Disclaimer:

I Don't own anything related to the right of Harry Potter or Warcraft.

Author's Note:

Inspired by The Black Scorpion by etincelle047, which I believe has been abandoned, and Wizard Runemaster by plums, which is a pretty new story. Also damn good. I truly recommend reading them. Honestly, it seems all the decent Harry Potter/Warcraft crossovers start in either Felwood or Wyrmrest Temple. Felwood seems to be the only places that has a good "feel" for a beginning, so a number of things are pretty similar in the first few chapters, but I tried to spin a half-decent story. Let me know if I succeeded.

(Feb. 19th, 2013) - Changed some things, such as the amount of time that had passed between the end of the war and Harry opening the portal. Also added a few things and made some minor edits. I think it reads better now.

(Mar. 18th, 2013) - Added some memories and minor edits. It more than doubled the word count for this chapter.

(Aug. 20th, 2013) - Reworked and tweaked.

Oh, and no Beta, so all mistakes are my own.

Publish Date: Jan. 28th, 2013

Update Date: Aug. 20th, 2013


Chapter One

The More Things Change...

London, England

Harry opened the front door and entered his flat with a tired sigh, mindlessly hanging his dark gray cloak up on the hook next to the door with one hand, a habit thoroughly ingrained over more than two decades of repetition. Still on autopilot, he moved down the short hallway and into his office, maneuvering smoothly over to the rickety desk covered with stacks of parchment, every inch of every piece filled with his small, neat handwriting and drawings of rune schemes. The entire office, specifically the area around the desk, was an absolute walking hazard for anyone but him. Books with scraps and pieces of parchment stuck between pages overflowed the bookshelves and spilled into piles and stacks, some taller than he was, on any available surface, the most commonly used ones scattered haphazardly within arms reach of the chair. The rubbish bin was beginning to overflow with balled up pieces of parchment, empty whiskey bottles, and take-away containers, the calendar on the wall showing a date months past.

Hermione once called it a mess. He called it 'organized chaos'. That alone caused a rant about how chaos was inherently unorganized, and how he should just call it what it was. A mess. He still refused to budge on the issue, but that was more stubbornness than anything else. It was his office, he'd call it whatever he liked, full stop.

Harry flopped down into the well-worn chair, causing it to creak and groan in protest to the sudden weight. It was a sound he had become used to. At first it had made him jump slightly every time, thinking that the poor piece of overused furniture would collapse in a gentle breeze, but after a while he came to realize that it was just old, and not really in danger of structural failure, so he began ignoring the noises. He absently reached into an open drawer, pulled out a half-full bottle of firewhiskey from the night before and took a long pull straight from the bottle, draining nearly half of what was left in one go. He pulled the glass container away from his lips with a heavy sigh and set it down on the only empty spot on the desk in front of him with practiced ease, his mind racing over memories and information, his body absolutely still.

Twenty-three years since the end of the war.


It was over. Voldemort was finally dead and gone and couldn't come back. The silence that filled the room was deafening, and no one moved. Then, all at once, every person in the Great Hall let out a massive cheer, screaming in joy at the top of there lungs. Clapping, whooping, cheering filled the castle, and the word was quickly spread.

Voldemort was dead.

All through the celebrations, Harry just stood there, motionless, his holly and phoenix feather wand in one hand and the Elder Wand in the other. He couldn't seem to grasp what he was seeing before him. The prophecy was complete, he didn't have to keep looking over his shoulder for those red eyes chasing him. No more visions. No more forced nightmares. He was completely and utterly free. He stared at Voldemort's lifeless form with one single thought running through his mind over and over.

What do I do now?


After he took down Voldemort, one of the first things he did was replace his glasses with permanent magical contacts with some of the same enchantments that Mad-Eye's fake eye had been enchanted with. He had been rendered effectively blind in the middle of a fight far too often for him to be comfortable wearing them any more. He was just glad his hearing was so good to compensate.


"Accio glasses!"

The well worn and heavily repaired frames ripped away from Harry's face, rendering the world into a shapeless, blurry mass. He squinted in a futile effort to see at least a bit of what was going on around him, he could still hear the battle continuing, but Harry couldn't cast at anything, afraid he'd hit his friends instead.

"Can't hit what you can't see, can you, boy!" His opponent stupidly mocked.

Harry half-grinned and fired off a vicious bone-breaker. He was rewarded with a number of loud snaps and his mocker screaming in pain.

He could still hit what he could hear.


