Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Fate/Extra. Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling and the Fate franchise is owned by Type-Moon.

Prologue

Green eyes blearily blinked open as their owner returned to wakefulness. A child that appeared to be no older than eight wearing worn clothes that were clearly more than a couple of sizes too big slowly sat up and looked around at his surroundings. He was sat in the middle of a small bunch of bushes with a couple of trees and a lamppost mixed in as well. In front of him was a three-storey building that didn't seem at all familiar to him yet he was fairly sure it was a school for some strange reason.

Understandably confused by his current situation, the green-eyed boy tried to recall how he had ended up in the bushes only for a crippling pain to shoot through his head the moment he attempted to call up the relevant memories while his vision went a little fuzzy as though he was looking at everything through a thin layer of static. The agony was such that he let out a loud yelp and fell backwards as his arms were no longer prdopping him up due to his hands automatically clutching his forehead in a futile attempt to dull the sudden headache.

After what might have been a few seconds or a few hours, the pain had lessened to a relatively minor but constant ache and the child realised that he had absolutely no idea how he had arrived at this school. In fact, he couldn't remember anything apart from his own name and even that wasn't something he was entirely sure about considering the complete lack of other memories.

"Harry Potter. My name is Harry Potter," the black-haired boy kept repeating to himself under his breath, worried that that too would disappear from his memory if he didn't keep thinking about it.

Suddenly, a bell rang out from the school in front of him and, seeing flickers of movement out of the corner of his eye, the now-named Harry quickly ran off to the side. He darted past a vending machine and towards the small building on his left, tripping through the open doorway just as a group of teenagers in brown uniforms walked by the area he had been mere moments before. He didn't know anything about this place other than it seemed to be a school and that something seemed strange about it so the glasses-wearing boy was opting to be cautious for the time being until he had a better understanding of what was going on since he had no idea how the people here would react to his sudden appearance.

"Hey little boy, are you lost? You're a bit young for this school."

Harry jumped when he heard the voice behind him. He had been so focused on avoiding the people outside that he hadn't paid much attention to the room he had sneaked into to hide. Turning around, the child saw a somewhat plain-looking teenaged girl with short brown hair in odd clothes standing a few feet away with a really long bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.

"I think so. I don't know where I am or how I got here," Harry said as he kept an eye on the armed teen's weapon. There didn't seem to be any hostility in her voice but she was still holding something that could easily kill him if she wanted to so he discreetly started backing up towards the door in case she chose to use it.

The girl seemed a bit confused at the reaction since he wasn't being as subtle as he thought he was but she quickly figured out the cause when she saw that the boy's eyes were locked on her bow. In an attempt to reassure him, she slowly crouched down, placed her bow and arrow on the floor and moved away from them as she stood up again.

"It's alright. I'm not going to hurt you. I was just in the middle of practice when I heard you come in," she explained, gesturing behind her with her gloved right hand where Harry could see a handful of round targets at the far end of the building, one of which had several arrows sticking out around the middle. "Anyway, this is the archery range at Tsukumihara Academy. Does that help?"

"No, I've never heard of it. Where is it?" the black-haired child replied. The name sounded foreign, which was an odd thought considering that he couldn't remember where he was from, but didn't really give him any clues as to what was going on.

"It's..." the girl started, only to trail off after a moment as she frowned in confusion. "I don't know... Why don't I know?" she muttered to herself. "This is my third year here so why can't I remember where the school is?" The brunette groaned slightly as a hand went up to absently massage her temple while a bell rang out from the main building. "Sorry kid but I've got to go get changed into my uniform before class starts. I'm sorry I wasn't much help," she mumbled, her thoughts clearly elsewhere as she headed out of the archery range while removing her chest protector and brushing a bit of fluff off of her dark hakama.

"Wait..." Harry called out but the teen didn't seem to hear him and she quickly disappeared from sight. He followed after her to try and ask her other things like the reason why everything was fuzzy but, when he got outside, there was nobody around. Looking around the deserted school yard, the boy caught a glimpse of red up on the roof out of the corner of his eye but there was nothing there when he looked again so he dismissed it as his eyes playing tricks on him due to the weird situation.

It only took a few moments to find the main gate and the green-eyed Potter quickly ran towards it, wanting to get away from the strange school that was filled with wrongness. However, just as he reached out to the metal handle in order to open it, he was overcome with an unexplainable sense of dread that practically screamed at him to not touch it. Pulling his hand back as though it had been shocked, he just stared at the gate for a moment, wondering why he had felt like leaving the school would be the worst thing he could possibly do. It was at that point that he noticed something else unusual and that was the fact that he couldn't see a single person beyond the gate nor could he hear anything in the distance, almost as though there simply wasn't anything outside of the school.

