Heroes Return

Holidays. Harry had never looked forward to them; when they ended, he would usually be jumping for joy--at least, he would have if his aunt and uncle weren't constantly watching him like vultures. They weren't particularly pleasant individuals; whenever he stayed with them, he'd been half-starved, forced to do all the unpleasant tasks around the house, and then confined to his room whenever he was not wanted. It had been a small consolation for him to discover, in his fifth year, that far from being the social lions that his aunt had always held them to be, the Dursley family was in fact held in polite contempt by a good number of their so-called friends. It was a little mean-spirited, true, to feel pleased about it, but Harry had been under their thumb for almost fifteen years at the time, and thus it was unavoidable that he should harbour some animosity towards them.

This year, though, Harry found himself regarding the end of the holidays with not a little wistfulness. Not a little of this feeling was engendered by the fact that this, the summer of 1997, was the first summer in his life when he'd actually been happy. This year, instead of returning to the house at Number 4, Privet Drive, he had accompanied his friend, Ron Weasley, back to his family home, the Burrow, a large, rambling structure in which dwelled the diverse and multitudinous members of the burgeoning Weasley clan. Two of Ron's brothers had gotten married, and with their wives had taken up residence in unoccupied sections of the Weasley house. Harry had found himself surrounded with warm, friendly faces. It was deeply moving, he thought, as he strolled along the grand concourse of King's Cross Railway Station, to know that so many people cared.

His road had not been an easy one. He had borne the marks of destiny since he had been a babe in arms. The Dark Lord Voldemort, for reasons unknown, had come upon his parents' house in the dark and destroyed it, and them. The battle had been spectacular; the resulting lightshow had been visible for miles around. When the great pyre of eldritch energies had finally subsided, the muggle authorities had descended upon the area in force, dispatching police and other emergency personnel to the scene. They had found the empty, burnt-out shell of a small stone cottage--and the charred bodies of Lily and James Potter. Harry was nowhere to be found. He had been taken, unscathed, from the scene of battle by the half-giant Rubeus Hagrid, transported upon the flying motorbike of his godfather, the animagus Sirius Black to Privet Drive, where he was placed upon the doorstep of his mother's sister's house, with a note from Albus Dumbledore explaining the situation tucked into his swaddling-cloth.

The whole thing had turned out to be a colossal mistake on the arch-wizard's part; Harry had been regarded by the Dursleys as an onerous burden and a freak of nature, rather than as actual blood-kin. Yet try as they might to suppress Harry's unusual heritage, to condemn him to the life of a drudge instead of the glorious destiny that lay before him, Harry's mage-blood, and the mark of a lightning-bolt upon his brow, left there by that last failed death-spell cast by Lord Voldemort, had marked him as a person of Fate, around whom great things and monumental events would revolve.

That heritage had come to full fruition upon his eleventh birthday, when out of nowhere mysterious letters had begun to arrive. Soon, Harry found himself caught up in a world of wizards and witches, of spells and flying broomsticks, and eventually ended up embroiled once more in the machinations of the Dark Lord Voldemort, and had been instrumental more than once in thwarting the evil mage's plans.

This year, though, the coming of the school term had been marked by dire tidings. The last week's attack on Diagon Alley, reported with varying levels of detail and alarm by both the magical and mundane presses, had signaled one thing to those in the know: that the secret war that had been fought for seven long years in the shadows, the war about which in their most secret of councils ordinary wizards and witches had whispered about but hardly dared to believe in; the war had broken out, out into the open. From now on, it would be waged against all comers, whether magical or mundane, and it would not stop, not until the world entire lay within Voldemort's grasp, and all within had bent the knee towards him.

Harry shuddered. He had seen the Dark Lord's mind, during their last encounter, just a few months before as they stood, locked in a duel of sorcerous energies. The sight had, for a few precious moments, paralysed him with despair. The sheer monstrosity contained within that human skull was beyond belief. Harry had seen visions of a world in ruins, cities destroyed, razed entirely to the ground merely for the crime of having been the work of Muggle hands, and last and worst of all, a long line of Muggles, being herded by laughing Death-Eaters into some sort of enclosure, where they were "processed", reduced from human beings to mere meat-animals, stripped, hunted for sport, bred like cattle and suffered unspeakable horrors and hands of Death-Eaters. It was not just the sight itself that had horrified Harry--not just that, but the air of vicious satisfaction--of shrieking, gibbering glee almost--that had hung like the smoke of Hell itself over that horrendous vision inside that hideous mind. The Dark Lord had nursed his hatreds long and well, and his vengeances no less so.

They had almost destroyed him then, as he stood, facing them atop the roof of the Lloyd's Building. Only the intervention of the stranger known only as "Alucard"; a man whose acquaintance Harry had struck up as he tailed the Death-Eaters through the sewers to their meeting place, had saved him there and then. Even so, the Dark wizards had escaped, leaving behind them the still bodies of the muggle security guarding the building. As Alucard had explained it as they too fled the scene, the building was situated atop a massive vortex of extradimensional energy, the like of which was only rivaled by the fabled Hellmouth. The Death-Eaters had planned to use this energy, channeled through the great metal-reinforced pillar at the building's heart, to summon up some...thing. Harry had only had the briefest of glimpses of whatever it had been, but what he had seen, even more than the contents of Voldemort's mind, had been sufficient, when he thought about it later to induce in him an uncontrollable shivering fit.