It took him a few weeks to get used to the multiple mentally activated enchantments on them, sometimes activating one on accident and once nearly blinding himself when the ability to see magical auras suddenly came on full blast in the middle of Diagon Alley.


Harry was walking down the Alley with Ron and Hermione, laughing and joking. Hermione split off to go to the bookstore, as usual, and he and Ron headed over to Quality Quidditch Supplies. They could see a new type of broom had come out recently from half-way down the Alley, and they were dying to know more about it. Harry idly wondered what kind of runes and enchantments went into making a broom, and was suddenly assaulted with the blindingly bright lights of every magical aura in Diagon Alley. Considering everything in the Alley had some kind of enchantment on it, every building had wards for protection, every person gave off an aura, all Harry could see was a wall of light. He snapped his eyes shut and gave the mental command for his Aura Sight to stop, cautiously opening his eyes after a moment and trying to blink the spots from his vision.

"Are you okay mate?" Ron asked, concerned at Harry's sudden stopping and acting as if he couldn't see.

Harry turned to his friend and said jokingly, "Yeah, just blinded by the sheer awesomeness of that new broom!" He had yet to tell his friends about the enchantments on his contacts. He wanted to get used to them first before he brought it up.

Ron grinned and clapped him on the back, saying, "I don't blame you, mate. We were all like that when the Firebolt came out, and this new one looks like it's even better!"


After that he got a job with Ron and Neville as an Auror. Tried to make the magical world a safer place. Hunting down and defeating dark wizards and witches seemed to be what he was best at, so he figured he might as well get paid for the effort, and being someone 'for-hire' didn't really appeal to him. After the year of being on the run hunting for snake-face's Horcruxes, Auror training was actually pretty damn easy. He, Ron and Neville shot through it like a rocket and outclassed every other recruit in the program. The three of them finished training in just a few months instead of the three years it was supposed to take.


Harry, Ron and Neville grinned as the official Auror badges were pinned to their uniforms, right over their hearts. They flew through the training program in four months. They knew they still had some things to learn, but it was all things that only experience could teach them. Harry looked down at the badge on his chest and grinned wider. He had a job that would allow him to protect people, something that he accomplished that he felt proud of, and no one could say he did it with his name, because Ron and Neville were with him the entire way.

The three of them earned this, and that was the most important thing in the world at the moment. The three friends looked at each other, silently agreeing on one immediate thing.

There was going to be a hell of a party that night.


Twenty-one years since he took the job in the Department of Mysteries.

It was two years after enrolling in the Auror program before he realized they only wanted him as a fucking mascot. A figurehead for them to parade around like a damned puppet. He rarely had any real assignments, mostly public appearances and low-risk details. He quickly grew tired of it.


Harry stormed into the Director's office after receiving his new assignment. Once again it was Patrol Duty in the Alley. He didn't mind it at first, back when he, Ron and Neville all drew short straws and got Alley Patrol, but the two of them were now routinely being assigned to raids and manhunts. The least boring assignment he had gotten so far was this, and this was bordering on mind-numbing. So far, most of his work had been to make public appearances, something he loathed with every fiber of his being.

He stood in front of the Director and said, "Sir, why are the brand new recruits being sent out on manhunts for Death Eaters? Here I am stuck with more Alley Patrol, and I clearly remember you telling me two years ago that those patrols are for the new recruits to get their feet wet and get a feel for the job."

The director stammered and shuffled the papers on his desk before speaking in a rush, "You've already done your job with Voldemort, there's no need to risk yourself with something dangerous!" The director seemed to realize his mistake the moment he made it, and tried to backpedal to save himself.

Harry ignored it, and just barely ignored the overwhelming urge to rip his badge off and shove it down the director's throat to shut him up and keep him from digging himself further into the hole he was in already.


He used a few connections he had made over the years and transferred into the Department of Mysteries, a place where he could quite literally hide behind a mask and advance on his own merit instead of his name. Since the Director of the DoM was the only one who knew who he was and what he wanted, coming to an agreement was actually pretty simple.


Harry sat in front of the Director of the DoM. The Director just asked him why he wanted to transfer into his department when he had a perfectly good job in the Auror Corps. Harry leaned back in his chair, organizing his thoughts before saying, "I want to work somewhere that will utilize my skills, instead of my name. The Auror's office is more concerned with using my reputation as the bloody 'Man-Who-Conquered' instead of using my skills. They want a mascot, and that's something I'll never be able to stomach."