Deciding to listen to the weird feeling of doom, Harry opted not to open the gate and instead have another look at the campus that he had found himself in. He still couldn't see anybody since all the students were presumably in class right then so he decided to just wander around for a bit and see if he could find something that might help him figure out what was going on. Walking past the vending machine he had seen earlier, the boy stopped since he was feeling a bit thirsty but a check of his pockets told him that he didn't have any money on him so he was forced to give it a miss.

Half an hour later and Harry had pretty much covered the entirety of the school's currently empty grounds. Unfortunately, he had been unable to find anything that might explain how he had gotten there or why he couldn't remember anything. He had stumbled across a large chapel near a nice-looking fountain around the back of the tall building but the area had been closed for renovations according to a sign so he hadn't been able to get too close. The child had also found another gate right at the back past the chapel and a side gate next to the archery range yet the weird feeling of dread had returned the moment he had gotten near either of them so he left them both alone while wondering why it seemed like he wasn't supposed to leave the school even though he probably wasn't a student there due to how young he was.

Since his exploration of outside didn't turn up anything, Harry decided that the only thing left would be to try inside the school itself. With any luck, he might stumble across the girl from earlier since she had been nice enough to try and help him even if she was clearly distracted towards the end of their brief conversation. Walking through the front entrance of what was presumably the main building, the black-haired child quickly noticed that the corridor he was in was empty of students, which he took to mean that they were all still in class.

Suddenly, Harry heard a door shutting directly behind him and the boy literally jumped in surprise. Looking back, he saw a tall man standing there. The black-haired man was wearing a large black coat with a high fur-lined collar and he was staring at Harry with dead eyes and a blank expression on his face. For some reason, the stranger's mere presence put the glasses-wearing child on edge and his instincts were screaming at him to both run away as quickly as possible and stay perfectly still to try and avoid being noticed.

"Hmm? A late arrival?" the man mumbled to himself. "No, that shouldn't be possible so you must have been hiding somewhere until now. You're not on the list but to have avoided detection until the final day of the preliminaries..." he trailed off there, possibly weighing up his options. "I suppose I should test you."

Before the child could so much as blink, something hit him hard in the stomach and he collapsed to the floor. As darkness started to encroach on his vision, Harry coughed violently in response to the blow while his mind tried to figure out what had just happened; the man hadn't moved a muscle but there was nobody else around to have struck him. Unfortunately, any other thoughts on the matter were lost as his consciousness escaped him and everything went black.

When Harry eventually came to, the pain in his gut from the intimidating man's strike immediately made itself known to him, being more than strong enough to drown out the constant headache he had been feeling since earlier. Cautiously opening one eye for a quick look around, the green-eyed child saw that he was still in the same ground floor corridor which was still empty except for himself as the violent adult was nowhere to be seen. As he slowly climbed to his feet, he tried to figure out what he should do. Trying to leave through any of the gates he had found seemed like a really bad idea, even though he wasn't quite sure why he felt like that, but staying in this strange school was just plain dangerous, especially if he encountered the same guy that had previously attacked him.

Since he wouldn't achieve anything by just standing there, the young child decided that he might as well carry on looking around the school. The right side of the corridor didn't turn up anything since the doors were all locked so he moved on to the left side. There were only three rooms on that side and few very quick glances through the windows showed that they were all classrooms full of students in brown who were all paying attention to the teachers at the front of the room.

Not wanting to disrupt the lessons despite his confusing situation, Harry turned around with the intention of exploring the next floor only to stop when he saw a teenaged girl with long purple hair reaching down to her ankles with a red ribbon just above her left ear and a white jacket covering the same brown uniform he had seen on others earlier staring at him in surprise from the other end of the corridor. The black-haired child was about to go over to her to see if she could help him figure things out when the school's bell rang again and he heard people moving around in the rooms on his right. As one of the doors started to open, the young Potter heard the emotionless voice of the man in black from earlier drift out of the classroom and he quickly ducked around the corner at the end of the hallway to hide before his attacker had a chance to notice him as he really didn't want to get hit again.

Harry listened as several dozen teens all disappeared off in the other direction, many of them chatting about random things ranging from class and a tiger of some sort all the way to what they were going to have for lunch or what they had planned for after school was over. Once the last of the voices had gone out of earshot, he risked a glance around the corner but immediately pulled his head back when he saw the man in black leaving one of the classrooms. He didn't think he had been seen since the adult hadn't been looking in his direction but the child didn't want to risk being found so he quickly looked around for somewhere to hide. It was only then that he realised the corridor was a dead-end with nothing but a small fire extinguisher and a set of lockers about the same height as him.

