AN: … Hi. So, I didn't think I'd ever post here again, on this story I mean. But a lot of you guys are persistent. Even now, nearly two months after announcing the series as discontinued, you're still PM-ing me. That's some dedication right there. But you finally got to me. I was writing to another PM explaining why I wouldn't write on this anymore when I slowly stopped thinking 'Wow… I'm having a hard time thinking of reasons to say no'.

So here I am. This is not, however, AWG. THIS IS A SPIN-OFF OF A WIZARD'S GAME. Specifically, a sort of jumpchain of sorts, though if you've even been halfway attentive to the story up to this point, you already know the method of world travelling.

Next, this fic won't have the little italics dialogues in-between line breaks. I have a suspicion that half of you don't read those and I'd honestly rather just make interludes more common than make a bunch of them.

Finally, I made two pretty important polls related to this story. Go to my profile and look at the top of the page for them. I'm going to wait a week before taking it down and uploading more chapters.

If you have a profile I'd appreciate it if you would vote on whether to make this a new story and post it elsewhere or leave it here in the AWG story. On one hand I'm not sure how many people will notice a spin-off if I post it in a different story.

On the other hand, I'd prefer not to bother you all who follow the story here with notifications about a story that's not truly AWG but a spin-off of it in case you don't want to read this renewal of the story. Let me know, would you? Oh, and I made a second poll for, *ahem*, lemons. About three people have asked for them and I'm not sure whether their opinion represents the majority or not.

[|||| =WORLD 2= ||||]

[|||| =LEVEL 1= ||||]

The feeling hit me like a chill up my spine so violent it was almost painful as well as a feeling of something tearing out of me. Thinking I was under attack and caught completely off guard considering I was asleep just a moment ago I rolled out of my bed only to fall onto scorching sandy ground, which I sunk into even as I cloaked myself in a dozen magical defenses. I reached out with my more magical senses, as I was buried under sand, and saw nothing. I looked harder and more thoroughly and saw nothing. Other senses gave me nothing as well. I tried to trigger a teleport back to Beacon but it felt like I ran into a wall. That had never happened before. I tried doing a teleport with void in case I had to break through wardings but the same feeling persisted. What was going on?!

I phased myself out of space and flew upwards before looking around physically. There was… sand. Sand everywhere. But that answered nothing. Was I in Vacuo? Eastern Mistral? Or even far down south?

Flying farther up I made sure to keep the air and pressure around me stable. I briefly considered a space suit but had no idea where I'd get one. I prodded my metal affinity to make a thick suit of steel around me, using my magic to keep the joints flexible. For the faceplate I took out two circles of bulletproof glass I had for constructing weapons scopes and put them near my eyes before melting metal around them so I could see but was entirely covered from radiation. I could probably cure cancer, but I had never tried and this was easier.

I kept going farther up, looking far over the horizon. I was high enough to see the curvature of the planet but it wasn't quite far enough. There was just desert. Besides that, nothing.

Having a moment of something like inspiration or perhaps fear I stored my body in my soul space and teleported myself far out into space. It was then that I saw the planet clearly. It was NOT Remnant. It wasn't Earth either. It seemed completely random, honestly. So I had no idea where I was, and I couldn't teleport back to Remnant… shit.

Though I doubted it would work, I reached out to the greater void and commanded it to bring me back to my Remnant. I felt it respond and felt my soul compress and twist, but when I was released I was still far above the desert planet.

So Remnant was blocked off… how?! There were a - quite literally - infinite amount of Remnant's just like my own! How am I being…

As my mind came to a conclusion I focused my senses on myself. It didn't even take any effort to find what I was looking for. An anchor of some sort was on me made of an affinity I could clearly recognize and braided through it was another affinity I recalled but couldn't remember at the moment. Mind affinity. Somebody was screwing with my head somehow despite all of my precautions and mental defenses. This was literally my worst fear.

