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Fae's Path to Konoha – Chapter 3 + Epilogue

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Christmas at Hogwarts was always a kind of magic all to itself.

However, whilst last year she'd been fretting over her grades, this time she was fretting over more extracurricular projects. To the point where she'd actually canceled her plans to spend Christmas with her parents.

She might not be the best of friends, but she wasn't enough of a heel to go spend time with her parents when one of her friends was being held against his will. Unofficially so or not. No, she was going to spend the holidays at Hogwarts until Harry was allowed to go back home.

That she spent her time during those holidays more focused on things only vaguely related to the other boy? She wasn't very good with people, and she had a lot of history and inaccurate stories and blatant propaganda to sort through.

Most every muggle fairytale about magic had proven itself real to some extent, with unicorns and magic and dragons and now apparently fae too. The problem mostly came in that Hogwarts didn't seem to have any proper records whatsoever of the latter.

So, either they weren't real and Harry had somehow managed to traverse worlds and lose his memory of actually doing so in a way eerily reminiscent but-actually-unrelated to fae-abductions, or somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that fae were erased from the collective factual memory of every wizard in Britain.

The bookworm in Hermione was utterly appalled that someone might police the books in a library, especially considering how Wizarding Britain didn't seem to have any other place to store books beyond Hogwarts. But-... well, Hermione knew that their Good Neighbors were... special.

Who knew if just mentioning them might draw their attention to you? Who knew if magic somehow amplified that effect tenfold? Who knew if there'd once been a long and bloody war to stop the fae from interfering with the Statute of Secrecy?

There were too many unknowns for Hermione to really work up the outrage for it. No, more than anything, she was just worried.

Harry might not have been abducted by fae, but from what little he could still remember? There were no magic ever recorded that included face-less men inside of mirrors, so Hermione was fairly certain of her conclusion on the matter.

That meant that Harry had already been in contact with the fae. That – if they truly had been forcefully ousted from their world, and had their names forever erased from the memories of those who could bring them back – he'd already known enough about them to mention them and draw their attention to their world.

And if Harry was the first one to come into contact with a fae for... possibly hundreds of years, then there had to be a reason. A reason like the fae having somehow been driven away. They were after all supposed to be far too individualistic and spontaneous for them all to simply... go away one day.

Except Harry had been in contact with them, and was now back in Britain. Hermione didn't have a clue what kind of 'rules' that scenario would be bending, but she could guess that something was going to bend enough that the fae started looking for a loophole. And fae always found loopholes, even when there weren't any. Perhaps especially when there weren't any.

But, if fae were real and had at some point been driven away from their world, then it stood to reason that once upon a time they hadn't yet been driven away. And the founding of a school like Hogwarts? A momentous effort like that? Hermione could easily imagine someone ending up in debt during the building-process. The question was to whom.

To the surrounding muggle nobles and their castles? To the old wizard families? To the royalty whose land they built on? To the fae whose homes they built it next to? And had those debts been properly repaid?

Hermione was pretty sure that fae never truly died. Injured and maimed and killed, yes. But fae were supposed to be more concept than mortal, and ideals tended to simply warp when the person who embodied them got themselves killed.

Kill a fae, and the same fae took its place. Diminished and warped, perhaps, but the same nonetheless.

And, with how fae were supposed to hold grudges far better than most mortals would ever be able to manage, for the wizards to have cast them out after the wizards had already taken an offered helping hand previously?

Hermione still wasn't entirely convinced that her current field of research was actually necessary, but it was better than sitting around and stewing in being unable to help Harry.

Ron didn't seem entirely happy to be agreeing with her on the matter, but he did anyway, because she was right. Well, that and Harry was doing a lot of calligraphy or abstract ink-painting or something lately. Kind of fascinating to look at, but generally pretty boring to watch being repeated time and again.

She really only needed to make sure that her name wasn't written down on any contract that might connect her to whomever the fae decided to take their revenge out on. Which... probably wasn't actually that likely for herself, but far more likely for someone like Ron, whose family had been around in the magical world for a very long time.

Which meant that she also needed to figure out if there was some kind of properly legal way to 'cancel' a contract or debt of people long-since dead. Just in case.

XXX

"Have you ever heard of a trophic cascade, before?"

