BOOK ONE

Arc One: Legend of the Keepers – Part One

Chapter One

July 30th 1999

Harry Potter was sitting on a sun-warmed rock looking out over a glassy lake, planning what he would do to celebrate his upcoming birthday when a feather-light brush of cold kissed at the arch of his cheek.

He looked up and blinked for a moment trying to process the sight in front of him.

Beneath his legs he could still feel the warmth of the day seeping into his skin from the stone, but the air above his nose was suddenly filled with fluffy ponderous snowflakes. They drifted fat and lazy, from a sky that was quickly turning from clear cornflower blue to an ominous gunmetal grey.

"What the—" he muttered to himself, climbing to his feet.

Was this normal?

He glanced around surreptitiously and found that everyone around him seemed just as amazed and confused. Their gawking faces tipped up to the sky as they scrambled out of the lake and emerged from the activity tents.

Not normal then.

Good to know that even in a place as different from Surrey as Japan they didn't often suffer snowstorms in July.

The wind picked up, moving across the campground, a wall of howling, frigid air and in a moment, everyone started moving, making a mad dash for the nearest cabins, abandoning sports equipment and leaving the tents to be flattened by the sudden gale.

In seconds the gentle flurry turned into a whiteout.

"Everybody, get inside! This way, hurry!" Harry heard a counselor call.

Harry turned and sprinted for the cabin he shared with two other boys.

This cabin also just happened to be closest to the lake, and was packed with eight other people who and taken shelter and were waiting for the summer blizzard to let up.

The other kids were murmuring amongst each other as they gathered around the single window and watched the snow pile up.

Kawakami-san, one of their counselors, banged open the door bundled up in a jacket that clearly didn't belong to her with clumps of snow falling off the brim of her hat to do a quick headcount and admonish everyone to stay inside until the snow let up, and then they were left to their own devices.

Harry wasn't eager to try his luck at grabbing a spot near the window, and sat himself next to his bunkmate, Koushiro seating himself cross-legged on the end of the other boy's bed.

Koushiro, rather than attempting to witness one of nature's stranger phenomena, was tapping at his keyboard rapidly and fiddling with his cell phone. His face twisting into a scowl when he didn't get the desired response out of either one.

He looked up briefly when Harry sat down next to him, offering a small quirk of his lips.

"Hey Harry," he greeted.

Harry cocked his head and gestured to the laptop in clear question.

Koushiro grimaced.

"It's still not working. This storm is making a mess of my infrared internet connection," he explained closing up his laptop with a brisk snap and strapping it back into his backpack.

Koushiro never went anywhere without his backpack, but as far as Harry knew the only thing that he ever carried in the thing were cables and other electronic devices, all of them far sleeker and more sophisticated than anything Harry was used to seeing.

"I was hoping to pull some of the satellite data for my analysis," he sighed, rubbing absently at the back of his neck. "Did you know irregular climate deviations have been happening all over the world for the past six months? There's been over a dozen reported cases over heavily populated areas but my analysis suggests that it's a much larger global pattern than anybody realizes."

Harry didn't understand everything Koushiro was trying to say, his vocabulary tended to be far more advanced than anyone else's, but he nodded in agreement just the same.

It was a safe bet. Koushiro was usually right, no matter what he was talking about.

As Koushiro continued to talk Harry couldn't help the fond smile that curled in the corner of his mouth, and let his mind wander.

Harry had never once enjoyed a summer holiday before this one.

In his experience the end of the school year heralded an extra six or seven hours or chores, presided over by his Aunt Petunia, and many more opportunities for his cousin, Dudley, and his little gang to engage in their favourite sport – Harry Hunting.

Harry Hunting was exactly what it sounded like, an excuse for Dudley's gang to chase him around the neighbourhood, and to beat him up if they happened to catch him. Fortunately, Harry was smaller, faster and smarter than Dudley and his gang and they couldn't often manage it. Whether they caught him or not though, the whole experience was unpleasant.