Unable to find a viable hiding place, Harry decided to take another quick peek to see if he actually needed to. When he did, he saw the man in black still there talking to a blond boy in red for a moment before the pair quite literally vanished into thin air. As he tried to rationalise the clearly impossible sight, his headache intensified and the world seemed to tilt ever so slightly. Overcome by the strange sensation, the glasses-wearing child leaned against the wall next to the lockers and let himself slide down until he was sat on the floor.

"I need to get out of here," Harry muttered to himself. He still didn't have a clue what was going on but it was definitely too strange to be a regular school since people were not supposed to disappear without a trace like he had just witnessed.

"Huh?" The boy quickly turned to the right when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A proper look at the empty wall showed that there didn't appear to be anything there but something still seemed to be off so he got up and wandered over. Running his hand over the smooth surface also indicated that the wall was just a wall but that nagging feeling remained and his head started throbbing while the static covering his vision became even more prominent. "What's going on?"

A single blink was all it took for things to change as, where there had been a solid wall mere moments ago, there was now what looked to be a fire exit, complete with a green sign above it. Understandably confused, Harry ran a hand over the door that had appeared from nowhere, feeling the change in texture as his fingers passed over the frame and onto the wall.

"It's real?" Harry thought about his options. On the one hand, a mysteriously appearing door was right up there with mysteriously disappearing people in terms of strangeness, which he knew was really bad even though he didn't remember exactly why, and there was no telling where it would actually go. On the other hand, something kept screaming at him to not leave the school through the gates whenever he got close to one and the terrifying man that had attacked him for no apparent reason could potentially come back at any time. Eventually deciding that whatever was beyond the door couldn't be worse than staying where he was, he steeled himself for whatever might lie ahead and passed through the door.

While he hadn't been sure what to expect on the other side, the room Harry found himself in was surprising simply due to how normal it appeared, especially since the static-like fuzziness in his vision was no longer present. It looked to be a simple storage room with random boxes filled with rolled up sheets of paper on the floor near the side walls and there was a large blackboard to his left as well. It actually somehow took him a couple of seconds to notice the rather glaring oddities though how he had managed to not see the large gap in the far wall straight away he had no idea. It wasn't simply a hole that a door or big window might go in but rather it seemed like an entrance to another world entirely, what with the impenetrable darkness beyond, the randomly shifting edges and the weird glowing bubbles rising up from the floor on either side.

"Welcome, potential Master." A man's voice came from nowhere and echoed throughout the room.

Harry quickly looked around to try and find the source but failed to see anyone there other than himself and some strange man-sized mannequin that was standing to the side of the gap. When the mannequin suddenly moved in a rather threatening matter, the green-eyed Potter jumped back from it but started to relax again when it didn't do anything else afterwards, though he kept an eye on it in case it did decide to move again.

"That effigy with you is your sword and shield for what lies ahead. It will move in response to your commands. Now then, please proceed. The truth that you seek lies ahead."

"What's going on?" Harry shouted at the disembodied voice. This whole situation was really starting to freak him out, and the effigy was also making him uncomfortable even though it wasn't moving right then, but he was trying his best to not let it show. When he didn't get any reply, he decided that he might actually be better off in the school so he turned to leave only to freeze when he saw that the door was no longer there. Panicking due to the door's sudden disappearance, the boy quickly ran over to the now-empty wall and ran his hand over its smooth surface to confirm that the door did indeed no longer exist.

"If I go through there, can I go home?" Harry asked the mysterious voice. He didn't get an answer but he didn't think he had any other option so he cautiously approached the gap in the far wall and poked a finger through it. When nothing bad happened, he took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness, not noticing that the effigy followed him.

On the other side of the strange gap of darkness in the wall was something that could only really be described as a path made of glowing rectangles in a seemingly endless void of black that stretched out further than Harry could see. Once again, the sheer bizarreness of the situation resulted in the child trying to go back to the last room but there was no exit behind him so he had no choice but to move forward, taking care not to get too close to the path's edges to avoid falling. It was during this impromptu escape attempt that Harry became aware of the creepy mannequin from the previous room directly behind him. He took a step away from it but it simply took one forwards towards him. That was when he remembered what the bodiless voice had said about it.

"It will move in response to your commands," he repeated before looking at the effigy's featureless head. "Walk in front of me," he instructed, pointing behind him in the direction that the path led. When it didn't immediately move, Harry thought the unseen male had lied to him about the doll following orders but then it clumsily walked around him before stopping in the middle of the path, presumably to wait for him to get moving again.

