This is my very first attempt at a fan fiction, you are warned! This particular plot-bunny refused to leave me alone so I finally decided to pick up my pen and write it down more in an attempt to make go away than anything else. I last did any creative writing in 1994 when I wrote a story about a squirrel and a cat for my GCSE English Lit exam so I make no claims as to the quality of my writing.

Harry Potter belongs to J K Rowling, the wonderful lady who has inspired so many people to try their hand at writing too. Warhammer 40k belongs to Games Workshop who have a very scary legal team. Please don't sue me, I'm not very well off and could only pay you in pictures. I only mean to pay homage to the wonderful, funny, baroque, gruesomeness that is WH40k.

Yes, it is a cross-over but set mainly in the Potter-verse.

Inquisitor Carrow and the God Emperor-less Heathens

Chapter 1

Harry Potter curled up tighter on the ratty old mattress. Outside, beyond the small window and the security bars, the sun beat down on neat suburban lawns. The distant sound of shouting children and a lone electric lawn mower drifted through the open window. It had only been several weeks earlier that a rogue house elf had appeared in his bedroom and caused havoc resulting in Harry being locked indefinitely in his room, bars installed on his window, and a cat-flap in the bedroom door. Occasionally, he'd be allowed out to go to the bathroom, and occasionally his aunt Petunia would push a bowl of cold soup through the cat-flap so he could eat.

The lack of food was slowly causing him to lose weight, strength and hope, but, being a boy with a big heart he was more concerned with his pet Snowy Owl Hedwig. Harry's uncle Vernon had padlocked Hedwig in her cage at the beginning of the holiday and steadfastly refused to listen to any and all of his loathed nephew's pleas to let her out. Hedwig had taken to sitting in the bottom of her cage over the last few days and Harry was getting very concerned. His normally lively and opinionated owl was increasingly listless and unresponsive. He was becoming very worried that she was going to die, and then he was going to be trapped in this small room full of Dudley's broken junk with the decaying corpse of his beloved familiar. He wondered how long it would be before he followed her, slowly fading away due to lack of food and water.

As the sun sunk below the horizon leaving sweltering, sticky heat and insect filled air Harry began to pray, to anything that was listening, for escape, for release from the slow death that he was certain was going to be his lot. As midnight approached and he slowly drifted into a delirious, nightmare filled haze something answered. The small, shabby room was filled with an eerie blue glow as little Harry was transported somewhere very different.

OOOOOO

Somewhere in the depths of CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, a professor of particle physics looked up from perusing some of the latest data. "Hmm, that was strange..." he murmured to himself, before going back to his work.

OOOOOO

In a castle in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands a silver and intricate instrument started whistling; soon many more joined it vibrating along their shelves or on their stands as they broadcast their distress to the circular office, its only current occupant a large and particularly magnificent phoenix.

Albus Dumbledore woke with a start at the awful racket straight into one of his worst nightmares. Racing out into his office in nothing but his nightshirt it became clear that indeed his worst nightmare had somehow come to pass. The wards at Privet Drive had fallen. Multiple scenarios raced through the old man's mind, each worst then the last, Harry kidnapped, run away or the absolute unthinkable, the brave young boy dead.

Quickly rounding up his deputy Minerva McGonagall and the very grumpy potions master, Severus Snape, they quickly flooed to the residence of Arabella Figg just a street away from the home of Harry's Aunt and Uncle.

Dumbledore strode along the sodium illuminated pavement expecting to see a smoking hole instead of No. 4 Privet Drive. Instead the house looked completely peaceful, neat and tidy and virtually identical to its neighbours. The old man heaved a sigh of relief. At least some of his worst worries were now calmed. "Well at least the worst doesn't seem to have happened," Dumbledore quietly said as he turned to his colleagues "Though I think we should still check inside to see if Harry is safe". McGonagall nodded in agreement but the increasingly irritated potions professor couldn't contain himself any longer.

"Headmaster, the little brat has probably just had a silly little temper tantrum. Maybe his relatives took his favourite toy away. I'm sure we will find the spoilt little toad as healthy and insolent as ever." He scowled horribly at his colleagues, resenting being woken up in the wee hours of the morning and dragged all across the country, just for the Potter spawn.