Hari glanced up from another frustrating comparison of whether or not he'd matched the vague memory of an explosive-note. There was a blonde girl standing in front of him, maybe a bit younger than himself.

The girl met his narrowing eyes with a calm blink. "It's a rather newly discovered thing." She continued after a moment. "But it's quite fascinating."

Hari continued to glare at the girl who was interrupting his time in the library in order to ramble on about pointless things. He wasn't going to tell her to get lost, but that didn't mean he had to make her feel welcome.

The girl made a thoughtful humming sound. "Humans will change an ecosystem to be the most convenient for themselves, or they'll change it simply by failing to consider the impact their actions might have on it." The girl sat herself down, apparently completely unbothered by his glare. "But ecosystems are always connected in many different ways. Removing a predator causes its prey to thrive, that one is easy. But what of the prey? How will its feeding-habits change the surroundings? What will happen when there are less prey-bodies rotting away in the mud?"

Hari frowned as he pushed away his fuuinjutsu-attempts. There was something... eerily foreboding about the girl. As if she was on the verge of voicing a point that shouldn't ever be spoken.

The girl tilted her head, her long blonde hair shifting with the motion. "My mother always wondered before she died-..." Her eyes were really blue. "Whatever happened to the Hunt?"

-winter winds, gaunt faces, hatred and hatred and frustration and rage, the hungry howls of the dogs, the feasts that were paraded in front of him and yet never served to the inhabitants, the cold winter winds, and ragged teeth in a jaw stretching for his throat-...

Hari was on his feet and scrambling away from the blonde girl in an instant.

But she didn't move. She just continued staring at him with those too-blue eyes.

"To the prey, surely the removal of a predator is the greatest good." Her voice was so calm. "But to the surrounding world?" A small smile that seemed gentle and kind rather than deranged, despite the words coming from her mouth. "It must be one of the most gruesome evils, for an ecosystem to be so torn apart."

-green eyes in a saddened face of broken glass, a single call for help that had been answered in the briefest of loopholes, the despairing fury of the howling winter winds as Harry turned his back on them one last time-...

Hari turned and fled from the library as fast as his legs could carry him.

XXX

The trace was old and Kakashi doubted that it'd ever been more than faint.

It also lead them to a human settlement, so that was a bit of a relief. Even if the rain was part-snow and the buildings looked like an unholy cross between farms and apartments. Rigid in their uniformity, yet desperately trying to compensate for that with a garden that was so immaculate and bare of useful things, that it would've made a daimyo balk.

Kakashi could've happily lived his life without ever coming anywhere near this place, and from the faces of his students, they most thoroughly agreed with his assessment.

Still, a trace was a trace, and they'd need to get to the source of it and track down whatever they might be able to find on what exactly had happened to give the fae reason to stop by.

Thankfully, the trace was coming from one particular building, so – unless the people living in it were new arrivals – they were probably their best bet on finding information about it.

Unfortunately, the moment the awkwardly thin woman opened the door, she graced them with a screech of hatred and rage that reached a pitch that Kakashi wouldn't have considered unexpected from a dog-whistle.

The attempts to have an actual conversation weren't any less painful.

Though there was a distinct feeling of vicious satisfaction in watching Sakura tear down the entire stairwell in a fit of rage, once the full story came to light.

Also, apparently they suddenly had an actual destination to aim for.

Scotland. Wherever that was.

XXX

Turns out, Scotland was a not-country about the size of Waterfall. Not exactly easy to search, but from what the woman who was apparently Hari's biological aunt had said, it was a place for 'lots of freaks'.

However, considering that both Kakashi and his genin had all spent the last couple of months continuously practicing their chakra-sensing abilities, in order to sense what was more 'the warping of the world's chakra' than the chakra of actual ninja? It didn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle.

One of the reasons that the Hidden Villages had stopped being 'hidden' had been that there hadn't been much point in hiding away from their clients when they couldn't hide away from their enemies anyway.

Chakra-sensing wasn't exactly the most well-used skill, but every Village had at least a few ninja good enough at it to locate the distortion a couple of hundred active ninja would leave on the nearby environment. So even if the Villages were in inhospitable places designed to withstand sieges, all the other Villages would have a map with a pretty good guess on the exact location of the other Villages.

