Here's the fourteenth chapter, folks!

* Review Response:
Jostanos, Darkscythe Drake, orion0905, Pushi19, Ranmaleopard, god of all, Ikousetsu, Warehouse1, thank you for your reviews, folks!
raigalcc, what they don't know about won't offend them, right?
NazgulBelserion, no, Harry will not have minions. Even after he get better control over Eclipse and the emotion control issues it brings. He will have people he partners with more or less regularly, though - the first one will be introduced to the story before he even arrives to Mid-Childa, actually. And Zero, of course.

* AN: As always, great thanks to my friend Skelekitty for his help in polishing this chapter.

Disclaimer: "Harry Potter" and "Mahou Shoujou Lyrical Nanoha" belong to their respective owners. No profit is being made. The same goes for any other media that might be used as the sources of ideas and inspiration.

"speaking"
"telepathy"
「Devices speaking」
'thinking'
"spells"

Additional Disclaimer: The authors of this story in no way approve murder as a solution to interpersonal conflicts.

Power of Eclipse
Chapter XIV: The Unicorn Slayer

As it turned out, finding a dead unicorn in the Forbidden Forest was not a simple task. Indeed, it took Harry nearly a week of nightly searches to find the clearing where the unicorn's body used to be. It wasn't there anymore - someone, likely Hagrid, had found it before him and buried the creature - but the soil soaked with silvery blood was undeniable proof that it had been there only a couple of days ago.

This was rather unfortunate, as the highly-Magical nature of unicorns would likely translate into their body parts making excellent cores for Mana Cartridges. And Harry knew that he'd need the best cartridges Zero could make if he wanted to visit the Administered Worlds the coming summer.

His failure to secure unicorn parts left the green-eyed Eclipse Driver rather ...frustrated. Thankfully for the people at Hogwarts, there was enough wildlife around for him to cool off a little. Zero's reassurances that she'd be able to meet the demand with the materials she already had at hand, even if the end product would be much bulkier and not as efficient, also helped.

And, while it took Harry some time to realize it, not everything was lost: the unicorn slayer he had promised to bring down - if only for the challenge that fight would be - was more than likely to go after another creature sooner or later. If he waits patiently, the unknown wizard will appear sooner or later. And once the bastard did, he would step in and deal with him. The problem was, Harry wasn't exactly a patient person…

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This little game of waiting for the unicorn slayer to reveal himself was fun for maybe a day and a half. Then it just became an annoyingly-boring routine that was quickly driving Harry straight into Eclipse-induced irritation with a tinge of battlelust. And since he needed to keep his eyes on the Forbidden Forest as much as possible, his opportunities to go hunting to relieve himself from stress had been severely reduced, further complicating the situation.

This couldn't not be reflected in his, unfortunately required, interactions with his housemates and the Professors. And given how peeved he now was all the time, it was only a matter of time before he snapped at someone…

That someone happened to be the Hufflepuff's Quidditch team's seeker, Cedric Diggory. His team had narrowly lost a game against Gryffindors, so he was in a pretty bad mood. Thus, when he saw Harry making it clear that he didn't care about Quidditch one bit, something made him forget that messing with that strange and sometimes violent firstie might not be a good idea. Cedric went straight up to him and accused him of lacking House unity and not showing proper support to the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.

And so a brief fight ensued. They were quickly pulled apart by Professors, but not before Harry gave the other boy a black eye and several other bruises. He had taken several hits himself, but thanks to the Eclipse Factor everything was completely healed before Professor Sprout even finished telling them how disappointed she was with them.

Since Harry was the one who actually threw the first punch, he received by far the worst punishment. At least, that's how his Head of House saw it. The green-eyed youth silently disagreed: to him, a month of helping Hagrid around in the evenings - something that almost certainly included going into the Forbidden Forest, looking for the bastard that was killing unicorns - was more of a blessing in disguise.

Cedric got punished as well: everyone who saw the fight agreed that it was him who instigated it. Professor Sprout wanted him to clean the greenhouses for a week, but Professor Quirrell intervened and persuaded the Herbology Mistress to let him handle Mr. Diggory's punishment instead. Something about teaching the boy not to pick fights thoughtlessly.

Just as Harry had predicted, Hagrid indeed wanted his help with patrolling the Forbidden Forest. Almost anyone else would wonder what the hell the gamekeeper was thinking - taking a first year to search for a dark wizard hunting unicorns - but the young Eclipse Driver was actually happy about this development as it basically was an official permission to hunt the unicorn slayer. And why wouldn't he? It was as close to an official permission to go into the forest and fight the unicorn-slayer as he could get. Plus, if he found that bastard after he did his evil deed, would anyone really care if he stole the creature's horn?

