Doom Days (Harry Potter/MCU Crossover)

Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for. 

I struck first, and I struck twice. One spell for Krum, the other for Fleur— bludgeoners that left my wand like fireworks and splattered out against their shields. I was forced to spin out of the way of Cedric's piercing hex. Krum aimed a dark lance of magic at me that I failed to recognize, so I dodged it to avoid complications, and felt a metallic taste in my mouth as the spell passed my head. Interesting. I tried to break it down even as I stepped back and twirled my wand to form a spinning shield that took Fleur's spell head-on before I sent a blasting curse at the ground right in front of Krum's feet. He was sent flying off the platform even as both Fleur and Cedric hammered me with spells from both sides. 

"You know it's not a good look, teaming up against the fourteen-year-old?" I asked even as I weaved this way and that, blocking the spells and deflecting the ones I could. 

I was forced to hunker down into a mage shield as Krum flew back onto the platform with a savage incantation on his lips— "Fulgur." 

The bolt of black lightning hit my golden shield and sent me skidding backward. It was all I could do to dig my feet in and prevent myself from being sent flying even as I forced more and more magic into the mage shield. What made the mage shield special and different from the Protego was that despite its disadvantage in only being able to block magic, where the Protego could affect physical objects, it could access a greater upper level of protection as it got stronger the more magic was funneled through it. 

The air tasted like salt when the spell stopped, and I barely managed to fall to my knee to avoid Fleur's spell that shot through the weak point in my shield Krum's spell had created. 

"Think of us teaming up against you as a compliment, 'Arry," she said with a laugh as I had to send a Banisher at the dogs Cedric was sending my way. 

The dogs scrambled backward, struggling to find purchase against the stone as I hit it with a quick 'Glisseo'. I danced out of the way of two of Fleur's spells before deflecting Krum's bone-shattering curse at Cedric and countering the Bulgarian Bon-Bon with an organ-liquefying one of my own. 

There was a sneer on his face as he hit my spell with a textbook countercurse, nullifying it before it could even get close to hitting him. Fleur did her best, lifting rocks from the ground and animating them into attacking me, but all I needed to do was overpower her magic once they were close enough to me and far enough away from her, before turning them into monkeys with snapping teeth that I banished three-thirds of the way at Krum. 

Cedric finally managed to dispel the slippery charm on the ground and get his dogs moving, but all it took was me lashing out with my wand, breathing fire into existence that consumed all the dogs as one before funneling that fire into a thin, concentrated blast that Fleur was forced to shield from. Cedric's dueler's hello—stunner, disarmer, and piercing hex—joined my own array of spells that forced Krum into either deflecting or shielding. They further distracted him from the primates heading his way as he was forced to either shield or defend. 

I hammered Cedric's own shield with spell after spell, pinning him back until Fleur forced me to the floor to avoid a wide-area Banisher. Turning my attention to Krum, I managed to catch him about to blast through a monkey diving for his hand and sent a disarming charm at him at the same time. He had a choice to make then. Lose his wand if he followed through, or take the hit and sustain a serious injury to his non-wand hand. He made the same choice I would have in that situation, deflecting the spell while allowing the monkey to bite down on his left hand. 

He screamed, a nasty, deep thing, as he got a taste of the surprise I'd baked in with the monkeys. Those things had jaws strong enough to bite through just about anything. His scream was not destined to last long though, as Fleur of all people hit him with a disarming charm and my bludgeoner sent him sailing off the platform a second later. 

"Ahhhhhhhh!" we heard his screams for a few seconds before they came to an abrupt end. All three of us froze at that, shocked. Was he dead? By silent agreement, we walked over to the edge of the platform and looked down, only to see nothing but the same dark abyss we'd seen at the beginning. 

"He's fine, right? He managed to catch himself or something?" Cedric asked. 

"Not without his wand," I said, nodding over to the hornbeam and dragon heartstring stick on the floor not far from us. 

Fleur went white while Cedric swallowed. 

"So, truce, eh?" he offered. 

"You couldn't beat me three on one and now want a truce when I have the advantage?" I asked. 

"We'll give you a headstart to the finish line in exchange," Fleur offered, instantly beginning to negotiate. I wanted to ask for more, but everything I thought of either seemed unreasonable or just cruel, so I nodded and bent my spongy knees before jumping to the next platform, and then the next, and then the final one. 