'Hogwarts' probably didn't count as a Hidden Village, but supposedly it was was filled with some kind of ninja, so that was something of a moot point. Simply gathering that many chakra-users in one place for an extended amount of time, should leave plenty enough of a distortion to sense.

And what do you know, three weeks later, and they happened upon a very interesting large-scale genjutsu. A genjutsu hiding away a castle on a hill, along with a small village some distance away.

XXX

Harry had integrated rather badly into the school.

He refused to show up at meal-times, never participated in lessons despite being present during them, and the only two people he spent any time with were the two Gryffindors Ms Granger and Mr Weasley.

On the one hand, it was heartening to see him interacting with a muggleborn and a pureblood on the Light side of the spectrum. On the other hand, there was never any real... passion in those relationships.

Albus had observed many friendships over his many years at Hogwarts, but for all that the three of them got along there was always a distinct lack of closeness in their relationship. Harry remained with them because they sat on the sidelines and allowed him to use their presence to ward off the rest of the school. They were cordial enough, but it was clear that they knew that Harry was there under duress, and had no interest in sticking around if he could help it.

All the magic in the world at his fingertips, and the boy refused to learn.

It was beyond frustrating, listening to his professors growl about a student who should've really been expelled because of his absolute refusal to actually study. Albus knew that they had a point, and had it been anyone other than the Boy-Who-Lived, he would've probably agreed. Hogwarts was a school, a place for learning for all that it'd long since become a battleground of politics.

The problem was that Albus couldn't allow Harry Potter to slip through his fingers. He'd barely managed to save his own reputation from the mess of the Boy-Who-Lived not arriving for his first year of school, Merlin knew what he'd have to do to keep things stabilized if the boy suddenly up and vanished again.

That was part of why he'd so carefully bound the boy's magic to not stray outside of Hogwarts.

The house elves he'd asked to check in on him now and again – he couldn't exactly ask them to spy for him, but a periodical check for the sake of the boy's health was acceptable – told him that Harry didn't eat anything from the kitchens either, nor did he seem to be sleeping all that well.

Honestly, Albus didn't have the faintest idea of what Harry was eating to stay alive, but he hoped that he'd run out of it so that he could start to actually show up during meal-times. His current refusal wasn't exactly helping stem the whispers that something strange was going on at Hogwarts, and Albus's damaged reputation could ill afford any more doubt aimed towards him.

Still, it was barely past the winter holidays yet. With more than another five years coming up before the boy's graduation, Albus could afford to wait.

XXX

Hari blinked back to awareness in the middle of the professor's constantly droning voice.

There was-...

Outside.

Hari got to his feet, ignoring the angry bark sent his way, and ran out of the classroom.

He needed to get to them, he needed to-...

Dodging out of the way of a certain poltergeist, and ignoring the angry yells from someone about running in the corridors, Hari made it to the Great Hall in record time.

Just in time for Dumbledore to greet him with a calculating smile, easily blocking the path to four people who were so familiar that Hari wanted to cry.

Sasuke and Naruto were both a little bit taller than he remembered, though Sasuke's scowl had eased and Naruto had stopped fidgeting so blatantly. Kakashi was the same as ever, a bizarre presence of carefully structured disarray. And his big sister was-...

Hari blinked. He didn't think he'd ever seen her making that face before. A kind of pent-up fury, banked with desperate relief as her eyes latched onto him.

She'd been worried. And she'd managed to come find him. Which should've been impossible because the winter had been driven away along with the summer, a path that'd opened for Hari only because the safety winter had promised him needed to keep him safe from even themselves-...

"Nee-chan?" His voice didn't sound like it'd come from himself, hesitant and wavering.

"Hari." Sakura-nee wasn't smiling, even as her eyes burned with relief.

Dumbledore made a move to interrupt, but Hari had been expecting this. He'd known that the headmaster would make his move sooner or later, would let him in close, if only to better keep control of his hostage.

A single strip of paper, carefully hidden from Dumbledore's eyes, but causing several other eyes to widen in recognition, a brief pulse of chakra-...

Hari blinked.

The sky was-... no, that was the ceiling of the Great Hall. His ears were ringing, an endless cacophony of noise. There wasn't any pain-... No, there was lots of pain.

