HP: Witcher at Hogwarts

Corvo Bianco Vineyard, Duchy of Toussaint

"I don't know how you did it, but you had to have cheated." Geralt slammed his Gwent cards onto the table. "No one wins every game of Gwent, and no one cheats right under my nose."

He thumped the table in frustration, hard enough that the cold beer near his hand sloshed across the wood.

Across from him sat a lean young man with long black hair tied back in a ponytail. His most striking feature was his eyes: amber like a cat's, with narrow, vertical pupils that lent his otherwise handsome face something faintly inhuman.

That, perhaps, was one of the reasons witchers were so rarely welcome anywhere.

As the table rattled, Elias Vale quickly lifted his own beer out of harm's way. He took in Geralt's furious expression and grinned.

"I told you, Geralt. If you're going to accuse me of cheating, you need evidence."

The moment Geralt finally stopped pounding the table, Elias swept the small pile of crowns in front of him into his pocket. Geralt's eye twitched.

Apparently still unsatisfied, Elias took a small round object from his coat.

"One more game," he said. "Come on, Geralt. You might win the Eye of Nehaleni back. How about you wager that magic lamp of yours?"

Even Geralt, whose emotions had been dulled by mutation, had his limits.

Fighting down the urge to punch that smug face clear across the vineyard, he rose from his chair and stalked away.

Left without a playing partner, Elias settled back into the lounge chair and let himself enjoy the gentle beauty of Toussaint.

It was the kind of life he could never have imagined in his previous world.

Twenty-four years had passed since he had crossed into this one. He still remembered the first terror of waking as an infant, the slow, bitter work of accepting the impossible, and the twist of fate that had placed him under the Law of Surprise and eventually made him a witcher. He had lived through more than enough by now.

These days, even the memories of his first life had begun to blur. His parents' faces, his girlfriend's face, the office where he had spent his days as a low-level clerk - all of it had gone soft around the edges. When he had first become a witcher, he had buried himself in old books, desperate to discover why he had been thrown into this world.

In the end, all he had found were a few scattered references to the same impossible phrase.

The Conjunction of the Spheres.

Now, Elias no longer thought much about going back.

The mutations had given him strength, reflexes, senses, and a lifespan far beyond anything his old body could have managed. This life had been dangerous, yes, but it had also been vivid in a way his previous one had never been. The many sorceresses he had become rather closely acquainted with had done nothing to make him love this world less.

Lying in the sun with Toussaint spread before him, Elias decided that a nap sounded like an excellent idea.

He was just drifting off when a sudden, inexplicable sensation of falling tore him awake.

People used to say that if you felt yourself falling in a dream, it meant you were growing taller. Elias sincerely doubted a twenty-four-year-old witcher had any more growing left to do. Besides, this felt far too real.

He opened his eyes.

Corvo Bianco was gone.

So was the vineyard.

Below him was open sky.

Everyone knew a witcher's greatest enemies were heights and pitchforks. Since there were no pitchforks currently involved, that left only one possible explanation: some jilted sorceress had crept into the vineyard and opened a portal under him out of spite.

At that particular moment, all of Elias's skill meant absolutely nothing.

He could only plummet helplessly and shout, with deep sincerity, "I'm done for!"

A bright light swept over him.

He looked up.

'Was that a car?'

Before he could make sense of why there was a car in the sky, it slammed into him.

The pain of the impact swallowed everything. He lost consciousness instantly.

Inside the car, a bespectacled boy with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead stared in horror at the red-haired boy gripping the steering wheel.

"Ron," Harry said, voice tight with panic, "I think we hit someone."

Ron was already pale from the sudden disaster.

"Maybe we imagined it, Harry," he said, trying and failing to sound convincing. "People don't just fly."

"On a broomstick, maybe?" Harry scratched his head, then glanced nervously upward. "And I think he's still on the roof."

He had just seen a hand drop limply over the edge of the car. Blood dripped from the fingertips.

"Oh no." Ron's voice cracked. "We're finished."

"We have to get him inside," Harry said.

"We'll be expelled from Hogwarts," Ron said, despair flooding his voice.

The car seemed to share his mood. It lurched violently in the air.

Harry nearly lost his balance. Forcing himself to stay calm, he told Ron to keep the car steady, then reached for the door. Somehow, he managed to get it open against the rushing wind and lean halfway out into the sky.

If any other wizard had been there to see it, they might have fainted on the spot. Harry Potter, dangling out of a flying car high above the ground, looked seconds away from following the stranger into the open air.

He had no choice but to use a Levitation Charm.

After a terrifying stretch of fumbling, pulling, and trying not to look down, Harry finally dragged the injured man into the back seat.

"He's alive," Harry said, relief breaking through his fear. "He's still breathing."

The news did not comfort Ron in the slightest.

In the rearview mirror, he could see the blood smeared across Harry's hands and face from hauling the man off the roof. If anything, Ron went even whiter.

"We need to get back to Hogwarts fast," Harry said, trying to press down on the stranger's bleeding wounds. "Madam Pomfrey can help him."

That gave Ron something to hold on to.

The flying car shot toward Hogwarts.

The flight back was not easy. Hedwig, startled by the sudden appearance of a full-grown man in the car, screeched furiously from her cage. Harry had to keep one hand on Elias, trying to slow the bleeding, while using the other to soothe his owl.

At last, the battered car carried all three of them, wobbling badly, onto the Hogwarts grounds.

Thanks to Elias's unexpected arrival, the Ford Anglia did not crash into the Whomping Willow. With Ron barely in control, however, it still came down hard. The tires tore several deep grooves across the Hogwarts lawn before the car finally stopped.

The moment it did, Harry and Ron scrambled out and sprinted toward the castle.

They did not get far before they ran straight into Argus Filch, who had clearly been waiting for them.

Filch had come prepared to catch two rule-breaking students. The blood on Harry's clothes startled him so badly that all his carefully rehearsed threats died in his throat.

Instead, he seized both boys and hurried them off to Professor Snape.

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