There were rumors, Harry knew, that the wizarding race had not arisen naturally, that it had been created, for their own unfathomable purposes, by vast and unutterably alien beings from beyond the stars. More, several of the legends involved humans, both wizard and Muggle, coming into contact with these strange intelligences. Most ominously, no one of these unfortunate adventurers had ever been recorded as surviving their encounters intact. Inevitably, though they lived through that first, horrifying brush against a reality far vaster and more unforgiving than anything in human experience, they all went mad. It might take months, or even years, but slowly, inexorably, they each and everyone descended into screaming, raving insanity.

Harry could feel it himself, deep in the darkest corners of his mind: a small voice, gibbering away, screaming at his consciousness about the utter meaninglessness of life--about the insignificance and impotence of the human race in a vast and uncaring cosmos. He did his best to ignore it. Thus far, he had been successful; the voice had remained, up till now, just a nagging whisper in his waking moments. There were times, though in the night. He would wake up screaming now and then, his mind reeling from the sight of some half-remembered horror, a Thing whose shape he could not describe, yet the memory of which filled him with dread.

He shuddered. There was a pillar next to him. He put his hand on it, feeling the comforting roughness of the solid brick under his palm, and leaned on it. This was real, he told himself. The pillar was real, and the train station was real, and Hogwarts was real, and all those he knew were real. Professor Dumbledore, Sirius, Professor Lupin, Hermione, Ron, and everybody else. Even Draco and Professor Snape, enemies though they were of his. They were real, and good and evil were real. That was the truth. He would not succumb, try as it might, to the hideous wiles of that otherworldly force. He would not.

He felt a slim hand upon his arm. He turned. It was Ginny. Virginia Weasley, flower of the Weasley clan, the only daughter among the many sons of Arthur Weasley.

"Harry," she said. "You don't look too well. Is everything all right?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. No, Ginny, it's all right. I'm fine. Really." He smiled at her reassuringly, the smile seeming to him to echo hollowly through the caverns of his consciousness. He certainly didn't feel reassured.

She examined him for a few moments, staring deeply into his eyes, as if searching for something, some sign of duplicity, perhaps, as if somehow, she knew what had happened to him that dreadful night.

You fool, he thought. If there is anything worth fighting for in this world, it's her. She matters. Don't you get it? Those Great Old Ones can do whatever they like. I'll stand against them again if I have to, because of her. They can't stop me.

Tenderly, he took her hand. "Really, Ginny, I am all right. I was just thinking, that's all."

"About the attacks?" she asked.

Harry looked at her. She seemed...subdued somehow. Scared, almost. Since his fourth year, almost the entire wizarding world had known about the resurgence of Voldemort. To most, however, he remained a distant, though menacing figure. When, after the disastrous events of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, no further threats had emerged for some time, the demands of normal life had shoved any worries about the Dark Lord into the background. Ordinary men and women still had livings to make. There were still children to be educated. The complacency that, in every society, inevitably occurs every time a grave threat fails to emerge had set in.

Only a select few, those who had been involved personally in the struggle against the Dark Lord, had remembered, and held themselves ready, waiting for the day when he would strike again. Over the past two years, they had fought a shadow war, carrying out the actions against the Death Eaters that the Aurors themselves could not undertake. In a hundred secret holdings of the Death Eater cult, in the darkness of night, in hidden alleyways and mystical locations known to only a select few powerful wizards, the secret spell-war had been waged. Harry himself had been a participant in the war, thwarting, with the assistance of his friends, the plots of the Dark Lord within Hogwarts itself for two years running.

Still, though, the covert nature of the cult's operations indicated that, in all likelihood, its dark master had not the strength at his command to conduct a campaign in the open even against the magical authorities of Great Britain alone. This sudden change of tactic had been interpreted as a dire sign by several who were knowledgeable in such things. Surely the Dark Lord had to realize that such an attack, in the middle of an area heavily populated with wizards, and for no apparent reason, would bring the full wrath of the wizarding government down upon his organization. A powerful wizard Voldemort was, but even he could not single-handedly conquer the world. Hence, to expose his cult so to such a response, out of the blue, could only mean one thing--that, against all expectations, he had built the Death Eaters to such strength as he believed could take all comers, wizard or Muggle. And he had done so without betraying at all his organization's true strength.

There were those among the secret warriors who favored a second explanation: that Voldemort had found allies. Though there were many in whom whose hearts the Dark Lord's creed of hatred towards the non-magical folk had struck a chord, yet in comparison to the wizarding population at large, they were pitiably small. Outside of Europe, the proportion was even smaller. Though the Dark Lord might gather them all under his sway, yet should they in the slightest attract the attention of the mundane governments of the world, they would not survive.

Thus, the wizards and witches whose task it was to oppose the Dark Lord found the news of the attack ominous indeed. Even more ominous, though were the reports of what had accompanied the Death Eaters in their latest assault.

