Disclaimer: I don't own shit lol

Chapter 3

Notes

Before we begin, I would like to point out a few things that people may have missed, judging from the reviews.

Number 1: Shirou has been de-aged. As pointed out in chapter 1, Luna mentions that Shirou looked to be around her age. Luna is around 13-14 at this time, so there's no way that Shirou, who's 17-18, is going to look her age. I know this is a bit of a cheap mechanic, but if Shirou's 17-18, that completely negates the possibility of Hogwarts without creating a whole bunch of other issues, and causing awkwardness with the cast as well. On the other hand, if Shirou is 14-15, which is the age I had in mind, I don't see any significant issues arising with the lore and cast, and it gives him the opportunity to develop more dynamic relationships more easily with the cast imo. While Shirou CAN be an onii-chan to anybody (lol) I would rather have him as a friend than a brother when dealing with the cast of the HP-verse. There's really nothing that changes about Shirou himself with this change, as his physical appearance only changes the reactions, restrictions and expectations of the world around him. And, I want to have this story flexible, and open up plot options, so that's that. If anyone has a problem with this, please pop me a review or a PM.

Number 2: When I look at the reviews for my questions, (Which I will provide at certain points in the story, to make the relationship of the reader and the plot more dynamic) I don't only look at the responses themselves, but also the justifications for each response. I've already noticed a few things I've completely missed lol. So, if you think I've missed something, or if you think there's proper justification for an answer that makes you confident in it, don't be afraid to provide critique or feedback! It's what keeps me going when I have a whole truck load of other duties xD.

Anyways, that's enough ranting from me xD. On with the story!

What in the world? Shirou Emiya deadpanned at the letter in his hands. While he had been given a basic briefing of magic via Xenophilius, he had no idea what these terms meant. Trace? Azkaban? From what he could discern, traces were scanners in some way or forms that tracked magic, and Azkaban was a location, quite possibly a prison. If it's being compared to the death penalty, must be a really bad place to go. Shirou grimaced. How did trouble seem to follow him around wherever in the world he went? He had no idea what he had done, and yet, once again, he had fallen into some kind of predicament that would possibly end his life. Except this time, he was even more at a disadvantage. Most of his troubles in the Holy Grail War were physical opponents. Gilgamesh, Berserker, Archer, they were all opponents that were physical opponents that he could battle with a sword- save for perhaps Archer, with his philosophical shenanigans. This, on the other hand, was a different kind of trouble. Trouble with the law, and to make it even worse, law that he had no flipping idea about.

Biting his lip, he quickly sprinted towards Xenophilius, who was just about to enter his house, and tapped his shoulder. The older man turned around in surprise, and looked at him in curiosity. "Did something occur? Your expression seems quite urgent at the moment, is there any thing you need, boy?"

Shirou nodded, handing him the letter. Xenophilius picked it up from his hands, and seemingly skimmed over it, looking at the contents of the letter. Instantly, the man's expression turned into a grimace, and he looked at Shirou with a slightly pointed, and yet curious expression. "How in the world did you trigger every single trace in the world? They're supposed to be unique to their owners. Somehow, you resonated with every single wand in the world, boy. And that makes you dangerous to the ministry's eyes. Do you know what the Wizengamot is, boy?"

Shirou shook his head. "Sorry, Mr. Lovegood." he said.

"Think of it as the wizarding high council. They don't summon you to the Wizengamot without good reason, but I suppose tripping every single trace in the world does have a rather astounding butterfly effect. Anyways, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I don't believe you have a choice in this matter. You need to stand trial in front of the Wizengamot." said Xenophilius, before stating, "Don't worry too much, boy, although they may be intimidating, they aren't unreasonable people. Nobody would suspect a child like you would intentionally trigger something like this. At worst, they would break a wand that doesn't exi-" he paused. "Actually, that might be a problem."

Shirou paused. "What could be a problem, Mr. Lovegood?" he asked.

Xenophilius scratched his chin. "The fact that you don't have a wand. Boy, let me tell you this- everyone in the world who's a wizard has a wand. It's the only commonly accepted way to do magic. Wandless magic is possible, but near impossible to do competently, and even harder to do on command. Hell- I wouldn't even expect Dumbledore to do wandless magic on command. So, without a wand, you would be considered a muggle, and have your entire memory wiped, and possibly even detained for what you did. Or, you would be considered as some new species of a magical creature. You don't want either of those options happening."

"So, what am I supposed to do?" Shirou asked. It's quite frustrating to be in such a situation.