Hari tried to scream, but all that came out was a cough. It tasted like iron.

XXX

Sakura watched with wide eyes as her little brother triggered an explosive note without a timer.

She couldn't move. She couldn't stop him. She couldn't do anything except watch as her little brother triggered an explosion that turned his arm into so much chunky red mist.

The old man with the long white beard didn't fare much better, having tried to get distance in that last final moment only to get caught up in the explosion regardless, but Sakura was only watching Hari.

Kakashi burst into motion as Hari's body finally came to a tumbling stop, moving towards him even as he motioned to the rest of them to secure the old man that her little brother had gone to such an effort to kill.

Naruto stumbled a little bit, and Sasuke hesitated, but both boys hurried forward to make sure that the old man didn't have some kind of weird weapon on him. Sakura mostly just blinked, trying not to listen to the ringing in her ears, or feel the way her stomach had turned itself into a knot.

Which was why she was the first to notice the new arrival to the Great Hall.

A girl about their age, with long frizzy brown hair, followed by a redheaded boy of the same age.

The girl took in the scene for a moment before making a horrified noise, and then grabbed the boy's arm when he tried to move towards them.

"Madam Pomfrey!" The girl hissed at the boy.

The eyes of the two new arrivals met for a moment, and then the boy turned on his heels and ran back out of the Great Hall. He was pretty fast for a civilian.

XXX

Kakashi shook his head as he did what he could to stem the bleeding. He was pretty sure that Hari would survive, even if he'd gone into shock. His chakra-system was healthy enough to help him stabilize, and it didn't look like he'd done more than bruise a few vital organs.

Oh, his arm was gone and any chance at starting a career as a ninja in the field was more or less completely down the drain without two arms to make hand-seals with, but he'd live. That was more than could be said about most people crazy or desperate enough to set off untested explosive notes on people with nothing but their bare hands.

The old man who'd tried to stop him from rushing to their side on the other hand, was probably going to die. Most of his torso was scattered across the hall, and he was old enough that something like that would really screw him up as far as shock went. He might maybe survive if this 'Madam Pomfrey' was the second coming of Tsunade, but even if she managed to pull off a miracle, he'd be lucky to survive a year without his health dwindling away into nothing from the shock to his system.

Still, he was struggling to speak even so. Which was impressive in its own way, even if Kakashi was fairly sure that these people could throw ninjutsu around with just the words, making him more than a bit wary of it.

"No-..." A rattling breath through a half-shredded lung. "No, the prophecy-..." A cough that splattered red across what little hadn't already been dyed red. "He's the-... the chosen one-..."

The brown-haired girl stared down at the old man with something that was a mixture of terror and contempt. A civilian terrified by the sea of blood, and yet finding herself dawning to the realization that she didn't actually feel any sympathy for the victim.

Considering that this man seemed to have just admitted to having been the one to steal Hari away from his family for the sake of something as vague as a prophecy? Kakashi couldn't blame her for taking exception to it.

"What prophecy, headmaster?" The girl asked.

The man's pale blue eyes turned towards her, a desperate light in them. "The power-..." A desperate breath. "The power the Dark Lord knows not-..." Another cough.

A moment of confusion, then of terror, then of rage, then of thoughtfulness. "'Flight from death'." She turned towards Hari, hurriedly making her way over. "Harry? Can you hear me? What does the winter hunt?"

Kakashi frowned, wondering how exactly this girl knew about the Fae Realms, but also not entirely sure about why she was bringing them up right now.

"Oath-breakers..." Hari muttered through gritted teeth. "Oath-breakers and cowards and anyone at all."

The girl looked at him for a long moment, before giving him a bitter smile. "Harry, we're killing ourselves."

Hari stared up at her, a kind of confused despair on his face, slowly shifting into horrified understanding. "You-... You really think-...?"

"There have been Dark Lords for hundreds of years, growing worse every time." She shook her head. "Sometimes it's purebloods, sometimes it's muggleborn, sometimes it's neither. They're just a symptom, yes. But they're a symptom to an ill that we can't remove."

Hari continued to stare at her for a moment, before something like resolve appeared in his eyes, even if his mouth still slurred some of the words. "People will die. They won't stop. Ever."