When I arrived, I nodded at the two of them and they began to lose the distance with their own means while I leaned over and grabbed a hold of one of the coins. I felt something begin to pull at my navel, and I tried to drop the coin, but it was stuck to my hand. The hook-about-the-navel sensation of the portkey took me, and next thing I knew I was consigned to a whirling vortex of light and opaqueness. There was no sound here. Not even that of my breathing. 

When I landed on the ground, I pointed my wand out, prepared to come face to face with Crouch again. Except instead of a sketchy graveyard, I found myself on a platform floating above the castle's grounds. A fake floating island with a see-through floor that allowed me to see the cheering crowd at the bottom. 

"And so Harry Potter is the first to make it to the final stage of the last test. Will he be the first to make it to the prize hidden within the maze, however?" Bagman's voice echoed, and that was enough for me to figure out what the final bit was supposed to be. It was a maze made of grassy hedges that was in a lot of ways a one-to-one recreation of the task I had expected from the books. 

Cedric and Fleur were going to be right behind me, I thought, and I bolted straight into the maze. I took the first turn before I reached an intersection. One of two choices—left or right. I attempted a Point-Me, but everything I tried pointing myself to caused the wand to just spin about aimlessly. They'd warded against scrying spells as a whole, not just scrying for the cup or anything that was similar. Even scrying for the way back, which I knew, and which should theoretically have been far impossible to block since it was something already within my knowledge, had not worked. 

So I was stuck doing this the old-fashioned way, and everyone knew that if you were faced with a choice between right or left, then the answer was to always go left. I turned left and came face to face with Hagrid's relatively new pet—the Blast-Ended Skrewt. 

"Hello there," I said in time-honored tradition when faced with barely sentient opposition, and I barely managed to bend over backward at the waist fast enough to allow the creature to just sail over me. Its backside had released some sort of controlled explosion that had rocketed it across the distance all while its pincers had been poised to grab me and crush me in their grip. Interesting attack. But now I was behind it, and it had no way of turning around from what I know of canon. 

Almost like it could hear me, it released another explosion that I blocked with a contemptuous shield. The explosion pushed it forward until it disappeared into the grass of the maze only for me to barely twist out of the way of a pincer that came down from behind me. The pincer stabbed itself into the ground, cracking the transparent stone. I fired two cutting curses at it, but both deflected off its carapace and it exploded again, shooting straight at me once again. For a second time, I jumped over to avoid the creature and it continued on into the hedge. It came out again from the other side. I couldn't deny that was an interesting way to combat its difficulties being able to turn around in these quarters—making it so that moving through the hedge led it back to the other end of the corridor. 

This time, I turned around, expecting it to come out of the wall, and when it did, I slashed my wand upwards, causing a spike from the ground to shoot upwards. Just as I expected, the rounded spike turned the Skrewt over, exposing its soft underbelly. A soft underbelly that I wasted no time in cleaving straight through with a cutting curse. I jumped over its gurgling and bleeding form while muttering a silent apology to the half-giant that had spent a tremendous amount of time breeding and raising the thing. 

When I rounded the corner, this time I was faced with nothing but an empty passageway with the only thing special about it being that the ground for most of it was made of coarse white sand rather than the spelled transparent stone that had been the case for most of the maze. Cautious, I conjured a simple snake to cover the distance. It made it about halfway when the sand swallowed it. Interesting. Turning some stray stones into badgers, I sent them forth. Just like the snake, they made a fair amount of progress before the sand opened up and swallowed them. 

Except this time I was sure that I had noticed something particular about the way they went. I tried again with another set of badgers, and I carefully watched each one disappear into the sand. It ended up taking me two more tries before I was able to notice again and thus confirm my theory. 

I waited for the last badger to have the sand begin to fold in beneath it before I whispered, "Accio!" I felt the weight of the object I was trying to pull begin to pull me instead, sending my arm lurching forward and my body with it before I could catch myself and focus my intent even further. The creature fought the pull for a few seconds, but my magic could not be denied. And an earthworm-like thing that was the size of Hagrid shot from the sand, screeching its displeasure to the heavens. It turned its head this way and that way—at least what I thought was its head. It had no eyes, nor any other features other than a wide opening with sharp teeth within it. 

"Dao!" I whispered, and the Chinese cleaving curse tore it in two from head to tail. I stepped past its writhing body and continued further into the maze. I just had to hope that this was one of those mazes where every route led to the goal—just involving different obstacles. 