After looking through my memories quickly for discrepancies of any sort, I decided that I was as safe as I could be. Nothing related to my identity was tampered with. or if it was, it was neat enough that I'd never find it. Even so, the anchor of mind magic I could detect was inert. It wasn't doing anything at the moment. But I had a good guess of what it was supposed to do.

I grasped the void. Nothing happened. I reached out to the greater void. Nothing happened. I reached out for Remnant and the anchor jerked, tearing at my mind and through my mind the void. As soon as I sent the impulse to transport myself back to Remnant I sent another command to cancel the command, making the void stop transporting me. The process was instant, though, so I had no way of really stopping it.

So that's what the anchor does. Now for the other stuff…

I looked through my memories again, matching all the affinities I had seen. I looked through a few hundred I had seen in the souls of random people before I moved to ones I had once had and were removed when I found my match.

Fate affinity. The stuff that gave people a destiny. I didn't have one anymore, I was pretty sure. I think I had one before I was brought to Remnant, but now I had the FATE system, or just the system as I called it, because some gods had yanked it out of me. Not that the thing was all that useful. I didn't forget the skills I learned and I learned at what was clearly an abnormal pace, but I would have liked the ability to control fate more than a game interface.

At any rate, I had fate affinity on me. Oh boy, I wonder what that does. Just because I was nearly out of options, I tried to turn my void on the anchor of mind affinity. The violent chill hit me again despite my lack of a body as the fate affinity in the anchor pulsed and I hesitated. I brought my void towards the anchor again and the anchor pulsed much harder.

I felt my senses fade to black and my soul shook. I saw blue windows despite my lack of eyes, each with ominous warnings like 'NO', 'STOP OR DIE', and 'YOU ARE BARRED'. Behind them was a flickering stat window, my stat window actually. The numbers I was used to flickered with symbols, some english and some other languages. A moment later the boxes faded and I felt achey.

So it seemed like I couldn't go to Remnant anymore. For the foreseeable future, at least. I had a few guesses as to who it was. Somebody with magic, control over fate affinity, and a reason to exile me from my home… it's either the brothers of light again, or the siblings if the god of light actually was female like Icmant claimed years ago, or it was an alternate version of me. I've met with at least a dozen versions of myself at this point.

Either way I had a problem. I just didn't know how I could fix it.

[|||| =-= ||||]

"Hi, Ophis," I muttered as I shifted dimensions. The tiny goddess got up from her sitting position and hugged me for a second before sitting down and looking pointedly at me. I rolled my eyes and filled the room we were in with void. She instantly relaxed and I looked around. I noted the fluffy pink furniture, the fluffy pink walls, and the cat pictures on the wall before I decided to just ignore it all. Whoever owned the place, I didn't want to meet them.

"I have a problem," I said to her. She nodded woozily and leaned back into the eyesore pink couch.

"What?" she said quietly without opening her eyes. Well she was apparently fine and as short as always. It was good to know that Ophis at least wasn't having any problems.

"I have a parasite in my soul," I explained. Ophis' eyes opened a little and she frowned just a little. She must be incredibly alarmed! "It's blocking me from travelling to my home. It's tied to… not my fate but my skills. I can't remove it without losing all my power or possibly destroying my soul."

Ophis blinked at me silently. I waited for her, counting the seconds. I got to five when she sighed lightly. "That's not fair to you," she said discontentedly. I was about to respond when she continued, to my surprise. "It's a binding. You will have to live with it. It will wear off in… centuries. Less than a millennium. It will stay." If possible Ophis looked more tired than before and sunk into the couch, which I noted was so soft that it might actually be uncomfortable for me to sit in.

"There's… no way?" I asked, hating the note of desperation in my voice. Ophis seemed to rally herself, held awake through will alone.

"… Wait," she said.

"… What about time-"

"No," If Ophis had to try before, now she was actually glaring at me, even if only a little bit. From the nearly all-powerful, if childish, goddess it was more intimidating than it should have been. Especially since she was being eaten by the pink couch. "I will not be alone and your binding will not allow it. Wait." I was silent and Ophis took that as her cue to be consumed by the fluffiness of the pink couch. I could only see her nose and a little of her cheeks. Feeling more than a little angry I swiftly cast the enchantment to keep the void in the room for some time and was about to disappear.