Dumbledore and McGonagall sighed at the resentment towards the last Potter that rolled off the man. A quiet Alohomora and they quickly gained entry to the sleeping house. A quick look around the ground-floor of the house revealed nothing apparently wrong. The house was very neat, obsessively so, to the point of sterility. The house had an almost show-room quality to it, as if nobody lived there. Even more disturbing was the lack of any images of Harry Potter among the many framed photographs of the resident family.

"A quick check upstairs, I think" Dumbledore murmured to McGonagall and Snape. They quietly made their way up the stairs past even more family portraits all showing the same three people. It was as if Harry Potter had never lived there at all. Upstairs Snape quickly discovered a horribly pink bathroom, and chintzy spare bedroom filled with a small army of simpering dog figurines. He quickly backed away from their soulless stares. Dumbledore, just by ear, found the master bedroom where Harry's aunt and uncle were fast asleep, he snoring like a revving motorcycle. McGonagall put her head around another bedroom door. The room beyond was filled with expensive gadgets and toys, clothes strewn across the floor and Harry's enormous cousin himself sprawled across the bed fast asleep, his duvet trickling slowly on to the floor. Quietly leaving, she turned to the remaining door. A slow sinking feeling filled her as she took in the numerous locks and the cat-flap. She'd told Albus these were the worst sort of muggles. "Albus" she hissed "I think it's this one". Dumbledore and Snape hurried over, hoping to get to the bottom of the night's events. Both looked at the door apprehensively. Why would a child's room need so many locks? Undoing the locks they slowly pushed the door open dreading what they would find.

OOOOOO

It was Halloween and Albus Dumbledore stood in his office looking out of the window. Even the beautiful view out towards the lake and the Forbidden Forest couldn't lighten his heart. There was no twinkle in his eyes as he thought of that awful night in August. Minerva had been so right; Vernon and Petunia Dursley really were the worst sort of muggles. He sighed sadly. They had found what had turned out to be Harry's bedroom to be all but empty except for his dying familiar locked in her cage. There had been no sign of the boy's occupation of the room apart from the hint of powerful magic quickly fading.

The Dursleys had had a very rude awakening where a large number of disturbing truths had been revealed about poor Harry's home life. Dumbledore had never been more enraged, upset and disappointed in his life. Poor Minerva had been practically in tears and was having difficulties holding herself back from hexing the disgusting excuse for a family. Severus had looked absolutely shell-shocked. The man had been nursing the idea of the last Potter as being a carbon-copy of his father, rich and spoilt. The poor man hadn't spoken for days afterwards. There was little they could do. The Dursleys seemed both delighted and completely unrepentant about it when they discovered their nephew had disappeared. In the end they retrieved the boy's meagre possessions and left.

The fall-out since had been awful. When it had been learnt that the boy-who-lived had gone missing and that he had an abusive childhood there had been a massive public outcry. How could Albus Dumbledore , defeater of Grindelwald and the only person that you-know-who was afraid of loose the boy-who-lived? How could he not have known about the boy's home life? After all he'd been reassuring everyone for years that Harry Potter was both safe and happy.

Dumbledore sighed lowering himself into his chair and closing his eyes as Fawkes tried desperately to comfort his human familiar. As Albus sunk into his depression and exhaustion there was a massive disturbance in the castle wards the like of which he never wanted to feel again. Racing to the window revealed the sight of distant students running away from the lake shore. Albus left his office at a sprint dreading what could have caused such a disruption in the castle's defences.

OOOOOO

In Geneva the professor of physics looked up from the computer screen. "Oh, back again" he thought to himself, before going back to his work.

OOOOOO

Panting from his mad dash (he was fit for his age, but there were limits), Dumbledore arrived at the lake shore with much of the rest of the teaching staff in his wake. A small group of students stood nearby looking at the reason for the disturbance with wide and frightened eyes. One of them, a Gryffindor piped up, "What is it Sir?"

Dumbledore stared at the thing. "I have no idea child."