Satisfied that the weird effigy wouldn't be able to suddenly attack him from behind without any warning, Harry started walking forwards again, this time following the effigy instead of the other way around even though it did stop whenever he did despite never looking back at him. As he kept walking, he realised that the featureless black expanse around him had started to change. The black was slowly replaced with a blurry blue colour and various glowing blue cubes popped up every now and then on either side of the path while smaller yellow cubes occasionally shot past.

Eventually, after walking for what felt like at least half an hour, Harry somehow ended up in a weird circular room of some sort. He had no idea how he had wound up there since he hadn't seen it coming but he had pretty much given up questioning what he saw by this point to avoid potential headaches. The room he was in strangely reminded him of a church or chapel for some reason, probably due the three huge stained-glass windows in front of him. The walls were either so black that nothing else could be determined about them or they were just shadows that encircled everything else, he honestly didn't know. The floor had a fancy design to it as well but the boy found his eyes instead drawn to the girl in brown lying in the middle of the chamber with another effigy in a heap next to her.

At first glance, he thought it was the teen he had met at the archery range but a closer look showed that, while she appeared similar, it was a different person as she seemed a bit shorter and the hair was both noticeably longer and a slightly lighter shade. Crouching down next to her, Harry gently shook her shoulder to try and wake her only to pull it back a moment later when he realised how cold she was. That was also when he noticed the red-stained rip in her clothes right where her heart was and he quickly looked away from that area when he caught a glimpse of what looked like bone amidst the large amount of crimson liquid.

"Hey, wake up," he pleaded, shaking her a bit more forcefully in a desperate attempt to avoid the truth. When he got absolutely no response from her, he couldn't really deny it any longer and he quickly shuffled backwards away from the corpse.

It was at that precise moment that the second mannequin clambered to its needle-like feet with a clatter and drove its equally needle-like arm into the shoulder of Harry's own effigy. Seeing the attack, coupled with the fear caused by the discovery of the dead student, Harry ran in the opposite direction as fast as his legs could carry him only to trip over a large brown lump and fall to the floor, his glasses flying from his face in the process. Fumbling around in a frantic attempt to find his taped up spectacles, he froze in pure terror when his hand found a red puddle and he saw the blurry but unmistakable sight of another unmoving teen, this one probably a male, staring back at him.

A clattering sound resulted in Harry turning just in time to see his effigy falling to the ground in pieces, it having been unable to do anything to defend itself without anybody issuing commands. From what little he could tell with his poor eyesight, the other effigy didn't look like it had taken any damage during the short and heavily one-sided slaughter and the young Potter watched in horror as it turned its attention to him. Fearing for his life, he clumsily shuffled backwards as his would-be executioner approached only for his back to hit a soft mound that he had a distinct feeling was composed of yet more dead bodies. With nowhere else to run, the boy could do nothing but watch as the effigy raised its arm with the clear intention of killing him.

"Stay away!" he yelled as he closed his eyes and curled up in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable.

Had he kept his eyes open, Harry would have seen the advancing doll suddenly get thrown backwards by an invisible force with enough strength to hit the shadow-like wall at the other end of the room. It wasn't just the effigy that had been affected either as the bodies next to him as well as the dozens of others that he had yet to notice were all violently pushed away from him with far more force than would be considered respectful for the deceased.

When several seconds went by without any pain, the suddenly exhausted boy looked up in confusion that only increased at the sight of the empty space around him. A clattering drew his attention to the far end of the room and he could just about make out something moving. The noises it made pretty much confirmed that it was the hostile effigy getting up for round two and the panicking boy curled up again in fear.

He didn't want to die. Whatever had happened to spare him moments ago probably wouldn't happen again. That meant that the deadly mannequin would kill him like the students he had found. Was this it? Was this how he was going to die? He still had no idea how he had ended up in this weird place or what his life had been like before. He could hear the effigy getting closer. Only a few more seconds and it would probably be close enough to end him.

"Please! I want to live!"

"Fear not, child! I shall save you!" Harry's final frantic plea for survival was answered by the declaration of a young woman. The words were accompanied by the sound of breaking glass as bright light cut through the gloom of the chamber.

Looking up at the completely unexpected sound, Harry saw the pale effigy right in front of him, reaching out with one of its sharp arms. However, before it could hit him, he heard a barely audible twang and the mannequin was thrown to one side. Turning to face the direction he thought the sound had come from, the child could make out what looked to be a person standing in the middle of the room holding a long black staff in their left hand. Without his glasses, he couldn't pick out all of the details but the newcomer definitely wasn't another effigy.