"I will look for a way to suppress it. Do not hold out hope." I heard from within the pink couch. I clenched my teeth, despair taking over. My space affinity flexed and I disappeared into thin air.

I needed to talk to somebody.

[|||| =-= ||||]

"Nyaa… Do you want some chinese food?" Kuroka, in some dingy apartment she called a safehouse, asked me. I curled myself deeper into the couch I was laying on. I was taking after Ophis' example and drowning my sorrows in fluff. I was already wrapped in at least three large blankets and I didn't care that one of them was barbie doll themed. I was more busy dealing with the fact that I wouldn't see my family again for a long, long time.

I was interrupted from my brooding by two chopsticks poking at my mouth. "Say nyaaaah!" Kuroka said, a teasing tone in her voice but a lot more gentle than normal. After hearing Ophis' news and going through that first night crying into her chest, which I wasn't going to get into, I had been alternating between brooding and quietly talking with her. Besides everyone in Remnant, who did I really have? There was Ophis, Kuroka, and the Pendragons in DxD but I wasn't friends of any sort with the characters in the HP-verse. I barely knew the lady from Tamriel, Ira-something, really all I had was Kuroka and Ophis right now, and Helen, but when I thought of someone to cry with Kuroka was the first person to come to mind.

I had tried reaching out for my family in every way I could think of. I reached for them rather than Remnant, I reached for versions of them wildly different than the norm, I tried astrally projecting myself rather than just moving my soul, I tried looking through the minds of the people I knew through links to their souls, which were still present but so muted as to be useless. I couldn't go to Remnant, I couldn't see into Remnant, and I was all but certain that I couldn't send a third person to Remnant. Pit was gone too, probably the tearing feeling I felt when I first woke up.

"Here," Kuroka pushed something into my cheeks when I made no effort to open my mouth. Noodles, I vaguely recognized. I swallowed them and turned my face downwards. I didn't want to eat. She looked at me with clear concern, worry in her eyes. I kept looking downwards while I felt her her crawl over me. A moment later she was playing big spoon to me on the couch. I didn't want to admit it, but it felt nice.

"Hey…" she whispered. "When I… lost Shirone I wasn't in a good place." I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started paying her more attention.

"I was… kinda messed up," she admitted. "I stole some stuff, broke some more, and cried sometimes… pretty much every night. I beat a few people up looking for fights, and did a lot of running, not all of that just because I had to. I thought 'If I get stronger I can save my sister'. So I got stronger. Lots stronger. But I wasn't happy. I didn't really have anything, you know? I was messed up. Badly. I spent a lot of time like that. Years, I think. I hated it. I hated it so much I made it my goal to never be like that again. That's why I want a family. A huge one, with so many kids I'll never have to be sad if I lose somebody again. Do you get what I'm saying?"

I was silent. My throat hurt. I might be close to crying again.

"But I got better," she continued in the same quiet tone of voice. "People don't do stuff alone. Ever. they've always got somebody in their heart." She reached around the blankets I was cloaked with to poke me right where my heart was.

"I had Shirone in my heart. You've got your family in your heart. Yeah, it hurts. It hurts a lot. I'm not sure if I know exactly what's going on with you but I know you're hurting. Bad. But… are they dead?" I was quiet but then I shook my head a little.

"Then be happy," she said. "Your family is alive and they can live their own long, happy lives with each other. But you? You need a family. Always. Everybody does or they start hurting inside like I did. Like you are. So… start a family. Find friends, lovers, wives, battle buddies, or pets. Family makes you happy. So be happy. Trust your family to be happy…. Now do you see what I mean?" I was quiet. Then I sniffled and realized I was crying a little. I moved myself around to be facing Kuroka and took a deep breath.