One memorable day about a year ago in the hottest part of August, Harry had been forced to wedge himself in behind a dumpster and pinch his nose against the stench of fetid garbage juice for a half-hour until they all finally went off. And then, of course, Aunt Petunia had taken one look at him and made him wash up outside with the garden hose and locked him straight back into his cupboard without supper.

That was what Harry had come to expect out of summer vacation, but now, sitting on a sun-warmed rock overlooking a glassy lake with not a single Dursley in sight, he was beginning to see the appeal.

This run of unexpected good fortune had all started a few weeks previous, when Harry's Uncle Vernon received the opportunity he had been waiting for his entire career.

Uncle Vernon worked in the sales office of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills, and had been handed the opportunity to negotiate an exclusive contract with the head of a wealthy Japanese construction company.

A successful negotiation would mean a promotion, a pay-raise, a new car and the opportunity to purchase a lovely vacation home in Majorca.

These were all important things for Uncle Vernon. This was why, when his boss informed him that he and his family would have to move to Tokyo for half the year while the details were finalized to foster good relations between the two companies, Uncle Vernon told him that it was no problem.

Aunt Petunia had been a bit upset as there were a number of reasons why this would, in fact, be a problem, and the least of those reasons had been what they were going to do with Harry.

Harry's existence was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Dursley household. His mother had been Aunt Petunia's sister and she and his father had died in a car accident when Harry was small.

He had been living with the Dursleys ever since.

Harry wasn't precisely sure why, but his relatives had always hated him from as far back as he could remember. He was about as welcome in their house as mouse-droppings and they liked to think of him as though he were something slimy and repulsive that could never understand them.

They liked to demonstrate this in a number of small but important ways.

Rather than giving him one of the two extra bedrooms in their house on Privet Drive Harry had been squeezed into the cupboard under the stairs. Rather than buying him jumpers and trainers that fit, Harry had always been clothed in the rattiest of Dudley's castoffs. Rather than giving him a place at the dinner table he could eat scraps from their family meal as soon as the cooking and washing up was done.

The Dursleys may have suffered him to live in their house, but he wasn't a part of their family.

When he was quite small this had bothered him, but as he grew up a bit it became just another fact of life and he could no more change the Dursleys attitude towards him than he could change the color of the sky.

The problem, he'd determined, was that the Dursleys had a fixation that bordered on obsession with being the same as everyone else and, even as a small baby, Harry had been different.

If they could have locked him away forever and denied his very existence the Dursleys would have done so in a heartbeat, but by the same token if they ever wanted to be rid of him, they needed to let him into the world to attend school.

As it was, the only people in Little Whinging who knew that Aunt Petunia was his guardian were his teachers, the principal of the school, and the office secretary. The rest of the neighbourhood thought of him as 'that Potter boy' and were quite certain he was bad news.

What it came down to was that Uncle Vernon's coworkers had no clue that he had a nephew, much less that the boy was living with him, and Uncle Vernon was determined to keep it that way. Since they couldn't leave him with anyone in England for six full months the Dursleys were forced to take him along to Japan and arrange for him to disappear until the start of the school year.

Uncle Vernon had quickly found what he deemed the perfect solution.

They had barely arrived in Tokyo when Harry and his meagre luggage were hustled onto a bus full of children around his age and driven into the countryside for two months of educational and organized fun at a sleep-away summer camp.

Harry had never been to camp before, and neither had Dudley, so he hadn't been entirely sure what to expect.

Summer camp, according to the things Harry heard eavesdropping on his classmates was meant to be fun and exciting.

In practice, camp turned out to be a little uncomfortable and even a bit boring. The activities were regimented and educational, and the counselors were all very strict and responsible, and Harry was stuck in a strange place, with strange people, who often spoke about as much English as Harry did Japanese.