"Hmm, you said you can create swords, right boy?" Xenophilius suddenly asked, his expression brightening. Shirou nodded. Then, Xenophilius exclaimed, "By any chance, could you create a wand?"

Shirou shook his head, having expected that question. "I only have an affinity for bladed objects, unfortunately." Xenophilius frowned, and seemingly went into deep thought for a few moments, before finally shaking his head.

"In that case, I'm not sure how you can get out of this predicament. You could technically buy a wand, but you don't nearly have enough time. If you read that letter, then the Ministry is probably on their way-" Xenophilius paused, his eyes widening. Suddenly, he grabbed Shirou's head and pulled it down. Surprised, Shirou obliged regardless, bending his legs so that the tall grass nearly completely covered his smaller frame.

Well, at least that's something useful I got from this entire ordeal. Shirou had been surprised to find out that he had de-aged from whatever the grail had done to him, but he wasn't complaining now. He had no idea what in the world was happening, but he trusted the older Lovegood enough to follow his orders.

"C'mon, Xenophilius. We know you have the boy. Hand him over to the ministry, and if he's really innocent, we'll let him go." a voice said. Shirou crawled closer towards the origin of the voice to get a better sense of what was being said. Then, he proceeded to reinforce his ears.

"I'm sorry Connor, but I'm afraid-" said Xenophillius, "-that I frankly have no idea what you're talking about. Are you aware that just because your spike happened in this general area doesn't mean that I have any affiliation with what happened to your traces? And besides, it was just an instantaneous spike, wasn't it? No harm done."

"Getting defensive, eh? Xeno, we both know that you live in the middle of nowhere. There's no way that this is a coincidence. And besides-" a new voice echoed- "-if there's no harm done, then you would just hand him over." Shirou could practically hear the smirk that was etched on the man's face.

"Except..." Xenophilius said with a newfound grit to his voice, "As I've said before, I know absolutely nothing about what is happening. Is that so hard to understand?"

"No, it's quite easy to understand." The first voice- Connor replied. "It's just hard to believe."

"And on what grounds do you have the proof to accuse me?" Xenophilius angrily said. "As far as I am concerned, you have zero evidence that I have any relation to what has happened."

"Simple math, old friend. The probabilities and the possibilities match way too much for this to be completely outside your knowledge." said Connor.

"I'd have you know that I do not appreciate such accusations leveled against me." Xenophilius retorted.

"I am aware, Xenophilius." Connor replied with a calm smile. "But you know what they say- duty comes first." With that, the man quickly reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a long, intricate stick that Shirou recognized as a wand. The magus gasped. This isn't going to be pretty.

Instantly, Xenophilius flashed out his wand as well- and just in time too- as a flash of red energy collided with his wand, only to be quickly absorbed. For the first time since arriving in this world, Shirou had a glimpse of how wizards fought. And from what he was able to see, their fighting relied on distanced shots of offensive magic- similar to caster classes. Except, unlike caster servants, the wizards relied on their wands for every spell in their arsenal. It was a back and forth tennis match of flashing lights, and the winner was going to be decided on factors like reflexes or smart, tactical decision making.

However, more than all of those factors, numbers played a big advantage. It seemed that regardless of the skill of a wizard, they could only become so powerful in terms of their ability with spells. Having companions completely would completely overwrite the rules of the game. This wasn't the holy grail war, where overpowered servants like Gilgamesh were floors above the rest of the crowd.

In short, it was similar to guerrilla warfare. Shirou wasn't quite sure if he liked that or not, but most of all, he knew one thing.

These people won't stand a chance against someone like Gilgamesh. To his fear and disappointment, despite their magic, wizards... didn't seem to be as powerful as servants, or even masters for that matter. Their biggest combat advantage was their versatility in spells, but the matter of fact was that they simply weren't fast enough to fight servants- especially Gilgamesh.

Shirou watched as Xenophilius was quickly put on the defensive by the two wizards, the man's arm swinging frantically to deflect the barrage of spells being sent to him while somehow managing to fire a few of his own in retaliation. But despite this, it was quickly obvious that the Lovegood was on the losing side of the fight.

That was when Shirou decided to intervene.

Quickly reinforcing his limbs, Shirou sped towards the two wizards, revealing himself from the bushes. With his reinforced ears, he could distinctly hear the three voices all react differently. Xenophilius gasped and whispered a quiet, "No..." while the other wizards reacted with varying degrees of shock.

"Connor! That's him, isn't it!"

"It must be."