"When I was young," I started, "I was… alone. For a long, long time." Memories of the desert, the parents I never really knew, and Summer passed through my mind. "Then I was… found. Adopted. Summer wasn't really a mom but she was family. When she died, I didn't have time to blame myself. I took care of Ruby. My sister. I focused everything on her… I was a little obsessive, going everywhere with her. It was, to me, how I repaid Summer, though I didn't think of it like that. I didn't have to take care of Ruby. I only knew her for a month. But… I was her big brother then. The moment Summer died." I stopped, choking. Kuroka gave me time and pressed her forehead against mine solemnly. It might have been a minute or it might have been five, but I continued.

"I did a lot. I made a company. Got rich. Ruled a city. I got an aunt for her. She was family too. But I think I realized something eventually. I didn't remember my time alone. What little fragments I remember still, I hate. I was tired and angry and alone. I wasn't feeling anything. Not really. But when I got Summer, got a family, I started remembering things. I made memories worth remembering. Happy memories. I got friends, my best friend, a community, and a girl, Pyrrha, even had a crush on me. Now… now they're all gone." With that I finally broke down into real tears. Kuroka reached around me and pulled me closer.

"I'm never going to see my family again," I cried softly. "Ruby's going to grow up and… Pyrrha's going to get married. Jaune's going to grow up and Raven's going to be hurt again. Yang's going to be there for Ruby and everyone… everyone… everyone I know… is going to be so sad…"

By this point Kuroka was crying a little bit too, though my heavy breaths and tears were much worse than her. "Hey Abyss?" she asked, as quietly as before. "Do… do you want a family? Not like… for me but… a family. For… us…" I was quiet and my tears calmed down a little.

"… Yeah… I'd… I'm not…" I sobbed a little, not feeling confident in an answer. Kuroka moved a little and tenderly kissed me. It wasn't loving but it was the most comforting gesture I could ever remember.

[|||| =-= ||||]

"I'm better. Really!" I protested, pushing away the floating hot chocolate. I was lying a little, but compared to two weeks ago I was practically stable. Kuroka had been there for me much more than before, where we only had a physical relationship. Before I had really come to DxD, just dropped by for fun and friends, we had been much more casual lovers. But now that she was one of the people I was closest with I was seriously considering actually dating her. Like… with marriage as a viable option moving forwards.

It was so weird to consider that, but Kuroka had really taken a leap for me when I needed help. I'd say I was closer to her than I was to most people I was on Remnant, barring just a few. And strangely enough, we hadn't even had sex while I was staying with her. She just seemed to know that I wasn't feeling up to it.

Still, visiting Helen and filling her in on the news might have been a bad idea.

"Helen, really!" I warded off the hot chocolate again and it clinked around the spoon in it a little, as though angry I wouldn't accept it. A wave of emotion, an empathetic sadness that screamed 'teary-eyed housewife' coursed through me.

"I-!… Fine." I stopped my protests and snatched the hot chocolate, feeling a little pissy even if I shouldn't have. Helen nearly felt relief as I sipped the admittedly good hot chocolate. I buried that warm feeling deep inside me where she would never find it… I was such a sucker.

I leaned back in my chair only to find that I was somehow sitting on my favorite armchair. I cradled my hot chocolate and sighed as Helen talked to me again, having calmed down a little.

"No, they're not dead. Just… gone," I said to her. I took another small sip. "I woke up and somebody put a… a binding on me. I asked a friend of mine and it's going to go away but it's going to take a long, long time. It's resistant to time-altering magics, apparently. I still might test that, but going forwards the result is the same. My family will be long dead by the time I get back." There was a dark, sad tone to my voice at the end of my sentence and Helen felt another burst of nail-biting concern. "No, no," I waved her concerns away. "I… I'm not great. I know it. But I'm getting better. Two weeks ago I was much worse off. But now I can talk without crying. I don't need a shoulder to lean on all the time now. I'm old, Helen, and I've dealt with this before. I'll get better. I just need time." Helen's concern lessened and I doubted I'd get rid of any more so I changed the subject.