Moving past the slug led me to a dead end. I backtracked a step or two and took the other turn instead. I was met with a deep chasm instead of a pathway and turned to the wall instead. The wall besides the chasm, unlike the walls and hedges about the rest of the maze, were not spelled to resist charm work so I started with that instead, stabbing my wand into the hedge to create a series of steps along the side of the hedge. 

I followed them carefully, allowing my ritual-enhanced body to keep me balanced despite the relative precariousness of the situation before me. I moved without opposition and cleared the task without issue. I came to a sharp right, took that and had to backpedal to avoid a blast of green liquid taking my head off—the green stuff had hit the wall behind me and was melting through it quite thoroughly. I swung my head about the corridor again and came face to face with a creature that my vast knowledge of magical creatures could not place. Beyond the corrosive liquid it could fire at high speeds, there was little of note about the creature. It was humanoid with a protruding midsection, and only about 3 feet tall, all of it just about coming up past my waist. 

I aimed a Banishing Charm at it but it just barreled through the spell like it was not there and spat another deluge of venom at my head. I swung it right back around the edge again. Okay, so magical resistance. Maybe on the same level as something like a troll? That Banishing Charm had done absolutely nothing to it. 

I turned again and this time caught it with a Retching Curse. It burped, releasing an ugly sound that grated at my ears, but beyond that there was no other effect. Definitely about the same level of magical resistance as a troll then. Or at least, it most assuredly didn't have a lesser level than those creatures. Mind made up, I fully stepped into the clearing again. 

This time, it spat the venom as soon as it saw me. A tight circle with my wand saw the venom float before me in mid-air. Good. That confirmed something. I sent the liquid flying right back at it. The thing seemed to eep as it saw its venom coming back before it began running backward. My aim was impeccable, however. The venom hit, and the creature let out a scream as its body began to dissolve from its own produced liquid. Just like I'd thought. The venom had been bubbling when it had been about to hit my head, but it had been inert when it had left its mouth. That was why my first dodge had been so slow—confusion as to what was going on. Now I knew what it was. For some reason, the liquid the creature produced did not become corrosive until it had been exposed to the right amount of air—could have been ambient magic that activated rather than air, but I was going with Occam's razor here. 

I continued down the maze, taking two lefts in a row until I came by my next task. A sphinx stood in the middle of the path, and while I brought my wand to bear, I knew this was not a fight that I particularly wanted. For one, the damn things were magical resistant even up to some of the darkest arts out there. For another, they weren't dumb brutes. They knew how to leverage their advantages. The only reason they weren't considered wizard-killers in the same breath as Nundus and Chimeras was the fact that they could be negotiated with, reasoned with, tempered. They weren't brainless and so they rarely needed to be fought. 

"Hail, great Sphinx," I said in greeting. 

"Harry Potter. I expected you to be the first I came across. Are you ready for my riddle, or would you rather explore alternative means of passage?" It asked in a sultry voice that might have insinuated something else if not for the fact that its head was gazing right at my wand as it said the second part of its sentence. It had noticed my indecision around fighting it. My grip on my wand tightened, but I did not attack. 

"I'll take the riddle first, and we can see what comes after," I said, and there was a chuckle from its mouth before it began to speak. 

"I am the answer to a question that cannot be asked. A key to freedom that cannot be grasped. Though I exist in the mind, I never set you free. What am I?" It said, and I began to think. The answer to a question that cannot be asked. A key to freedom that cannot be grasped. Cannot in both instances. Impossible for it to do either. Though I exist in the mind, I never set you free. Exist in the mind. A thought? Does a thought answer unasked questions though? Can a thought be grasped? No, it had to be something else. It just watched me rack my mind with a wide smile on its face. Or at least what passed for a face on it. 

"A dream," I said the answer as it came to mind. 

"A dream, indeed. Well reasoned, Mr. Potter." It said, and stepped to the side, allowing me to make my way through before I jolted as it suddenly leaned forward, head next to my shoulder. 

"I look forward to tasting the doom you leave in your wake." From its human head, it licked my ear and I tried not to show my discomfort as I walked past. This was the second time I was hearing those words. 

I walked straight ahead, and I watched as the maze shifted and changed. The hedges disappeared leading up to a set of stairs that I took two at a time. When I finally reached the top, the Cup was there, contained in a transparent shell of some sort. A final test? 

A/N: Here we go! Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.