The girl smiled that bitter smile again. "And neither will we."

Kakashi frowned a little as Hari motioned him to help him sit up properly, but he helped him nonetheless. He didn't really know what was going on, but he had an inkling that it was more important than the boy's immediate comfort.

Sakura seemed to have about as much of an idea as to what was going on as Kakashi himself did, and the boys were both too focused on making sure that the headmaster didn't do anything stupid to pay them more than the briefest of attention.

This show was entirely between the girl and Hari.

"A mirror." Hari demanded with rasping breath, and Sakura helpfully provided one.

Kakashi wondered when exactly his student had had the time to actually figure out how to carry one of those around in the field, but maybe she'd talked to some of the more experienced kunoichi before leaving. Or maybe it was just one of those 'tough' mirrors that could survive a bit of rough handling.

...- It wasn't Hari being reflected in the glass.

Green eyes, yes. Male, yes. But it was a man, a man without a face. The face more broken glass than flesh, even as the bright green eyes stared out from it.

"The name Harry James Potter, I give to you." A deep shuddering breath. "Magic, flesh, or law. All that belongs to it, you may claim."

And then every single floating candle in the hall went out, frost spreading with visible speed across the stained-glass windows as the temperature dropped to something Kakashi would've been expecting on a glacier rather than indoors.

A figure of frost and mist and chilling cruelty stood among the shadows of the Great Hall. Its hungry grin revealing teeth like icicles in a blizzard.

The apparition lunged forward.

"I am Spring!" Hari shouted in its face, voice cracking under the strain.

A hateful cry of impotent fury. A demand for submission that didn't need words to phrase it.

"I am Spring!" Hari shouted at it again, into the icicle-teeth that were snapping threateningly inches from his own face. "You have no claim on me!"

A howl of rage, and then the apparition lashed out with its long claws, slicing Hari across the face before Kakashi could even think to try to move between them. And then it was gone.

Leaving Hari to collapse back into Kakashi's arms, blood sluggishly pouring down from the thin cut across his forehead, to go along with all of the blood he'd already lost to disintegrating his own arm.

"What-... What have you done...?" A whisper from the dying old man.

"Harry James Potter was born in Britain, and is written into the records of Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic and Gringotts, all." The girl turned to Sakura, a small smile spreading across her lips. "But that's not your brother's name, is it?"

Sakura met her eyes, and smiled the first happy smile Kakashi had seen on her face for months. "No, it isn't."

Kakashi tried to wrap his head around exactly what the two girls were talking about and came up with the vague conclusion that the fae had been unable to properly interact with this world for some reason. That's why the brown-haired girl wanted him to invite winter, though Kakashi was a bit lost on exactly why that would be an even remotely good idea.

As for Hari's actual way of doing so... It seemed to entirely consist of him simply giving up the name he'd been born under to the fae, allowing them to return to this world that 'Harry James Potter' belonged to. After all, a citizenship was very much a possession to own.

Though, Kakashi couldn't help but wonder if it would've worked out nearly as well if Haruno Hari's name hadn't literally been 'of Spring'.

XXX

Epilogue

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Hari traded glances with Sasuke as Sakura went off to greet Ino.

Ino who hadn't even glanced at Sasuke once, and who was looking a little bit weak in the knees about his sister's bare arms. And Sakura herself who'd instantly zeroed in on Ino in the crowd, and didn't seem to think anything at all of the fact that Ino had practically melted into her hug.

The girl who was supposed to be both her best friend and 'her rival for Sasuke's affection'. The same Sasuke that she only ever paid serious attention to when Ino was glancing his way.

Sweet merciful kami, but Hari's sister was literally denser than lead.

Shikamaru was apparently of a similar thought, because he was making a face that clearly said that he wanted to be anywhere else except in the vague neighborhood of their reunion. He looked like he was already developing a headache.

It was nice to be back.

He'd gone through enough food-rations from Kakashi that everyone had been walking on eggshells about exactly how he'd been surviving 'without food' for so long. Hari was pretty sure that it had something to do with the worlds being enough out of alignment that you could fudge physics if you refused something hard enough, but even Naruto thought that that sounded more stupid than awesome, so it was probably not entirely true.

