Harry Potter In The Witcher

Chapter 52 : Shattered Timelines!



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Harry had been so stupid. So incredibly, monumentally stupid. How could he have possibly forgotten about the goddamn Thanedd coup?

Normally, he wouldn't have been too worried about it. He knew the general outcome, that it was an expected event in the timeline, and he knew that no one who truly mattered to him died or got too badly banged up during the initial chaos. At least, not permanently.

Unfortunately, he had also recently found out that the fire-happy, cowardly mage named Rience was, in fact, Vilgefortz's apprentice.

With Rience now dead, prematurely removed from the board by Geralt's sword, there was simply no way to tell how Vilgefortz, that master manipulator, would react without the aid of his key assistant.

Of course, everything couldstill work out fine, the timeline could correct itself, but Harry wasn't willing to test fate, not when Ciri's safety was on the line.

Harry didn't have to fly long before he picked up a familiar, comforting scent on the wind the scent of Geralt, a man he had just left a few weeks previous.

He tilted his massive dragon head down and saw a tall, slender, grey tower standing near a winding road Tor Lara.

With his superior, draconic eyesight, he could clearly see two forms that seemed to be clashing at its base.

He quickly realized this was Geralt, fighting for his life, and he swooped down without a second thought.

He shifted from his colossal dragon form back to his much smaller, more maneuverable human one mid-air, and quickly descended through the stormy sky.

As he got closer to the ground, he cast a silent Featherweight Charm on himself, causing him to drift lightly, almost weightlessly, towards the ground.

He landed without even a single thump and looked around, taking in the scene. About a hundred yards away, the powerful mage, Vilgefortz, had Geralt on the ground, his magical staff glowing with a malevolent, threatening light.

What was worse, Harry could feel Ciri's frantic, chaotic magic pulsing from within that very tower. If Harry remembered correctly from her stories, she would soon go through the unstable portal at the top of the tower and end up stranded in the blistering Korath desert.

He hoped, with a desperate intensity, that she would still remain relatively okay, as she had in the original timeline.

Right now, though, he had to worry about Geralt. Harry whipped out the Elder Wand, its familiar, powerful weight a comfort in his hand.

He had a strong feeling he would need its full, unrivaled power for this particular battle. He ran, a blur of motion, quickly towards the two men.

"Confrigo Maxima!" Harry yelled, and watched as a large, crackling blue wave of explosive energy shot from his wand and hurtled towards Vilgefortz.

The powerful sorcerer, however, swiftly turned and, with a casual, almost contemptuous swipe of his staff, batted the curse aside, blasting it apart before it even reached him.

"Hmmm," Vilgefortz said, a small, arrogant smile playing on his lips as he turned his full attention to Harry.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here? A new player. A mage with quite a bit of raw power to him, it seems. Though, I don't believe we have had the pleasure of meeting before."

Harry sneered. He had to be careful here. In combat, his own personal specialty had always been taking out large groups of people or powerful, single mages with overwhelming, almost uncontrollable spells, spells that were nearly impossible to counter.

That's why Fiendfyre, in all its destructive glory, had always been a personal favorite of his. Most people, besides himself, simply couldn't counter it.

Sadly, he could use none of his usual, overwhelming, area-of-effect spells right now, not with Geralt currently passed out, vulnerable and helpless, so close by.

"Don't worry," Harry said, his voice a low, menacing growl. "We won't be acquainted for very long. I guarantee it." He then jumped into action.

"Locomotor Mortis! Vox Inrita! Petrificus Totalus! Expulso!" Harry said, launching a rapid, relentless chain of spells at the man.

Vilgefortz just twirled his staff with clear, arrogant expertise, swatting the various spells out of the air as if they were nothing more than bothersome flies.

Harry smirked. He had expected the man to do just that, which was precisely why the last spell in the chain had been an Expulso charm.

As Vilgefortz's staff hit that particular spell, it exploded in a massive, fiery ball of flames, completely engulfing the man.

Unfortunately, Vilgefortz called out something ineligible in Elder Speech, and the flames simply winked out of existence, though Vilgefortz did look considerably more annoyed now.

"You will regret that," Vilgefortz spat out at him, his composure finally cracking.

"Probably not, to be honest," Harry shot back, as he deftly dodged a searing arc of crackling lightning that sailed right past him, scorching the ground where he had just been standing.

"Maybe you should stick to your little stick-fighting, mate," Harry taunted the man.

That seemed to make Vilgefortz even angrier. He chanted something else, a longer, more complex incantation in Elder Speech, and suddenly, a swirling, black portal ripped open the air beside him.

Harry tensed, thinking the man was calling for reinforcements. He was only partially correct.

A giant, hulking stone golem emerged from the portal, its magical runes glowing with a sickly green light.