Despite this, camp was still, in Harry's considered opinion, loads better than spending the hols at Privet Drive. He had very few chores, all the food he could want at mealtimes, and plenty of time in between activities to lie in the sun and just relax.

The only thing that would have made the entire experience better was if he'd had more opportunity to learn Japanese before they'd left England. After three weeks he was finally starting to pick it up more easily, and could generally understand what people were talking about, but had a lot of trouble speaking and answering questions.

If he could speak proper Japanese, Harry was convinced, he might have half a chance at making a friend, something that he'd never had before.

Back home, Dudley was always quick to beat up anyone who had the passing thought about being nice to Harry. But since Dudley wasn't here, Harry wanted to at least make an attempt at making a friend.

Harry had decided early on that he would like to try to befriend the outgoing Yagami Taichi who was a little strange, wore goggles on his head, was obsessed with football and collected friends the way other people collected stamps.

It actually probably wouldn't have been that difficult to go up to Taichi and offer to join in one of the seemingly endless parade of pick-up games and make friends that way, but as the days stretched on it became more and more difficult to just—do.

Koushiro, was really cool too, Harry thought wistfully. He was patient and smart and didn't mind when Harry had to have things explained to him, or stayed up late reading because he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep.

Likely, this was because Koushiro was always so absorbed in whatever it was he was doing on his computer that he barely noticed these oddities.

It was hard to consider someone who devoted a maximum of half his attention to him a friend, but it was the closest thing to friendship Harry had ever experienced, and better than Harry probably deserved.

Harry was jolted out of his musings when Taichi shouted: "It's finally stopped!" and promptly flung the door open and ran out into the fresh snow, letting in a shocking gust of cold air.

The blizzard had stopped as suddenly as it had sprung up, and the other kids were filing out of the cabin eager to play in the two or three inches of snow that had settled on the ground and in the trees, coating the campground in a layer of twinkling white.

"I'm gonna build the biggest snowman!" one of the younger kids declared.

An older guy, Yamato, ran out after him, calling: "Takeru be careful!"

One of the girls shivered in her yellow and white tank top standing in the doorway.

"It's so cold, it's hard to believe it's really summer, and I didn't think to bring a jacket."

"Me neither," admitted Koushiro. "I admit, I hadn't predicted that I would be affected by these strange climactic phenomena."

The girl hummed her agreement, adjusting her hat to better cover her ears.

"I hope the camp has extra blankets in storage or this is going to get uncomfortable pretty quickly."

Despite the cold, she followed the others outside and Koushiro followed her, scooping his backpack up and settling it over his shoulders.

Harry didn't have a jacket either, he didn't actually own one, but he did have a flannel shirt that was warm if a bit worse for wear, and he paused to dig it out of his luggage, which left him alone with an older boy he hadn't seen much around the camp and a girl he'd talked with a few times who's name was Mimi.

The boy was tall and skinny and wore glasses like Harry. Although, unlike Harry, his frames weren't held together with tape and determination. He took one horrified look outside and began to step back further into the cabin.

"I was worried about catching a summer cold, but this, this is even worse," he said. "If nobody wants to wait inside, we should at least gather everybody up and head for the counselors' cabin."

Mimi bounced up next to him and shoved him outside in front of her.

"You're too serious Jou, look at how pretty the fresh snow is! I should have packed my fluffy pink boots!"

Harry yanked his flannel shirt on and followed them to where the rest of the kids had gathered on the shore of the lake.

A couple of them were lobbing snowballs at each other and Mimi was loudly contemplating the benefits of getting the back of her dress wet in order to make a snow angel.

Harry jogged up to Koushiro, trying to ignore the wetness seeping into his socks through the holes in his trainers, and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Can you work it now?" he asked in halting Japanese, gesturing at his computer

"Oh! No, it's no good," Koushiro said. "The storm is still in the atmosphere. Just because its stopped snowing doesn't mean that we aren't technically right in the middle of the storm. If I had internet access, I could pull up satellite images of the storm cell and show you but—"

"Hey! What's-your-name, foreign kid! Koushiro! You guys have got to see this!" Taichi called, waving them over.