So, not being hungry was nice. And not being kept awake from the hunger-pangs was nice too.

He supposed that he might miss Hermione and Ron a little bit, at some point. They'd been good friends, in their own ways. But nowhere near enough that he'd consider visiting them or inviting them to Konoha. Their paths had diverged, and forcing a meeting once more would only bring needless pain.

No, Konoha was Hari's home. Even if having only a single arm made his chosen career something of a moot point.

An experienced shinobi might be able to function with only a single arm, but a genin only just starting out? Their work was dangerous enough as it was, anything that made it harder than that was basically a death-sentence.

Then again, he had managed to replicate a mostly-working explosive-note from a brief memory, without any aid, and with inferior materials. An admission which had caused Kakashi to make some vague noises about how research-and-development were always happy to have anyone capable of writing seals.

As long as it didn't include blowing up his remaining limbs, Hari was more than willing to give it a try.

Rewriting reality with a piece of paper and some ink? It sounded kind of fun.

XXX

Team 7 had disappeared at a rather inopportune time.

Ignoring the fact that Kakashi would've likely nominated them for the Chunin Exam just to convince his students that he wasn't holding them back from advancing – even though he would've, had the exams taken place anywhere other than Konoha, because Team 7 was something of a political powder-keg and it was best not to tempt fate. A nomination which would've been a perfectly reasonable thing for him to give, but which would've undoubtedly have resulted in an even bigger mess with Orochimaru's infiltration.

As it was, Hiruzen's old student spent a lot of his time running around trying to track down a genin-team that hadn't even been in Konoha for a month before he made his move – and wouldn't return for a substantial amount of months afterwards. A fault in his plans which Hiruzen had happily pointed out to him during his invasion.

Sure, Suna's jinchuuriki tied up a lot of good ninja who could've otherwise helped keep the casualties down, but otherwise it'd been a massive failure all around from his old student.

He'd wasted his time, and grown frustrated enough with it that upon being reminded of it he'd lost his temper.

Orochimaru was a terrifying man in the best of moods, but he'd always been somewhat mercurial in behavior, for all that Hiruzen's other students were more famous for being fickle.

He hadn't managed to stop Orochimaru from running off again. Hadn't even really managed to hurt him permanently, and had nearly completely lost a leg just from driving him off. He really was getting too old.

But there was a distinct lack of proper candidates for the Hat, and if Hiruzen made any noise about retirement before such a candidate could be found, Danzo would swoop in to relieve him of duty and declare him unfit to rule. Which would be ridiculous because they were the same age, not that Danzo had ever let something like that stop him from complaining previously.

So whilst Team 7 not being involved in the Chunin Exams was perhaps a bit of a blessing in hindsight, they really had been running low on personnel in the aftermath. Three genin more or less would've easily slipped under the radar, but Kakashi would've been a godsend.

Still, though they'd clearly been delayed, the fact of the matter was that they had returned. They'd even succeeded in their mission of bringing back Haruno Hari to Konoha. Crippled though he'd been.

The tale they brought with them of it however, made Hiruzen somewhat worried about the future.

Certainly, there hadn't been any reports of people disappearing out of their homes, or much of anything else that their resident experts on all things fae claimed them willing and capable of doing.

But Hiruzen hadn't spent more than half of his life as Hokage without learning to pay attention to things changing. And something was definitely changing, somewhere. He just hadn't managed to figure out where or what, yet.

He did however know that of everyone who'd dealt with fae, upon hearing Hari's final deal with the Winter Court, they'd only been able to find a single loophole. A loophole that worried him rather significantly.

Once upon a time, the Winter Court had promised one Harry James Potter safe passage to Konoha. Not admission, not anything else. But a safe passage to Konoha's gates nonetheless.

And everything Harry James Potter owned belonged to the fae now.

XXX

The howls were growing closer, always closer.

It didn't matter how far he tried to move through the trees or the ground. It didn't matter if he hid, it didn't matter if he disguised himself. They found him. Always.

The plans with Tobi were in ruins. The plans with Pein were in ruins. The plans with Madara were in ruins. The plans for Kaguya's return were all in ruins.

The White Zetsu were gone. Hunted down to the last, no matter how expertly they hid. It was only him left now. The single Black Zetsu, fleeing from an enemy that'd arrived from nowhere and who wanted nothing other than the hunt.