"So how's Dumbledore doing?" I asked. Helen immediately sprung into fiery anger, her concern fading to the background. "That bad?" I felt vigorous agreement. "What's he doing?" I saw images of Dumbledore standing in front of a large goblet as he spoke two solemn words. 'Harry Potter'. Helen's anger, upon seeing the memory once more, rose to a white hot fury at the injustice happening to her students. It was more than somebody rigging the tournament, that they had somehow gotten away with it! I stood a little straighter as I heard a faint rumble and saw stone dust fall from the ceiling. A wave of my hand brushed all the dust away from me.

"Was that around the whole castle?" I asked. Helen sent a confirmation, her anger still hot. "That must not be helping the games." Agreement, and a grudging sort of guilt from her that she was disrupting the Triwizard Tournament. Or, in this case, quad-wizard tournament.

"Hmm… I don't suppose you want help?" Helen perked up and I got an excited sort of pleading. "I will, fine. I need something to do other than just lay around with Kuroka. She has her own business to do, after all." I heard her call the Khaos Brigade three days ago. All she had to do was namedrop me, 'The Apostle', and everybody instantly backed off getting her to attend whatever meeting they were running.

Apparently I was some sort of ambassador of Ophis now to everybody. I already knew that the Underworld thought I was her champion or something, but I didn't know that the Khaos Brigade bought into that. They weren't wrong, though, I was probably the only person Ophis actually listened to.

"So, I'm helping you out with whatever this is" I considered. "So… everyone thinks I'm some sort of hitwizard or… what did they call them? Ahhh, Unspeakables! Yes, that's what they think I am. So I need a badge that shows I actually am one of them, though it doesn't have to be official, just convincing. Then I need to… hm. I guess mentor Harry? It sounds kind of boring though. I suppose it's better than nothing."

Helen sent agreement. 'The contract of the tournament is unbreakable. Even to the unwilling,'a voice said. I blinked at her using direct speech. She had avoided using it often. She preferred her primal pulses of emotion and sensory information. Formulating speech was awkward somehow for her. I attributed it to her not having a body. I knew from personal experience that real telepathy with just aura wasn't that easy. Conversations were complex things when you thought about it.

"Well I'll… hm… actually, do the rules state that there can be a moderator of the tournament?" There was silence as Helen's consciousness left for a moment. I sipped my hot chocolate for a moment longer and closed my eyes, just relaxing in the armchair I often used to study the magics Harry Potter's world had to offer.

Helen came back excitedly with a devilish flair to her. An open book thudded down on my lap from thin air and I looked at a few of the rules. No peacocks allowed for magical rituals, no magic with a radial range of greater than two thousand hands, and… ah, 'Any oversight to the abidement of the rules must be recognized by the landowner in which the Grande Evente occurs'. So Helen announces me as the moderator for this year's tournament and I become a moderator. I think. Nobody truly owns Hogwarts as far as I know, except perhaps an even split between the four founding families of the school. Besides, who was going to say no to Helen? She WAS the school, and she could cause a lot of trouble in not just the tournament but the school itself if she wanted.

"Huh. So since you are the land you just announce me as a moderator, or overseer as it is. Also, is abidement a word?" Helen dismissed my worries and sent an inquisitive feeling. "Yes, I'll moderate in the tournament. When is the next meeting between whoever's managing the tournament? Or should I just announce myself during a feast? Has the first task started?"

Helen responded with a happy feeling, a shrug, a negative, and another negative in that order. She then sent an image of an eight and a sun. So there were eight days until the first task. Good to know. Now, to plotting.

[|||| =-= ||||]

I watched through Helen's eyes as a house elf arrived at Dumbledore's side with the same book I had held hours ago. He set aside his dinner as the elf whispered to him and pointed out the rule of a moderator for the tournament. Dumbledore whispered something back and the house elf shook his head vigorously. At this point a few eyes were on the scene, including all the other headmasters. When the house elf urgently whispered one more thing to him Dumbledore reared back a little in surprise and cleared his throat. Whatever eyes weren't on him already turned to the front of the room.