Sharing a glance Harry and Koushiro jogged forward to join the others standing on the snow-covered outcropping overlooking the lake.

"Up there, you see that?" said Taichi, pointing.

The sky was clear of clouds, despite the recent snow, and just above the horizon a diaphanous curtain of pale blue, green, and pink wavered.

Harry gaped. He'd never seen anything like it.

"Wow, it's so beautiful, magical even!" said Mimi.

"Yes, but what is it?" said Koushiro.

"Maybe an aurora?" suggested the girl in the hat.

"You mean aurora borealis, the northern lights? That's impossible. We're way too far south, you'd never see them in Japan, not even in Hokkaido," Koushiro replied.

"Yeah, I guess, but what else would you call this?" the girl retorted.

"Unknown atmospheric phenomenon," Koushiro answered promptly.

"Uh, huh, that's really great guys but I really think we should get back inside before we all come down with pneumonia," said the boy with the glasses.

"And miss this?" said Yamato, "The sky is like…short circuiting."

"What is that?" said Taichi.

Harry squinted up into the sky past the lazily undulating aurora, and spotted it.

A whirling vortex of green was forming past the trailing edge of the aurora and slowly growing larger. In the eye of the vortex was a pale light that was growing steadily brighter.

Harry waited for Koushiro to give some kind of an explanation but he could present any theories, the light suddenly split into eight separate pieces and sped towards them like falling stars.

"Look out!"

The kids all shrieked and ducked down with their arms over their heads.

Yamato was quick to cover Takeru, sheltering him with his own body.

The lights crashed into the ground booming crack, like thunder, sending up clouds of steam where they hit the snow. The ground shook at the impact and snow and dirt went flying in great puffs.

"Everyone, alright?" asked the girl when the snow had settled back to earth. "No injuries?"

"We're alright," said Yamato.

"All good here," added Taichi.

"That was scary," said Mimi, clutching the brim of her hat.

"What was that?" Jou asked.

Koushiro inched towards the nearest fallen star on his hands and knees.

"Maybe a meteorite?" he suggested peering down at the hole.

Whatever it was, it was still glowing blue and bright where it had fallen.

"I don't think meteors do that, but what do I know," said Taichi.

"Not much," Yamato retorted, leaning over to get a closer look.

"No Taichi's right, for once," said the girl. "I've never seen anything like this."

"Guys, I really think we should go get an adult," Jou said, pushing his glasses a bit further up his nose. "We don't want to be messing around with these things, who knows what they could do to us? They could be dangerous. They could be radioactive!"

The others mostly ignored him.

Koushiro scrambled to his feet, gasping, as the lights, whatever they were, floated up out of the snow, each one bathed in a ribbon of soft blue light.

They all stared, transfixed.

Taichi was the first one brave enough to reach out to try and grab one.

When nothing happened to him the others quickly followed suit, although Jou took so long to work up the courage to do it that his, whatever it was, almost escaped.

As soon as Harry touched the light nearest to him, he felt a sense of rightness wash through him. Like a puzzle piece slotting into place.

The light faded and left him holding a little electrical device.

It fit easily in the palm of his hand, vaguely square in shape, with a black screen and a few small buttons set into the front, as well as what looked like a squat rubbery antenna. The back had a small clip and Harry quickly followed Taichi's example and clipped the little doodad to his belt

Koushiro was examining the device in his hand with naked fascination poking carefully at the buttons and squinting at the strange runic symbols etched around the screen.

The girl seemed equally fascinated, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip as she flipped hers over.

"What are these things do you think?" she asked.

"Not a pager or a cell phone, but something along those lines technologically speaking. My guess is some sort of miniature remote digital apparatus," Koushiro answered. "Though why something like this would be falling out of the sky is beyond the scope of my imagination."