The Director was quiet, motionless, simply staring at Harry. Harry stared back and refused to start fidgeting. Finally the Director spoke. "I believe you will fit in very well here, Mr. Potter. Welcome to the Department of Mysteries."


He went on a number of dangerous assignments, most times alone or only with Dobby, but all that did was quickly erode what little faith he had left in the magical world and its inhabitants. It was a year into his tenure at the Department of Mysteries when he came up with his absolutely ridiculous idea. He tried to shake it off, but it kept popping up in his mind, and pretty soon he was trying to find a way to make it happen.


Harry was tired. He had just finished a long term reconnaissance mission and some of the things he had seen... He was tired of seeing such depravity, tired of not being able to do anything to help because of orders, tired of others ignoring it simply because it didn't directly affect them, tired of his unwanted fame, tired of not even being able to walk out of his own bloody flat without being mobbed. He was just plain bloody tired.

A thought bubbled up to the surface of his mind, something that he had idly toyed with and discarded as an impossibility. A thought that he might be able to find a way to get away. A thought that might let him find some peace and quiet, even if it was only for a bit. He never really did look into it before, he just dismissed it out of hand and promptly forgot about it.

Maybe it was time to do some research. The DoM had the one of the largest repositories of knowledge in the world. Maybe it was time to put it to use.


Twenty long years of study and research in between assignments.

He chuckled humorlessly at that last thought. A year into the job at the DoM and he was sick of damn near the entire magical world. He only stayed in the Department so he could have unfettered access to the centuries of secret books and notes that they kept in meticulous detail. Runes, wards, combat, wandless and elemental magics, enchantments and various other things thought lost to the ravages time was quite literally at his fingertips. He spent a lot of time over the years copying those tomes and scrolls and notes for himself. He had a number of expanded trunks to hold his steadily growing personal library.

All he could say about that was one thing. Time-Turners were an absolutely wonderful invention.

When he wasn't working, he was researching and training, keeping his skills from the war and his assignments razor-sharp. He sunk into his personal research and training with a vengeance, barely taking enough time to eat or sleep. Quite a few times in the early years after he transferred to the Department, Hermione had found him slumped over his desk, books piled around him, his head pillowed on stacks of parchment, his entire body covered in cuts and bruises.


Hermione used her key to get into Harry's flat, calling his name out loudly as she came in. He was supposed to meet everyone at her and Ron's house for dinner, but he was late. Again.

When he didn't answer, she thought maybe he had just lost track of time and he was already on his way over. On a whim, she glanced into the room he was using as an office, finding him sitting in his rickety creaky old chair with the squeaky wheel that drove her insane, his head pillowed on his arms on top of a thick stack of parchment, quietly snoring away. She huffed and stomped over, shaking his arm to try and wake him. When that didn't work, she used her next tactic, shaking his arm harder and yelling his name in his ear. The only response that garnered was a groan and a wave of his arm, before said arm dropped back to the desk. Hermione huffed louder and decided to break out the big guns in waking Harry James Bloody Potter.

She raised her leg and gave a mighty kick to the side of the chair, tipping it over and spilling Harry across the floor with a yelp.

In Harry's futile attempt to keep upright, books were knocked to the floor with a crash, quills and ink were scattered, and parchment learned how to fly.

Harry looked around and blinked owlishly, making Hermione smirk slightly. "Hermione?" He asked, his voice thick with sleep. "What's going on?" He looked around and asked dumbly, "Why am I on the floor?"

Hermione arched an eyebrow at him and said tersely, "No idea, but I know where you're supposed to be. At my house for dinner."

Harry looked at her blankly before turning and looking at the calendar on the wall. "I am?"

Hermione's eyebrow went up further, one hand on her hip and the other tapping her wand against her thigh. "Yes," She hissed. "And you were supposed to be there one hour and thirty-nine minutes ago."

"Oh... Oops?" Harry responded with a lop-sided grin, hoping against all hope and every shred of evidence that he would be spared from Hurricane Hermione. She wasn't too fond of that nickname he and Ron made up, but it fit perfectly when she went nuclear.

"HARRY JAMES POTTER!"

And Hurricane Hermione stuck again.


Over time the piles of books turned in to mountains that just got taller and taller as her visits got further and further apart. He still remembered her last visit. She actually tried to get him to take a break from studying.

Hermione tried to get him to take a break from studying.

Talk about role reversal.


Hermione sighed and took the book out of Harry's hands, ignoring his protests. He was officially worse than she ever was in school. This secret project of his was taking it's toll, and he looked horrible. It wasn't just the cuts and bruises from his rigorous training either. His eyes were sunken in with dark bags under them, his once bright green orbs were darker and duller, almost lifeless. Judging from the smell, he hadn't taken a shower since his vacation started a week ago, and she would swear he had lost weight since she had last seen him.

