When Portkeys Go Wrong

Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Avatar: the Last Airbender. Most of these words are mine, excluding a few quotes in the beginning of the fic that I used to show parallelism between what really happened and the fic.

The old, blackened kettle glowed blue, ready to transport Harry Potter and four of the Weasleys back to number twelve, Grimmauld place. As he stared at the portkey, Harry recounted the recent turn of events in his mind: he'd had a vision of a snake biting Ron's father, told Dumbledore immediately, and found out that what seemed like a dream had turned out to be true. Now he would be taken to Grimmauld place with the rest of the school-aged Weasleys to wait. His head spun slightly.

"You have all used a portkey before?" Dumbledore asked them. Nodding, Harry and his friends pressed their fingers to the glowing kettle. The portkey activated, and Harry plummeted into the confusing state of portkey travel. The floor disappeared, the room around him swirled, and everything dissolved into a rush of shapeless colors. He felt Fred's body—or was it George's?—continually crashing into his. Suddenly the rush stopped, the landscape stood still, and the outlines of his friends reemerged. Harry smiled with relief as his feet touched the ground. It felt good to have solid earth, covered with layers of snow, underneath him. Wait. Snow? Wasn't he supposed to be inside, in Grimmauld place? For the first time, Harry looked up. Snow stretched across the barren, icy land for miles. Water surrounded the sandless beach, and icebergs floated atop a frigid sea.

Harry noticed that the others all stared in one direction. They each wore a look of surprise, and slight awe. Presumably, Harry thought, the odd setting shocked them. Grimmauld place resided neither near a beach nor near icebergs. They had obviously landed in a foreign country. When he turned around, however, his mouth hung agape from a new shock.

While he had been facing a snowy coast, the Weasleys had been staring at a different view. A titanic metal ship had beached itself on a nearer shore. In front of it stood a teenager with a ponytail his nearly bald head, scar on his left eye, and a scowl on his impatient face. Near him a boy with a blue arrow on his bald head leaned slightly on a wooden staff. Behind this boy were what looked to be a small village of people that rather resembled the Native Americans Harry had once seen in a muggle schoolbook. A boy with a half-painted face around Harry's age was getting up from a fall in the snow.

All of these people gawked at Harry and his friends. Harry and his friends gawked back. Finally, the bald boy stepped forth.

"Hi, I'm Aang." The boy introduced himself. A smile sprawled across his face and a playful glint flitted in his gray eyes. His youthful voice gave Harry a friendly feeling.

"I'm—" Harry began to introduce himself back, but the scar-faced teenager cut him off before he could say anything else.

"I don't care who you are," impatience and venom colored his voice, "but the Avatar is mine." Having said his share, the teenage boy proceeded to shoot fire from his palm, straight at the boy named Aang. Harry's eyes widened at the feat. This boy could create fire! But how? He became even more awed and bewildered when Aang repelled the attack with a simple twirl of his staff. The fire boy blasted more flames at Aang. This time the bald boy jumped up with unusual height and grace to avoid the attack. He then created a ball of moving air and rode on it, away from the teenager's attacks. Harry marveled. He could see the Weasleys doing the same. With each blow of fire, a part of the wintry wonderland melted. The igloos that Harry assumed the village lived in grew lopsided and deformed from the heat of the attacks. Harry suddenly realized how cold he felt, but quickly forgot as the battle between Aang and the irritable teenager came to a halt. The boy stopped moving around and his swirling ball of air vanished.

"If I go with you, will you leave these people alone?" Aang demanded. The ponytailed teenager nodded his head. A man who, Harry assumed, worked for the teenager began to lead Aang away.

"No, Aang! Don't do this!" The voice belonged to a girl from the village that looked about Ginny's age. Her brown hair hung braided down her back, with two thin loops of it adorning the sides of her head. Her face expressed concern for the boy. Harry wondered briefly if she was his girlfriend.

"Don't worry, Katara, it'll be okay," Aang attempted a reassuring smile.

"Head a course for the Fire Nation. I'm going home," The teenager commanded his crew, as they began boarding the metal ship.

All at once, Harry's feelings of awe abandoned him, and he suddenly realized the gravity of the situation. This friendly boy, Aang, was giving himself up to the enemy in order to protect the little village. Who knew when, or even whether, he would escape? A better question, Harry thought, was why anyone would want to capture an innocent boy in the first place. It didn't really matter though, because no matter the reason, Aang was still being led away. He was still, potentially, in danger.

On an impulse, Harry raised his wand. Aang and the teenager were almost in the ship, but not quite. If he aimed carefully, he might make a difference. Wand pointed, he whispered two words.

"Petrificus totalus."

The spell reached its mark, and the scarred teenager grew rigid as a board and fell flat on his back in the snow. The villagers gasped at his trick and stared at him in, half fearing him, half fascinated by him. Frightened at Harry's power, the teenager's men hurriedly scooped up the rigid body and made a hasty exit on the dull gray ship. The girl that had spoken to Aang earlier rushed to his side, quickly undoing the bindings around his wrist that the teenager's men must have tied when Harry wasn't looking. After hugging the girl, the boy made his way over to Harry and his friends. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Harry spoke.

"Since I was so rudely cut off before," he said, "I'm Harry Potter."