"It appears that we may have an… additional party to the triwizard tournament," he announced. "As my friend here has just informed me," he gestured to the house elf, who waved to the students shyly, "a moderator may be selected by the owners of the land on which the tournament occurs." Whispers broke out among the students and teachers as he paused.

"With this in mind, I have been told that a moderator HAS been chosen. By Hogwarts itself," he said a bit dramatically. The whispers rose to a loud murmur, no voice easily distinguished from the rest. Dumbledore easily spoke over them and they quieted down once more. "Now, if such claims are true-"

'ABYSSss GRANIte…' The words rang through the halls in a feminine voice, fading around the end. Speaking out loud was hard for Helen but doable so long as I fed her a few million points of mana. I was certain that she was hoarding more mana than she needed to just project herself but who was I to complain? I wasn't using it at the moment and I regenerated it all easily enough.

Of course the hall broke out into shouts, the foreign teachers demanding to know who I was, the students crying out in surprise, more people asking if this was a farce, and others just sitting in shock. This was my cue. I merged my soul with Helen's for a moment and pushed away the sensation of becoming a whole castle. Instead I used my storm affinity through her to still the air in the great hall. The sound instantly quelled to nothing, shocking many people. Eyes turned once more to the front as Helen formed a doorway in the walls behind Dumbledore. He turned around to look as I opened it and separated myself from Helen. Going from a whole school to two eyes was jarring but I didn't let it interrupt my stride. I stood in front of the school and smiled broadly.

"That would be me. Hello again, all of you. I will be making sure nobody dies this time. Besides, I find myself in need of entertainment. A tournament should do nicely. They're meant to entertain, after all."

The horrified looks I received were hilarious.

[|||| =-= ||||]

My plan was deeply flawed. Dumbledore quickly mustered all the Headmasters and myself and put McGonagall in charge of the Great Hall before shuffling us all to a room with a rounded table.

Of course, some people didn't wait to sit down before they started yelling.

"What the blazes is a moderator doing here?! What trickery are you trying to do, you-" The castle shook once more and an angry feeling from Helen swept through me. A harsh, cold wind went through the room and the big man, Karkoff I think, closed his mouth and sat down.

"Now that we're all here I expect that you'll all stay silent as I explain why I'm here again." A few mouths opened and I stilled the air again so they couldn't speak. "Thank you all for being silent. I'm not affiliated with the institution of Hogwarts or either of your schools, though I am friends with the spirit of the castle itself, and yes there's a spirit of Hogwarts. With how old the castle is and how much magic is here you'd think that would be obvious. Now, she made me the moderator because this tournament is a nightmare for her and I have nothing better to do with my time than help out. Being moderator means that I have the final say on rules, meaning I assign punishments for breaking them and decide whether they have been broken or not if that's unclear. I have the responsibility of handling emergencies and a few other minor powers like invalidating judges that I deem unfair or providing assistance to champions if a task seems too deadly. Don't worry, I have loose standards."

I paused for a moment and waved my hand with a small burst of intent to Helen. The book of tournament rules appeared in front of each of the judges turned to a page with all the powers and responsibilities of the moderator, most of which were irrelevant and the rest of which I'd already described.

"Now, questions?" I released the stilled air and three people spoke up at once. The traded looks and the headmistress of Beauxbatons, Madam Maxime, spoke.

"There has never been a moderator until now. Why now?"

"There has never been a fourth champion until now. Helen, that's the spirit of Hogwarts, hasn't been able to interact with the students much more than the runes and latent magic of Hogwarts allowed her to. Next."

Dumbledore spoke. "As the Headmaster of Hogwarts I was expected to be presiding over this tournament, as it takes place in my school. How, exactly, has this changed?" I was almost impressed. Rather than getting angry that he had lost some influence in the tournament or questioning my new position he was actually rolling with it. I had thought he'd try to pull another power play.