This was completely beyond his experience. In his long life he had seen many strange and wonderful sights. This was possibly one of the most alien things he had ever seen. It was also possibly one of the most disturbing.

Sprawled in the mud was a roughly humanoid shape. Except nothing about it appeared remotely human. The massive thing, easily the size of Hagrid when standing was made up of massive slabs of metal, gigantic shoulder pads, hands so large he was sure that one of them would be able to completely enclose his head within its grip, massive greaves and huge feet all completed with a broad, broad chest. The helmet was partially hidden by a gorget and appeared to be modelled on the sort of designs worn by medieval knights, except this one had glass eye-lenses which gleamed a baleful red. Rearing up behind the helmet was a stylised eagle which spat blue sparks. The entire monstrosity was black with much gilded decoration trimming the edges of the greaves, bracers and shoulder pads. The theme seemed to be mainly skulls, chains and lettering spelling out phrases in a mangled form of Latin. The skulls seemed to be the decoration of choice appearing everywhere on the amour, from the shoulder pads, to the large stylised "I" on the thing's chest, even the knees; there was even a trio of decorated human skulls hanging from its belt.

And then there were the weapons. The skull theme continued on the hilt of the five foot long sword covered in esoteric runic inscriptions gripped in one hand and the odd and blocky gun in the other. Dumbledore thought it might be a gun, as he had seen such things during the struggle against Grindelwald, but this massive and blocky firearm bore little resemblance to what he remembered. The thing even had a long and thick staff attached to its back pack which was topped, predictably, with a haloed skull.

The entirety of the giant was liberally splashed with blood and gore and the armour itself was marked with fresh chips and scrapes in its paint. It was as if this skull obsessed stranger had just stepped out of some titanic battle just moments before.

Albus looked around at his staff who looked to be as horrified and bewildered as he felt. Flitwick appeared to be reading some of the inscriptions with appalled fascination. McGonagall looked from him to the amour and back again. Snape stared at the giant figure with narrowed and calculating eyes while Hagrid merely looked bewildered. Lockhart on the other hand had plastered on his best Witch Weekly smile on, "Fancy seeing a Greater Hairless Yeti here" he said cheerfully, "I fought one of those when I was in Bhutan. It had been..." till Hagrid stood on his foot. He swore it was an accident afterwards.

Albus finally managed to find his voice, "Well we can't leave it here can we", he turned to look at Flitwick, "Leviosa Maximus do you think?" a disturbed looking Flitwick just nodded.

OOOOOO

Three hours and with much swearing and magical ingenuity they finally managed to get the armoured monstrosity in to the infirmary. Leviosa Maximus wasn't up to the job at all, in fact Dumbledore and his staff had been completely unable to get any magic to affect the properties of the behemoth at all, not one feather or levitation charm had had any effect. At this point, Hagrid had come into his own. He had managed, along with some help from the older students to haul the giant on to an improvised and strengthened stretcher which they had then levitated. It had taken five people working together to get all the way to the infirmary. The death grip the giant had on its weapons had made it particularly difficult to get round some of the corners but nothing they tried to make it let go of them worked.

One of the students had cast a weighing charm on the stretcher, out of curiosity and had exclaimed with shock when it was revealed that the giant weighed nearly three tons. How the thing managed to move around was anybody's guess. It had obviously taken part in a battle. "Maybe they just fought very slowly." Dumbledore mused.

Flitwick sidled up to him, "Do you know if the Unspeakables or the Aurors have a department for fighting demons?" he asked obviously worried, "because a lot of the inscriptions and images on that," he pointed at the giant "are about destroying them and people who consort with them". Dumbledore stared. This was just getting worse and worse.

"Not to my knowledge" he replied feeling nervous.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when Hagrid suddenly froze where he was standing over the propped-up armoured giant. There was a distinct click and hiss. He looked around sheepishly, "I think I broke it" he mumbled "I jus' pressed down on the 'ead like." The helmet easily turned in his hands and came away revealing the visage of the most gigantic man they had ever seen. Hagrid stared brow furrowed before leaping back with a yelp, dropping the helmet on his foot. "Merlin's beard" he gasped out "it's...it's..." he pointed a shaking finger.