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Siberian Taiga[1998]
–Damian Hawthorne–
The sunlight hit his face, making him jolt back into focus, from the thoughts he had been lost in for hours at this point. The entire night, he could do nothing but think, think, and think! About what the future held in store for him.
There was a chance, however minuscule, that he was jumping to conclusions and those wand waving people who shot colourful spells at him while shouting something in a foreign language were not wizards.
Unlikely.
Dismissing that possibility, he turned to the concepts of a plan he'd thought up during the entire night he was awake. Sadly, it wasn't much.
Not because he did not have any ideas as to what to do but because he had no idea on what could happen. All he knew about the Harry Potter universe, if he was indeed in the canonical version of that universe, was that the world's most powerful Dark Lord was hunting down a teenage boy, who, in the end, managed to slay the Dark Lord, not without a ton of deaths on both sides.
Yet, he distinctly remembered the convoluted ramblings he heard from his friends about the path taken by one Harry Potter, all so he could die and then come back to kill Voldemort. That, to him, looked as if Harry only won because Lady Luck shone on him.
Plus, that universe did not have people like Tony Stark, Captain America, and Bruce Banner. People, technically without magic, but capable of wonders far more than any wizard could conjure up.
There was always the interesting little fact about humanity. It's capacity for astounding intolerance. We couldn't handle different skin tones. What would happen if the world was on the precipice of knowing about an entirely new sub-species with enviable abilities?
It would be a bloodbath.
Sighing, he turned to the side and snarked, "Entertained, are you?"
There she was, the Ancient One, sipping tea on a comfortable chair, as if she was the owner of this place.
"Not very much, no. Panic does get boring after a while. What the audience wants is movement. So," With that, she set the tea cup down on a table that did not exist a moment ago, and looked him right in the eyes, "What will you do now?"
And just like that, she was gone, like she was never there. One blink later, the table, the tea cup, the slight smoke from the tea, the aroma, the Sorceress Supreme, all gone.
"I must be going mad," He muttered to himself, as he got up, stretched and got out the stiffness in his body, before moving to the basin, to wash up. He did not feel hungry, but water? That he could drink.
____xx____
–Ivan Sergeyevich Morozov–
His wand shot out, conjuring a rope around the waist of his junior, who was foolishly charging ahead into the forbidden forest, "That's quite enough, Dmitri!"
The talented but headstrong curse breaker jerked around his rope, as his momentum was brought to a zero so abruptly, with only both of them in the clearing, the rest having gotten the message and stopped in their tracks.
Both by his orders and those of his senior, both of them being the only two people on site aware of the secondary set of orders given to them from the Ministry, regarding the forest on the other side of the mountain.
"W-What? What are you saying? He is fleeing!" Dmitri struggled in his grip, trying to convey the urgency to him but he was just not having it, not after he knew what was placed in that forest and why no sane person would go anywhere near it.
For all they knew, the person who came to the investigation site was just running to his doom or was connected to that forbidden place somehow, either way, it was not their job. Still, this was not something he could tell Dmitri, the boy was a blabbermouth of the highest order, which was ironic, because in the business of curse breaking, most of the times, these people were left alone, in highly enclosed spaces with no one but curses, wards and darkness as company.
Come to think of it, no wonder most cursebreakers were a little wonky in the head. I mean, to work with the goblins of all people as their primary profession? Yeah, they were barny in their heads.
Concealing his true thoughts, he grimly said, yanking back the rope and Dmitri with it, "It is not our place to go there. That is outside our jurisdiction. Now, come on, we still have yet to figure out what the white remains are. To emit so much white magic at once, it has got to be something interesting."
As expected, the thought of interesting magic, especially related to his field, made his eyes light up as Dmitri began walking back, "Why didn't you say so earlier. Made me waste my time."
He chuckled, as the young cursebreaker all but ran back to the camp, ready to get back to curse breaking, despite there not being any curse left, only the remnants of them. Dmitri, however, was determined since, according to him, whatever happened there was something he could learn from.
His chuckle dried out as he took a look at the forest below him, the normal view almost enough to fool anyone who did not know what lay in it. A being, no, a calamity, beyond any wizard, sealed into this place so that the decades and centuries of isolation would hopefully whittle it down to nothing.
The spooks at the ICW sure knew how to choose their spots.
Shaking his head, he made sure to forget anything he saw before heading back. They were here only to investigate the spikes of magic that sent their sensor nets haywire, before heading back home.
Speed was the needed quality here, not thoroughness. They just needed a report before leaving, and frankly, the place gave him the creeps, so he wanted nothing more than to go back home, to terrible beer and even more terrible food.
____xx___
–Damian Hawthorne–
Doing a once over, he checked the cave, the enchantments on it, before cutting off the flow of water into his home, and once that was done, he hefted the small bag on his back before walking away.
It had been a week since he came face to face with wand waving wizards. A week since he realised he was in no position to stay holed up in a cave in some remote part of the planet, hoping that he would be ready by the time he got back to society.
Butterflies, especially the ones that wrecked timelines, were wonderful and terrible things but if those butterflies existed in a universe shared with wizards capable of altering the fabric of reality on a whim, with children possessing that same power? Then those butterflies went from bad but manageable to outright hell.
So, he packed everything of note into a bag, and began his journey to the outside world. For starters, he went back to the site of that cursed ritual and found it to be stripped clean of even the uppermost layer of soil.
They probably took everything that had even a hint of energy from that ritual, including the outer layer of the trees around him. He did not find anything of note there so he moved on, trudging through the mountain on the other side of the forest.
It was far more lively on this side of the mountain and he wondered why he never made any effort to come here.
With a sigh, he turned around and said, "This is the third time I am warning you. Leave me alone. The next time, I will begin with an explosion,"
There was no reply but he felt their presence leave his range. Apparently, people lived here, wizards most likely.
In that less than hour he had been in this forest, he had felt a gaze on him the entire time and had even sensed multiple wizards entering his sensing rage twice. The third time, it was only a single one but they were probably trying to map out his sensory range.
The next time, there will be an explosion!
He kind of wanted them to come, actually. It would give him a legitimate reason to extort them and get out of this place. The closest city, preferably one that spoke English, would be preferable, because he was getting really tired of just eating bland food.
Even the tea was getting boring nowadays due to how much he drank it. He was sure that there was a condition out there for drinking only tea for food but with how much abuse his body had already sustained, he was sure that it would not affect him.
He wondered just how strong he would get when his growth spurt would hit him.
That's when he felt the same wizard enter his range once more, as he smiled, gripped the primed explosive in his hand, inside his pocket, and then, in one swift motion, threw the stone near the wizard and activated Shaped Durability on his body, all at once.
He smiled as an explosion filled his view and he felt something impact his forcefield at nearly the same time.
The fire dissipated a moment later, revealing a scrawny wizard, pale and with white hair, though his face was youthful, looking at him through a shield, with wary eyes.
In response, he just waved his hand and smiled.
It must have looked great. A smiling child, moving through a dangerous, clearly magical forest with nothing on him to act as protection, someone who could apparently cast a wandless explosion, waving at the person they had just attacked.
If thought like that, he was practically harmless.
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