Harry had seen a few golems since arriving in this world, but he had never, ever seen one that was this big before.

"Oh, cock," Harry said to himself, as the large, lumbering stone creature began to shamble towards him. Now, Vilgefortz was pushing on the offensive.

Harry now had to deal with both a powerful, close-range attacker and a dangerous, long-range one, simultaneously.

"Bombardo!" Harry yelled, and watched as the explosive spell smashed into the stone creature.

The golem took some visible damage, a large chunk of its stone chest exploding outwards, but it was still on its feet, still trying to kill him.

Luckily, however, Harry could now use the big, walking stone slab as a convenient, mobile shield from Vilgefortz's ongoing magical onslaught, as it was now positioned directly between the two of them.

Harry thought for a quick minute on how to best, and most quickly, dispatch the golem, when his eyes traced the glowing, intricate runes etched all over its body, and a thought, a sudden, brilliant idea, came to him.

"Omnia perturbare!" Harry said, a new, complex incantation on his lips.

A sickly green spell erupted from his wand and smashed directly into the golem. The effect was almost immediate.

The golem seemed to take no further physical damage, but the glowing green runic arrays all over its body began to flicker erratically, until, one by one, they went out completely.

The golem went out with them, as it no longer had the magic holding its disparate parts together, and it simply, silently, crumbled into a large, inert pile of rubble on the ground.

"Impressive," Vilgefortz commented, that arrogant smile returning to his face, though his eyes were wary.

"I aim to please," Harry replied, as he immediately jumped back into action, pressing his advantage. "Flammis acribus!" he shot out as he moved forward, rushing the man.

The vicious, magical fire did not hit Vilgefortz directly, but the ground right next to his feet. Vilgefortz, instinctively, tried to put out the extremely hot, clinging fire quickly, which was the exact opening Harry had been waiting for.

"Maledictus glacies!" Harry said, his voice sharp. A brilliant, crystal-blue spell shot out of his wand and hit Vilgefortz's outstretched arm while he was distracted with the fire.

Vilgefortz screamed, a raw, agonized sound, and for very good reason. Harry had just hit him with the spell of Cursed Ice, a particularly nasty piece of dark magic he'd created himself.

It was a spell known to instantly encase its victims in a thick, rapidly spreading layer of magical ice, an ice that was held together with dark, corrosive magic, making it incredibly hard to combat on a normal day.

If it hit you, you were most likely dead from frostbite and organ failure within thirty seconds. Which was why Harry was so incredibly surprised when Vilgefortz wasn't.

The man seemed to recognize, almost immediately, what the spell was doing, despite the fact that he had certainly never seen it before.

Not knowing how to stop the cursed spell that was already creeping rapidly up his arm, threatening to encase his whole body, he simply… severed his own arm, completely, with a single, sharp severing spell.

Harry almost grimaced at the sight, yet he couldn't help but be impressed with the man's ruthless, quick thinking.

Vilgefortz, now missing an entire arm, fell down to one knee, his face pale and twisted with pain.

"It looks like this was my win," Harry taunted the man, his voice cold. "A shame, really, that we both couldn't go all out. I should have very much liked to know what some of your more… destructive spells were capable of. Too bad you couldn't afford to accidentally destroy that pretty little tower of yours, with its precious cargo inside."

No matter what, Vilgefortz had lost a great deal today with the loss of his arm. He would not be able to grow another one, not a functional one, not even with Harry's own terrific healing skills.

The loss of his arm would also give him a major, permanent hit to his spell repertoire, since so many powerful spells, especially in this world, required two hands to perform properly.

Not that any of that really mattered in the long run. Harry wasn't about to let him walk away from today.

Ciri had told him, in her nightmares, that this man would one day brutally torture Yennefer for information about her. And Harry simply would not allow that to ever happen.

Vilgefortz looked up at him, a strange, triumphant smile suddenly on his pain-twisted face. "You think you have won, stranger?" he gasped, his voice strained.

"I may be disarmed, quite literally, but I am not so stupid as to believe myself infallible. I ALWAYS plan for everything." Vilgefortz said with a knowing, chilling smirk as he looked at him.

Harry looked at the man closely, a sudden sense of confusion and alarm washing over him, ready for any of his tricks. It took him only a moment to realize that Vilgefortz was not looking directly at him, but… behind him?

'Oh, SHITE!' Harry thought, as he made to turn around, but he was too late.

The next thing he knew, something incredibly hard and heavy hit him squarely on the back of the head, HARD! His world immediately, without another thought, delved into an inky, silent blackness.

"Take him to the hidden laboratory at Stygga Castle!" Vilgefortz's strained, but triumphant, voice was the last thing Harry heard. "I am most… most curious to find out this man's secrets. Before he dies, that is."

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