That was eight months ago now that she thought about it.

"Harry, you need to stop. At least take a break, get a shower and some food. This project isn't going to get up and walk out of the house," Hermione said, trying to talk some sense into him.

Harry vainly reached for the book being held out of his reach. "But I'm so close to a breakthrough! I know it!"

"Harry," Hermione said firmly, "You need to take a break from this research. That's what a vacation is for, you know."

Harry froze and stared at her with wide eyes. After a moment he snorted in humor and said jokingly, "Who are you and what have you done with Hermione? I don't think she would ever advocate taking a break from study!"

Hermione sighed and wondered if she was ever really that bad. How had they put up with her for years if she was even just remotely close to this? She really wasn't sure she would be able to do what they had and put up with her. "At least go take a shower and get some food. You can eat while you read, it's called multitasking. I did it all the time, remember?"

Harry sighed and finally gave in, heading off to do that as quickly as he could so he could get back to his project. Hermione estimated that he would be busy for at least fifteen minutes. She set the book down and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her. She looked down the hallway to make sure he was really doing something else, and turned back to the door and raised her wand, casting locking charms and setting up wards over the door so he wouldn't be able to get back in for the rest of his vacation. Or at least delay him for a day or two.

When Harry finally emerged, he went to the office door and was stopped by the new wards. He frowned and pulled his wand, ignoring everything around him and started the long process of breaking in to his own office.

Hermione looked over her shoulder as she left, sighing sadly as he muttered under his breath and attempted to break through her wards, oblivious to the world around him.


That was over four years ago now that he thought about it. When was the last time he went out with any of his old friends? He couldn't remember. Honestly he couldn't bring himself to care anymore either. Every time he tried to go anywhere in the magical world after the war he got mobbed immediately like never before. It had eventually caused quite the fallout between him and Ron. The bastard's jealous streak flared up and he said some things that Harry would never be able to forgive. Things with Hermione just got more and more strained after that. He didn't really blame her though, she had a family to take care of and a career that he was sure was heading straight to the minister's office in just a few more years. He was also pretty sure that Ron had threatened to take their kids and leave if she didn't stop speaking to him. It was definitely something he'd do.

Not only that, but he still looked the same as he did at twenty. All of his former friends had obviously matured. The beginnings of wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, the slightest of gray in their hair. Not him though. Never him. He had taken to wearing heavy-duty glamors and sometimes muggle make-up and hair dye to make him look older than he was. It had been a bit of a sticking point the one time Hermione had been by and seen him without all of that, looking exactly like he did nearly a decade before. It took a while to convince her that he had no idea how it happened and that he had already spent quite a few years in the Department looking for anything he could about it and not to bother trying to retrace his steps because he couldn't lend her any of the books because of his oaths to the DoM. She eventually promised him she wouldn't tell anyone about it, even Ron, and she always kept her promises to him. He didn't want her looking to hard because he had already found out why, he just didn't know what to do with the information, or how it really affected him other than his appearance.

The Master of Death. Apparently it was far more than just a title.

He tried getting rid of the Hallows right after the war. Threw the Resurrection Stone into the ocean. Left the Elder Wand in Dumbledore's tomb. Got home that night, and there they were, sitting innocently on his desk. Tried getting rid of them again, came home, same thing. Over the years he had gotten used to it, but at first it truly freaked him out more than he cared to admit.

He didn't age at all anymore, but he wasn't sure if he could die or not. Even if he could die, would he stay dead? He didn't really want to risk it to find out. He wasn't that curious.

He dragged his mind back to the present and shuffled through the papers on his desk, glancing over information he had already committed to memory years ago. A personal project two decades in the making.

And now he was finally finished. He was sure it would work. It had to.


An official notice of someone quitting their job in the Department of Mysteries came across Hermione's desk late one afternoon just as she was getting ready to head home. She sighed tiredly and glared at the offending piece of parchment in her inbox. The ONLY piece of parchment in her inbox. She turned back to the door and briefly considered leaving it for the morning, knowing her inbox would be full by then anyway, and one more piece of work wasn't going to take much time.

But on the other hand, one more piece of work wasn't going to take much time.