"It's funny isn't it," said Yamato.

"What's funny?" asked the girl.

"I mean that there's one for each of us, isn't that kind of weird?"

"Very weird," agreed the girl.

"What, no instructions?" joked Yagami, tapping the girl's device with a finger.

"Stop that Taichi, you'll break it!"

"Did you see how hard it hit the ground?" retorted Taichi.

"Hey, look," Takeru piped up. "Mine's doing something."

Harry noticed that the screen of Takeru's device had gone from black to glowing green, as had Koushiro's and the girl's. Checking his own little device, he saw that it was doing the same.

"Another synchronized event. I wonder if they're being activated and controlled by a remote server," muttered Koushiro.

"Oh no!" shrieked Mimi pointing with one hand while the other hand kept a firm grip on her precious hat. "The lake!"

The group looked up from the strange electrical thingamabobs to see that, for no apparent reason, the lake had risen up to become a sheer wall of water.

"Run!" someone shouted.

"There's no time, everybody just hang-on to something!"

Harry yelped as suddenly the ground under his feet twisted and the world seemed to tilt and shift. Someone went screaming past him.

Harry scrabbled at the snow and dirt everything feeling strangely frictionless and insubstantial under his fingers as he slid, tumbling sideways into what had been a lake and was now doing a fair impression of the Parting of the Red Sea.

Harry thought he heard Mimi's voice, but as he tumbled through water and air and lights and color, he became so confused he couldn't be sure if he'd actually heard her or if it was just something he'd imagined.

Then he hit something solid and everything went black.

EDITED 05.12.2020

AN: For those of you who were optimists and followed me during my five-year hiatus, congratulations! Your efforts have paid off!

I began this fic seven years ago in 2012 and came to the conclusion that it needed to be completely edited five years ago…and only just getting around to actually committing to this rewrite here in 2020 (thanks COVID). Funnily, I began serious work on this rewrite once before, almost two years ago precisely in May of 2018 but only got through one chapter (this one, which I then edited again...) before stopping. Still, this fic, much like Digimon Adventure 01, holds a special place in my heart and I can only hope that I am now more equal to the task of bringing my imaginings to life.

Needless to say, my writing style, my process, and my ideas about where this story should take us have changed a lot in the past five years and I can only hope that those of you who started this journey with me seven years ago can benefit from the improvement.

The biggest changes from the original fic include not following the English Dub word for word, using the Japanese names for the original chosen children, and a change in Harry's digimon (which hurt me to do but will hopefully make the visuals easier for readers), and crest.

This is a big project so we're breaking it down into baby steps, I hope to be finished Arc One - Part One by the end of May 2020. It is outlined to be 8 chapters, including the rewrite of the six original chapters I had posted, covering the first 8 episodes and about 60k words with an average of 6000 words per chapter...so now that I've said that lets see how that goes lol

There will be no explicit romantic pairings in Book One which will cover all of Digimon Adventure 01. If I ever make it through Book One and Two, starting within Book Three projected pairings are as follows:

Taichi/Yamato

Harry/Koushiro

Mimi/Jou

Sora/Hikari

Takeru/Ken

I'm putting this here because I don't want to be accused of not warning y'all. There will eventually be slash, femslash, and het relationships...in about 400k words...No explicit content will be posted on , per site guidelines. If it really bothers you feel free to turn back now, or at any other point.

I am cross-posting on ao3 under the same title and pen-name for those of you who prefer ao3 as a platform.

As a part of this rewrite I went through and read every single review for a second time paying particular attention to your questions, thoughts and criticism and I am overwhelmed by the amount of support I've received over the years with this story. In hopes that this will give a little something back to you guys I am committed to responding promptly to all reviews and comments on this work starting today and will be glad to answer any other questions there!

Til next time!

Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon Adventure 01 or Harry Potter.