharing too much of our culture with you until at least two generations of peace between us has passed." Gur explained. "When you are eighty, and we have all proven to be able to get along, we will share everything. Just stay alive until then, yeah?"

Zaimon opened his mouth to answer, only to be smacked in said mouth by a ball of yellow and black. His coworker reacted by flinching back and blinking away his surprise, before they both looked down onto the ground of their firewatch porch to see what it was.It was a siskin, and the poor bird was flapping its wings wildly as it tried to find its feet.

Zaimon began laughing at himself while Gur reached down and, gently, cupped the poor thing with both hands before lifting it into the ledge where it flew away southward. He then blinked away his own surprised as Zaimon had at receiving a bird to the face.

"There are a lot of birds flying above the canopy today." He told his companion.

And indeed, there were hundreds flying towards the coast. Maybe there was an algea bloom and word got around about all the dead rotting fish that was up for grabs?Then another bird almost clipped him in the face with its wing as it flew straight trough their firewatch tower. I t was an Egyptian vulture if ever he'd ever seen one.

"Um. Gur?" He hear Zaimon say from behind him.

When he turned around it wasn't Zaimon's finger pointing upward that drew his gaze to the sky above. It was the sky above that did that.Birds. Lota of birds. ALL of the birds! Tens of thousands of them were flying high and fast. The nearer ones were following the vulture and siskin southward, but he could see the dark specks in the sky went eastward, westward and even northward. Away from an unseen area beyond the mountain at the edge of their purveiw.

He had never seen so many golden eagles, Egyptian vultures, tits, cormorants, warblers or any of the other species whose songs he woke up to every morning out here. Many hundreds of pixies, thousands of snidgets(possibly the entire population) and several families of griffons fled with them all.

There were black clouds following the birds, much more slowly, and it took him an inordinate amount of time to realize they were insects. Flies, mosquitoes, termites, ants, bees and so many beetles. They were all fleeing.

"I may no be a wizard." Said Zaimon. "But even I can feel that."

He pointed northward in the direction all of these flying creatures were fleeing from. And only then did Gur turn his focus to the epicenter of this avian stampede. What he felt was akin to a black hole against magic and nature itself. Something fucked up and WAY beyond their pay grade was happening out there. Something beyond either of their understanding.

He felt the structure he was standing on shake and glanced down to see that a bear had rammed into one of the legs of their fire watch tower. It didn't even shake off the haze it must have felt from the bump, merely charging on in the same direction as the birds and insects. The bear was not alone, flanked by roe deer, linxes and chamois on all sides. With his attention now directed downward he saw the entire forest was alive with stampeding animals, from the lowliest vole to the mighty bear. All of them were running away from whatever that feeling was.

"I am possessed of an overwhelming intuition that we should be running in that direction." Gur told his Muggle friend, pointing southward towards the sea.

"What? And abandon our post? We could be court martialed for that!" Zaimon objected.

Just then, a pillar of indescribably transparent gray light reached into the sky just beyond that mountain to the north. It was akin to light made of glass. The world rending kaboom followed a few seconds later and the shockwave of it knocked them both onto the floor, making the fire watch tower sway and creak along with the many trees around them.

Gur and Zaimon shared a glance.

"Right" Said Zaimon. "Running in that direction it is."

Xavier picked his sorry ass off of the ground with unexpected difficulty.

While his body was, mostly, invulnerable to damage, his mind was not.

Excess of damage could break him apart enough that reforming would take time.Similar types of damage could also put his mind into shock. It was only after centuries of practice and discipline that he was able to make it through that initial blast and bear spell Voldemort used without needing to take a few minutes to recuperate. But he was building up a tab that would have to be repaid with every hit he took.

"How long can you keep this up, Peeves?" Voldemort goaded from above. "With your companion serving as a paper tiger down below, you're on your own!"

"Grrr. Argh. Roar." He heard Dorcas say in a deadpan.

She still talked in her own, sickeningly girly voice despite now boasting the body of an absurdly tall African man.

Of all the members of the Ascendent, Dorcas was the one Voldemort knew the least about save maybe their eldest member. This was because the two were never allowed to work together. But he was correct. Being a vampiress the bright sunlight was putting her at a disadvantage. She could survive walking into it for a few seconds, before she would have to use up another heart switching to a new body. She was understandably unwilling to burn through twenty of those per minute.

But she could do a few things he was clearly unaware of.

Just then the earth and trees he blasted into the stratosphere began to come back down. Large splinters of woods, entire branches with leaves still on them, rocks, sand and so much ash. A hailstorm of fallout, thankfully non-radioactive as annihilation didn't have that side-effect, bore down on them and dimmed the sky. Hot, steaming rain of the vaporized liquid joined it.

As it all began coalescing the sunlight dimmed significantly.

As Xavier expected, the dimming was sufficient for Dorcas to step out of the cover provided by the trees.

The battle was no longer one on one.

I finally did some research on Romania and got so caught up on coming up with a positive scenario for how it would adapt well to wizarding neighbors, and the scene in my head of witnesses to this battle and the whole of nature fleeing from it, that I didn't have enough room to finish the fight scene! I am such a dolt.

But I won't be exploring the themes of how wizards being exposed will have an effect on people's faith or religious organizations, I just wanted to show that there is definitely an effect and let you guys enjoy the adventure that would set your imaginations down. I would be completely itnerested in reading fics that explore this in depth, so let me know if you write one.

NEXT chapter will be the battle of immortals. All of the action and horror you could ask for.