"My apologies for usurping some of your power here, Headmaster," I began. Dumbledore's expression didn't seem to change but I thought he was pleased that I acknowledged him as headmaster. "But your authority extends to your students and their wellbeing, safety, and education. When there was no formally acknowledged moderator you were acting as one, which was in your rights since you were the highest authority in Hogwarts. Now that Helen has awakened, she has the final say in things, including your position." Dumbledore's face grew somewhat worried.

"Not to say you're going to be removed," I assured him. He relaxed a little. "I have no interest in the position of headmaster any time soon, if at all." Helen emitted a feeling of patience. I ignored her, the pushy woman.

"My authority is over the tournament. I can't, for instance, pull out any of the champions, but I can assure their safety and intervene if their life seems to be in danger. I can't do anything to any of your students either except for Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory. Those two are under my supervision and I can do with them… nearly anything, actually. Their responsibilities lie in the tournament first and Hogwarts second. I technically have more authority over them than Helen, though she can strip me of my position as moderator." Dumbledore seemed uncomfortable with what I said. He was only really able to do what he normally did, administering Hogwarts.

"On that note, I'll be making my first ruling as the moderator here. I declare Harry Potter unfit to participate in the triwizard tournament as he is an unwilling participant by his word. If this needs confirmation I'm sure he'll swear under veritaserum that he didn't intend to participate. Though he's obligated by magic to participate he will not receive the prize of ten thousand galleons and he will not be formally recognized as a champion or victor, should he actually win." Everyone seemed pretty happy with this news. Even Dumbledore didn't seem very put off by it.

"To compensate for his unwilling participation, by his own admission, I'll be training him to be a bit less terrible in combat, just so he doesn't get horribly injured and I don't have to play mother hen to him. I'll talk with him about pulling him out of some of his classes during the day since champions are not obligated to attend their classes when preparing for the tournament." Karkoff and Maxine didn't seem to mind all that much and Dumbledore looked at me curiously. I was certain that he'd pull Harry aside to ask about me later.

"Is there anything else?"

"Yes," Karkoff grunted. "Who are you? I've never heard of you so how do you know this Spirit of Hogwarts, as you call her, and how are you at all qualified for your position? How can we even trust what you say when we don't even know you? And why in Merlin's name do you have cat ears?!"

"I'm in my position because Helen says I am and she has the authority to do so. I don't need to justify my position to you. If you need proof of my abilities, ask some of the fourth year students. I acted as a substitute here earlier in the year before you all arrived. As for trust, of course you're not going to trust me. I just showed up here out of the blue. I'll prove myself during the first task and continue doing so. And I have cat ears because I don't like losing the extra senses I have when I change to a panther. I'm an animagus, you see." That was apparently enough for Karkoff as he leaned back and nodded, though he had a scowl on his face.

"I will be needing to talk to you, Mister Granite, on the events occurring earlier in the year," Dumbledore reminded me before he got up. I recalled the exploding owl he sent me and groaned.

"Let's leave that problem until we settle the one in front of us, namely informing the students and champions about what's changed. For now, just know that I don't care to be hostile to you." Dumbledore nodded and we all got up. I sighed inwardly when I realised that I would have to repeat everything to the students. Maybe I had been a bit too headstrong getting into this tournament mess.

Hopefully Kuroka hasn't gotten too worried that I went missing.

AN: I avoid these normally but this time I think it's warranted. To really put himself out there Abyss needed to go cold turkey from Remnant. He needed to get kicked out of the nest, you could say. And obviously that leads to a lot, and I mean a LOT of emotions. Next chapter is actually doing the multicross stuff rather than just DxD and HP. I'm keeping it a secret for now, though.

Just know that there will be a short return to Remnant but it won't be present for more than short trips. Abyss is banned. Forever. He might just get short vacations here and there. Oh, and remember that POLL I told you all about earlier? Just saying. It's really important to me and this story.

Oh, and don't worry about this little Hogwarts business taking too long or much effort. Abyss has plenty of time to do other stuff as well as have fun in the HP-verse. A LOT of fun~