"A'ight, 'Arry." Hagrid said as they approached a split in a footpath. "I'll go left from 'ere, and yer can go right. Be back 'ere in two 'ours… And, uhm… Take Fang with yer. 'E will keep yer safe if yer come across something dangerous." The Eclipse Driver gave the dog in question a skeptical look. The poor mutt looked like it would rather not be in the Forbidden Forest at all, much less away from its owner.

"Nah, you can keep him. I'll be fine, I can take care of myself." Harry replied. The gamekeeper gave him a long look before finally giving in.

"If yer sure..." He said, before taking the left path, Fang hurrying after him. The green-eyed youth remained at the 'crossroad' until the half-giant and his dog could no longer be seen behind centuries-old trees, before taking off into the depth of the Forbidden Forest himself.

Despite being as thorough in his inspection of the forest as he could be, Harry had found no traces of either the unicorn herd or the wizard hunting them tonight. That is not to say that nothing exciting had happened during this time: roughly halfway through the two hours he was given, the Eclipse Driver came across a strange beast unlike anything he had ever seen before. He couldn't even identify it properly as it looked more like an escaped experiment created by some mad wizard than like anything that could've evolved naturally. The creature, on the other hand, identified him as a potential meal. Harry strongly disagreed with that and after a quick but intense fight, he slew the beast.

He then had Zero examine the slain creature. Alas, the silver-haired Strosek quickly discovered that despite its likely-unnatural origin, it wasn't any more Magical than an iron boar, so there was no real point in harvesting it for materials - those would be no better than what she already had.

The next two days of the 'detention' were even more uneventful. The unicorn-slaying wizard was nowhere to be seen and Harry didn't even get into any interesting fights with the local wildlife. Then, on the fourth day, something finally happened.

As he was running among the trees, Harry came across a trail of silvery blood. A quick inspection showed that the blood was rather fresh: a unicorn that shed it passed here no more than a couple of hours ago and likely much less than that. This made him smile: things were starting to get interesting!

Picking up his pace, the green-eyed Eclipse Driver followed the trail of unicorn blood, hoping that the bastard who did it was still around: he was itching for a good fight, and this one promised to be glorious! And even if the man was already gone by the time he found the slain unicorn, there still would be a horn for him to collect.

Turns out, even a wounded unicorn can keep going for a while before succumbing to its wounds: it took Harry over ten minutes of following the trail of blood to finally locate the creature. The unicorn was lying on its side next to a large tree, already dead, while a man was crouching next to it, apparently drinking its blood straight from a wound. The said man was wearing a long black cloak and his face was obscured both by a hood and by Magical means, so it was impossible to say who this unicorn slayer was.

Not that Harry cared about the man's identity. He was going to fight him regardless of who he was.

'Zero, React with me.' He commanded.

「Of course.」 His Strosek replied through their telepathic link before pushing him into the Reacted state, boosting his mana reserves with her own and greatly enhancing his Eclipse Driver abilities. Taking a moment to get used to all this power, Harry summoned a dozen or so of Magically-constructed spiked chains before sending them out to capture the unicorn slayer. The man, however, must have noticed a brief flash of light that accompanied the creation of the chains and quickly rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding being caught by the sudden attack.

"Who's there?" The cloaked man demanded as he pointed his want in the direction the chains had come from. The young Eclipse Driver obliged, charging at the man with his trusty knife drawn. "Potter?" The mysterious man muttered in surprise. Quickly recovering, he threw a red spell at the rushing youth. It however sizzled into harmlessness as it tried to power through Eclipse's Anti-Magic.

The unicorn slayer fired another red spell, apparently putting more power behind it, but the result was much the same: it just couldn't trump Harry's defenses. Doing another roll, this time to avoid being slashed by a knife, the man put as much distance as he could between himself and his young adversary, before launching a counter-offensive.

"Avada Kedavra!" The man called as a bolt of sickly-green light sprang from the tip of his wand.

Harry's battle instincts, whatever they might be, immediately screamed for him to dodge this one spell. And since this had never happened before, not like this at least, the young Eclipse Driver wisely chose to follow this 'advice'. The spell flew past him before hitting a rock, causing it to explode with surprising force. And while his Combat Protective Clothing had shielded him from this stone shrapnel, Harry still felt it somewhat. Had that spell hit him directly, though…

Quickly pushing that thought aside, he returned fire with a dozen very basic Magical bullets. These bullets were rather slow and lacked any capability to change their course, but they were still enough to push the unicorn slayer onto the defensive for a moment.

Capitalizing on this, Harry made another attempt to capture the man with his chains. Alas, the chains were material constructs and needed time to reach their target - this let the cloaked wizard to deflect them with whatever banishing spell he had used. He then turned his wand back towards Harry.