A few more missing-nin than previously had been dying. That'd been their only clue. The pattern had been inconsistent. Nothing had connected them to each other, and being a missing-nin was a dangerous lifestyle regardless. It shouldn't have been anything to worry over.

And then Akatsuki had been gutted. Its members there one day and gone the next. Tobi had been supposed to investigate it, except he'd disappeared too, and then the White Zetsu began to die in an endless river of gore. Hunted to the last.

Chakra finally spent, the Black Zetsu turned to face his hunters.

Strange creatures, humanoid but as far removed from humans as Zetsu himself had been. Probably even further than that, from the way their touch warped the chakra around them.

"Why?" He hissed at them.

A head full of antlers tilted in consideration, hard eyes staring down at him from the other side of a spear. "It's just our nature."

And then the spear stabbed forward, and the Black Zetsu knew no more.

XXX

Madam Pomfrey arrived too late to save Dumbledore, rushing onto the scene barely in time to watch him breathe his last few breaths.

It was the first time Hermione saw somebody die.

She didn't regret it.

Albus Dumbledore had pushed forward a lot of laws and changes that were good, but Hermione couldn't quite bring herself to separate that person from the one who'd kidnapped a twelve-year-old from his loving family and then trapped him in what should've been a place for learning. All for the sake of a prophecy and some rotten politics.

And even if Hermione deciding to convince Harry to release the Hunt on their world would probably end up hurting a lot of people, and she wasn't entirely sure if it would really stop the symptoms that'd been plaguing them since before the Statute of Secrecy had ever been thought of. In the end, it was the only option that made any sense as far as Dumbledore's belief of a prophecy was concerned.

That, and it was probably Harry's only chance of returning home without ever being forced to come back to Hogwarts by someone else capable of tracking him down like Dumbledore had. And though Hermione would've probably ended up in deep trouble with a lot of people if there'd been any witnesses to her actions, all witnesses were either dead or away someplace to wherever Harry lived.

After all, Ron and Madam Pomfrey had only arrived to see the light fade from Dumbledore's eyes, and Hari's sister and friends were all long gone by then.

It was a tense summer, waiting, listening, wondering what the next headline of the Daily Prophet would declare. But it was silent. Perhaps because the fae hadn't proven to the world that they'd returned, perhaps because the Daily Prophet simply refused to believe whatever proof had already been presented to them.

Returning for her third year, she found another girl who could see the thestrals pulling the carriages to Hogwarts, along with herself and Ron. A strange and rather bizarre second-year, who'd happily imposed herself on them ever since the train.

Not that Hermione terribly minded, for all that she didn't put all that much faint in the supposed abilities of her necklace made of butterbeer caps. Fae being a real thing or no, Hermione couldn't even remember reading any fairytales about anything like Nargles.

"Oh, did you like the book I borrowed you?" Luna finally asked as they stepped out of the carriage they'd shared.

Hermione blinked, confused for a long moment.

"It was my mother's." Luna smiled, a little bit nostalgic and a little bit bittersweet. "Thank you, by the way. She tried so very hard to fix things again."

And that as how Hermione was finally properly introduced to the single most manipulative best friend she'd ever had.

And her second best friend had been a ninja raised by fae.

XXX

A/n: For a perfect example of a trophic cascade, there's a very good video about the wolves of Yellowstone floating around on youtube.

And yeah, Luna is the grand manipulator in this fic. Hopefully it didn't come completely from out of left field (though a girl with blonde hair is mentioned to be wandering around the books on fairytales, earlier).

As for her being in the right? In this world, she is. Her actions help eliminate both Voldemort (remember the slice across the scar?) and future Dark Lords. After all, they tend to operate with methods that the fae would be looking for in prime hunting-material, making it very unattractive for Dark Lords to be Dark Lords.

Yes, a bunch of innocent lives will likely end over the course of a great many years, but in comparison to the lives that would equally as truthfully have been lost when the next Dark Lord rose to power? It's a ruthless kind of logic.

As for the Hunt's mention of it being their nature? It's from a story about a scorpion that I'm certain a great many of you have heard of before.

(And yeah no, get fucked Zetsu.)