Based on the voice, the stranger was probably a woman and he could tell that her clothes were mostly a mix of green and black while long straw-coloured hair extended down to her waist. Something seemed a little odd about her appearance but, due to how blurry everything was, Harry simply couldn't figure out what it was right then. Without warning, she raised the object in her left hand while pulling her right hand back, which made him realise that it was actually a bow rather than a staff, before another faint twang reached his ears and something shot over his head.

Looking back, Harry saw the effigy slowly getting up again with something long and thin, probably an arrow, sticking out of its right leg. He tried to scramble backwards to get away again but suddenly found himself being scooped up in the arms of the woman that had come to his rescue. She quickly leapt back to the middle of the room to put some distance between her and the effigy and gently set him down again, her long bow reappearing in her hand the moment it was empty.

"Fighting before the contract has been properly established is a bit unorthodox but I guess it can't be helped," she absently commented while readying another shot.

"Contract?" the boy asked as he tried, but failed, to get to his feet. He didn't have a clue what she was talking about and the exhaustion that had unexpectedly descended upon him shortly before was starting to take its toll.

"The contract between Master and Servant," the archer explained as she loosed her arrow. "If you'll accept me as your Servant then I promise to protect you with my life," she declared before muttering something else that he barely caught. "Even if you don't, I'll still destroy this pathetic excuse for an effigy that dared to harm an innocent child."

"I'll accept you," Harry replied after a moment's thought. He still didn't understand what was going on but having someone around to protect him would undoubtedly be a good thing and she seemed knowledgable on the topic so she could probably explain it to him later.

"Very well." Even though she wasn't facing him and he likely wouldn't have been able to make out her facial features properly even if she was, the black-haired boy had the distinct feeling that she was smiling. "I am Servant Archer and my arrows shall strike down anything that threatens you."

As she spoke, Harry let out a yell as he felt a sudden warmth on the back of his right hand before a sharp stabbing pain assaulted him. He quickly looked at the area in question and saw an oddly-shaped red mark. Thinking that he had somehow started bleeding, he tried to wipe off the presumed blood but couldn't feel anything other than skin.

"Those are your Command Spells. They are proof of both our pact and our participation in the Moon Cell's Holy Grail War," the recently named Archer informed him as a final arrow struck the hostile effigy with enough force that it was ripped to pieces.

Unfortunately, the explanation was lost on him as the mark had gotten warmer and warmer since appearing. Coupled with the mysterious exhaustion he had been feeling since shortly before Archer appeared, it proved too much for him to handle and everything went black. The last thing he was aware of before consciousness completely escaped him was Archer's arms catching him before he could collapse.

"Rest now, Master. The War is just beginning and things will only get tougher from here."

A/N: I know I really shouldn't be posting a new story considering how long it's been since I last updated either of my other two but this idea has been bugging me since I started replaying Fate/Extra back in September last year after I found out, in the space of about ten minutes, that not only is there going to be a Fate/Extra anime starting sometime around the end of 2017 but also that there was going to be a follow-up game called Fate/Extella (which I have since bought and completed barring a couple of the harder to get trophies).

Unlike the many other times that random story ideas pop into my head, this one has been refusing to leave me alone, to the point that it is interfering with my ability to concentrate on my other stories. Normally, I can get the idea out just by writing a few notes but this was being particularly stubborn so I finally gave up last month and started writing it out properly. On the plus side, I have a bunch of notes for this (and I even know how it is going to end unlike my other stories where I only have a vague idea at best) and Fate/Extra's Holy Grail War has a rather rigid structure (it's a seven round elimination tournament) so it hopefully shouldn't be too difficult to write, though I am still not completely decided on a couple of the Servants Harry will be facing so I need to get thinking about that.

EDIT, PLEASE READ: Since I've been getting some comments/complaints of Harry being too weak, I'm adding this here to address the issue. Firstly, there are three main elements to the plot of this story: the actual Holy Grail War, Harry's relationship with Archer and Harry's development. While I will admit that Harry is pretty much useless as a Master at the start, since he's only eight and doesn't even know that magic exists, he isn't going to stay that way throughout the story (as should be obvious by his development being listed as one of the focuses of the story in the previous sentence). There is a tendency for Fate protagonists to start off weak only to develop their abilities and general competency quite well over a relatively short period of time and Harry is going to be no different. He's not going to be OP and able to take out Servants single-handedly (unless he gets very, very lucky) but I'm planning for him to become just as capable as any other Master by the end of the Holy Grail War.