"Avada Kedavra!" The Eclipse Driver immediately moved to dodge the deadly curse, but his opponent didn't stop his attack there and silently fired two more white spells, aiming for the spot Harry would land on. These turned out to be explosive spells of some kind and, while Eclipse Anti-Magic managed to reduce their power somewhat before they unleashed their effect, Harry was still blown off his feet and thrown into a tree behind him. "You put up an admirable fight, Potter." The mysterious wizard said. "But I'm afraid your journey ends here. You're a hindrance to my Master's plans, and I must remove you. Avada Kedavra!"

While he wasn't capable of dodging that spell as he was right now, the green-eyed Eclipse Driver wasn't defenseless against it either: having seen it used twice, he knew that it would be stopped by the first object it encountered. So, calling forth the Bible of the Silver Cross - a device-like equipment normally used by Zero, he quickly surrounded himself with a cloud of its pages.

The idea worked as intended and the curse hit this makeshift shield, blowing a hole through it but otherwise not harming him. Seeing the unicorn slayer caught by surprise by this development, Harry turned the remaining pages into Magical bullets and threw them at the man. The bastard instinctively summoned a shield in front of himself, but it did little to stop the attack as pages-turned-bullets tore through it mercilessly. They were still lacking when it came to power and could do little more than tear through the man's cloak and whatever he was wearing underneath it. Oh, there was some blood spilt, but those wounds weren't even debilitating. Yet, it apparently was enough to make the mysterious wizard change his mind about killing Harry here:

"Very well. You win this time, Potter." The unicorn slayer said. "Enjoy whatever little time you get out of it. My Master will see you dead soon enough." And with that he turned on his heel and disappeared with a loud crack.

Letting out a sigh, the young Eclipse Driver dismissed the Bible of the Silver Cross and exited the Reacted state, simultaneously bringing Zero into the real world.

"Let's collect the horn." He said. The silver-haired Strosek nodded.

「Certainly.」 She said before walking around the unicorn's corpse and kneeling next to its head. She then tried to break the horn off, but even with Magical enhancements she didn't have enough physical strength to do that. 「Can this unit have your knife, Master?」 She asked then.

"Here." Harry said, handing her the blade. With its help, Zero was able to finally separate the horn from the rest of the unicorn after a minute or two of struggle. She then immediately began analyzing it.

「Your guess was correct. This horn is an excellent material for mana storage. This unit can't give you specifics without a more in-depth analysis, but a cartridge made from it would have at least ten times mana storage density.」 Those were some great news, Harry thought. 「It will also leak mana much slower, but changes to mana flow regulator will need to be made to account for the new core material. This unit estimates that...」 Zero stopped abruptly, going into full-alertness mode. 「Somebody is coming here.」 She said, before going into hiding within her Eclipse Driver. Harry barely had time to pick up his knife and the horn and hide them under his own clothes, before Hagrid stepped into the clearing.

"I saw lights coming from 'ere. Are yer a'ight, 'arry?" The half-giant asked. He then noticed the dead unicorn. "I see yer found the unicorn. 'ave you seen who did it?"

"He was wearing a cloak with a hood, and I think he was using Magic to conceal his face as well." Harry replied honestly. "The bastard ran away."

"That's no good." The gamekeeper said. "We still 'ave no idea who it is." Harry thought it out for a few moments, before saying:

"Well, we indeed don't know much, but I think I managed to learn something about the unicorn slayer during our brief altercation." This definitely got Hagrid's attention. "While the bastard did obscure his face, he did nothing to alter his voice. I know it, he was an adult man. He also instantly recognized me when I stepped into this clearing." While most wizards and witches probably knew what he looked like thanks to all this Boy-who-lived nonsense, recognizing him so quickly in the dark woods would probably be beyond them. It probably was someone who actually interacted with him in some capacity recently. So, an older student or even a Professor? "I also managed to nick him with my spell. I should've left some wounds."

"I'll ah… pass this to Professor Dumbledore." Hagrid said. The Eclipse Driver could only shrug in response. There was a rather long pause, before the gamekeeper continued. "And yer found the unicorn, obviously." Kneeling next to the creature, he checked for any signs of it being still alive. "It's dead, thou'. Such a waste…" Having noticed that the unicorn was missing something rather obvious, he spoke again: "And missing its horn."

"That man must've taken it." Harry lied smoothly. Hagrid hummed something unintelligible under his breath in response. Getting back to his feet, the half-giant swept the clearing with his gaze. He did raze an eyebrow at the signs Harry's battle with the cloaked man left, but said nothing about it.

"A'ight." He said finally. "It doesn't look like there is anything more for us to do 'ere. Let's go back to 'ogwarts." And with that he began tracking his way towards the castle. Harry quickly followed him without another word.

That's all, folks!
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