Instantly, Shirou was the target of a barrage of red flashing spells that sped towards him. Shirou had to admit- the spells certainly weren't slow, compared to normal human standards. They fired off with speeds similar to arrows launched from high quality longbows.

But for Shirou, this was nothing. The two wizards gasped as the magus simply pivoted around to dodge the assault that they had launched, with Shirou speeding towards them almost instantly afterwards. His prana pulsing throughout his body, Shirou accelerated towards the two wizards, briefly wondering about whether he would use tracing or not.

No, it's too soon to do that. Tracing would be overkill here anyways, and it would give away my abilities. Frankly, that's probably the last thing I want.

So, Shirou settled for merely slamming his fist across a wizard's face. He wasn't the best at hand to hand combat, but against people who were, quite frankly, not in top notch shape, it was more than enough. As Shirou punted a left hook into the wizard named Connor, the older man cried out in pain before collapsing.

Traditionally, Shirou would have checked if the wizard was unconscious, but unfortunately, there was a spell flying at his face. Quickly, the magus rolled away from the spell's trajectory before closing the distance between him and the other wizard in a single leap. The spellcaster gasped audibly as Shirou kicked his legs, most likely spraining a couple joints.

And then, Shirou felt a man breathing down his neck.

As the magus turned around, he was greeted by the sight of the other wizard, who was bringing down a fist towards his face. But before Shirou could make a move, the man- Connor- was hit by a flash of red light that flung him across the grass. Despite the situation, Shirou winced in pity of the man. The fall would leave bruises for sure.

Twisting his head, Shirou glanced at his supposed savior. Xenophilius merely gazed at him with both curiosity and amusement. As Shirou walked back towards him, the older man let out an amused chuckle. "I'm quite impressed. I never thought I would be so enthralled by a muggle style of fighting. I must say, it's quite brutal, but much more interesting to watch."

Somehow, Shirou got the idea that wizards weren't into roughhousing, and much less martial arts.

"And by the way, while you were handling those two wizards, I think that I've come up with an idea. A completely bizzare one, but it might be the best chance we have as of now."

Shirou looked at Xenophilius with a serious expression. "I'm open to ideas. What do you have in mind?"

"Well... You see, in the wizarding community of this country, all of us know about a- well, a quite distinguished school..."

Honestly, Luna Lovegood had no idea what she was supposed to do with the guy that she had found. Her father had told her that the boy had died during the treatment, despite the fact that on the second day he seemed completely fine. Luna was sad, disheartened even, but she left the subject matter alone. She was smart enough to know that her father was lying.

She wasn't nearly as good enough with people to convince her father what exactly he was lying about. Luna suspected that it had something to do with the boy. Somehow, it all leads back to him... But for the first time in her life, Luna Lovegood had no clue how.

Everything inside her screamed that the boy was the key- what connected everything together. But that was all she knew, and to her surprise, it did nothing but intrigue her more.

Now, as Luna sat down with her fellow Ravenclaws, watching in awe of the Drumstrang students who were entering a hall with an impressive march. Even Luna had to admit that the performance was a sight to behold- if not slightly extra.

As the Drumstrangs settled down, Dumbledore took the stage once more.

"And finally, we will have one last guest in Hogwarts this year!" the headmaster yelled. Heads in the great hall turned towards him in curiosity, with Luna already making wild guesses with her head. A new school? A new teacher? A new student, even?

"With Mr. Crouch's permission of course, due to the extremely challenging and dangerous conditions of the Triwizard tournament, Mr. Crouch and I... Have decided to hire an assistant to Mr. Filch, who will act as a security guard during the games!" Dumbledore said. "After all, we can't have our champions dying on us." he added with a small chuckle.

"So, I would like to welcome our newest member of staff, Mr. Shirou Emiya!"

Shirou Emiya? That's the name of the boy that I found. Could it actually be him? For the first time in... quite a while, Luna found herself acting uncharacteristically attentive, her eyes gaining focus.

The great hall doors opened. A single figure strode in, dressed in simple clothing accompanied with a cloak. The newest member of staff was short, with exotic red hair and even stranger looking golden irises.

Luna Lovegood's jaw threatened to drop out.

Notes

So, in classic fashion, Shirou is a janitor lmao. Please leave a review, and sorry for such a long wait/short chapter. I have a tooon of real world problems right now, and I couldn't find the right time to write. I hope I can update sooner from now on though.

And yes, before you point it out, I am aware that the two wizards know his identity. We're going to get to that on the next chapter.