Heaving a sigh as her shoulders slumped, she trudged back to her desk and picked up the parchment. She glanced over it to make sure all the information was placed correctly, signatures were signed and dated, and went to mark the notice as received and documented when she read the signature at the bottom and froze suddenly, staring at the notice as if it had made a logical argument that logic didn't exist.

Oddly enough, that had been one of her nightmares when she was a child.

Well, she didn't really read the signature of the person quitting, more that she recognized the pattern of scratches where the signature should go. Even with all of her help getting his handwriting up to legible standards, his signature was always the same chicken scratching that was absolutely indecipherable to anyone else but him and her. And three others, but that was a different story.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione sighed. "What are you up to this time?" She shook her head and went about her job, marking the notice as received and filed before absently sending copies to the appropriate departments and filing away the original.

The fact was, she was pretty sure she knew what he was going to do next. He had always said he wanted a normal life, she just had no idea what set this off now. Knowing him, he'd likely go as deep underground as he could, and wouldn't want anything attached to his name, and depending on how long he was planning to be gone, he might keep some of the investments his family had made.

Then again, knowing Harry's propensity for jumping first, he might decide to just sell it all off. Short-sighted to say the least.

Hermione missed having Harry around, and she was really starting to resent Ron for pushing her to chose between her family and Harry after the Christmas debacle five years ago. She should have fought him harder on it. Then and there, Hermione decided to do what she had always done, and to the best of her ability.

Take care of Harry Potter and his interests.

She finished up her work and headed determinedly for the door, changing her plans as she went, preparing a couple of short messages in her head to send off at the owl office in the Alley. There was a lot of work to do and likely not much time to do it.


It took another six months for Harry to get everything ready. He sold off every piece of property that he had inherited, except for Potter Manor. Traded the stock he had in various muggle and magical businesses for less than they were worth to get rid of it quickly, sometimes even just trading it for supplies. The last thing he did was to close out his Gringott's account and put all of his gold and heirlooms into storage trunks and shrink them down, label them, and toss the lot into the bottomless backpack he kept everything he owned in. By the time he finished his tasks, there was nothing owned by a Potter that wasn't on his person other than the manor, and even that had been stripped completely bare.

The only room with anything in it at all was the basement, and he was going to use that room for his project. It was a large space, just over fifty square meters and ten meters high, with runes carved into every bit of it from floor to ceiling. It had taken him months to finish it and charge the multitude of complicated runes, all with one goal in mind.

Creating a portal to a new world that had never heard of his bloody name.

Ambitious to say the least. Maybe he should have let the hat put him in Slytherin.

Only one more thing to do, then it was time to kick things off.

Time to call his last true friend. After sixth year, the war went a bit downhill for the light side. Hunting for the horcruxes was time-consuming and tedious. Luckily they were never captured, although there were quite a few close calls. Dobby's help had been absolutely invaluable during that long year.

"Dobby!" Harry called out, waiting for the pop that would signal the arrival of his only remaining friend. It took some time but he was finally able to break Dobby of the habits that the Malfoy's had instilled in him. Now, Dobby was a bit of a prankster and was actually quite vicious when angered. Dobby had resolutely stood by him for years, no matter how bad things were. He even fought by him during the war and while he was working at the DoM. The look of surprise on the faces of the Death Eaters and other dark wizards and witches when they saw a house elf flinging them around like paper was absolutely priceless.

The little elf popped in and bounced on his toes. "What can Dobby be doing for master Harry, sir?"

Harry looked down and smiled the first genuine smile in a long time. "I'm about to start the ritual. Last chance to stay here in this world if that's what you want."

Dobby scowled and snapped his fingers, causing Harry's legs to swing out from under him and dropping him on his ass so they were eye-to-eye. "Dobby goes with master Harry. Dobby knows the risks. Dobby goes where master Harry goes," the elf said forcefully before breaking out in a large grin. "Besides, how will master Harry survive without his Dobby?"

Harry laughed loudly, the sound echoing in the chamber. He climbed back to his feet and brushed himself off. "Yes, how indeed," Harry replied once he was able to speak. "Well then, let's get to it old friend. No time like the present, right?"

Dobby just nodded and stood side-by-side with his master, right where he knew he belonged.

Nine hours of continuous chanting and meticulous wand-waving later, the air in front of Harry and Dobby shimmered and coalesced into a bright green, swirling portal. The two companions looked at each other and nodded once, Harry picking up his backpack and swinging the Invisibility Cloak over himself as Dobby vanished using his own special brand of magic before they stepped through the portal together and into a brand new world.

A few moments later the portal flickered and closed behind them, leaving nothing but an empty manor and silence.