Several of the survivors had reported seeing strange creatures, a weird cross of fish, man and frog, alongside the attacking Death Eaters at Diagon Alley, wielding a type of magic that no wizard had ever seen before. The slobbering, chanting horrors had set upon the civilians present with death-spell, tooth and claw. Conventional curses had bounced off them, recoiling on their casters as if they had turned their wands upon themselves. Even those few with the wit or the daring to essay the Unforgivable Curses upon these creatures had found, to their horror, their castings turned back upon them.

Try as both the Ministry of Magic as well as the cabal to which Harry belonged did to suppress it, the news of these strange new allies of Voldemort had leaked out into the wizarding population at large. Though it was, as yet, only regarded as a rumor, it had contributed to the general air of tension that for the past week had hung over the wizarding world.

All this passed through Harry's mind as he considered the young woman whom, he was quite sure, he loved. She was not aware of the hidden struggle that had gone on behind the scenes of everyday life. Harry found himself uncertain as to what, if anything, he should tell her. Should he reveal the existence of that inner society of which he himself was a member, as a means of allaying her fears? After all her father and several of her brothers were themselves members of that society. What harm could it do?

No sooner had he asked that question in his mind than he found the answer: None at all. Yet the war against Voldemort was a secret initiative. Had he been working alone, he might have safely revealed all he knew. But there were others, and to tell any outsider, even one so trusted as Ginny Weasley, could affect the fates of dozens of other wizards who played their own parts in the struggle against the Dark Lord.

"Yes," he said. He turned, still holding her hand, and walked with her along the platform, towards the station café. Passing a clock, he glanced up. It was early still; the train to Hogwarts would not leave the station for another hour yet. Perhaps, he thought, there would be time to have a drink with Ginny...

Hopefully, it would also give him an opportunity to take his mind off his troubles for a few minutes.

"He's so much stronger, isn't he?" asked Ginny, somberly. "It seems like he's got so much power now, and for so long, we just forgot he was there."

Harry shook his head. "It happens, Ginny. People don't like to think too much on these sorts of things--they're not made that way, actually. Only when danger's staring them straight in the face do they get a move on." He sighed. "You can't really blame them, actually; that's just the way people are. Only sometimes it can become so bloody counterproductive." He shook his head again, his expression grim.

"We'll fight, won't we?" Ginny's voice was soft. Harry felt her hand close just a bit tighter around his.

He smiled. "Of course we will," he said. "I don't see how we can do otherwise. I just doubt that we'll win, though." His smile faded as he pondered that grim prospect. Then, abruptly, he chuckled. "Of course, one good thing about this whole affair is that the PM's probably lit a fire under Minister Fudge for letting this happen."

Ginny chuckled too as they entered the café. It was crowded; there seemed to be many more people waiting to use the trains on this day of this year than there had been in the past. Harry's practiced eye identified almost half of the people within, sitting quietly at tables, sipping tea or lemonade, as wizardly folk. There were a great many young children, accompanied by anxious parents as they counted out the minutes until the great train from London up to the loch in Scotland over which Hogwarts stood was ready to leave.

Barely days after the attack, Headmaster Dumbledore had issued a statement opening Hogwarts to children under the age of twelve. The school was, both physically and metaphysically, the most well protected location in the British Isles. A great many parents had taken him up on the offer. A war was looming, and the children, who could not as yet lift their hands to take part in this struggle, nor comprehend the motivations behind the belligerents, had to be protected. Dumbledore's offer of the school as a sanctuary had been well-received indeed. Now, every magical child in the United Kingdom was on his or her way north, to Hogwarts, and to safety.

Harry looked around. He could hear the people talking, both wizard and muggle, filling the café with their voices. A chance word, overheard here, another there--there was an undercurrent of tension within the conversation, and he could feel it.

He led Ginny by the hand to an empty booth, tucked away in the corner. A waiter came over to take their order. They made small talk as they waited, discussing the possibilities of the coming school year, remembering old and mutual friends.

Ron Weasley entered the café, followed closely by Hermione Granger. Harry waved.

Ron spotted them almost immediately. His face lit up as he took Hermione by the hand and they threaded their way through the tables to where Harry and Ginny sat.

"Hallo, Harry," he said, as he sat down. "I think you've been having designs on my sister. Good thing we caught up with you just now."

"Ooh, you'll suffer for that," replied Ginny. "Poke him in the ribs for me, will you, Hermione?"

"With pleasure," said Hermione, and did just that.

Ron winced. "Ow," he said. He looked around.

"A lot more crowded around here than usual," he observed. "If Voldemort were to decide to attack..." He let the thought trail off.

Harry sighed. He supposed there was no escaping talk of the war.

Ron was right. If the Death Eaters were to attack now, with so many wizards gathered in one place; if they could achieve the element of surprise, they might very well wipe out almost all viable opposition to their plans in the British Isles.

As if to confirm his gloomy hypothesis, there was a thunderous detonation outside. The great glass roof of the train station burst inward, showering the hapless pedestrians below with thousands of razor-sharp shards.

Panicked shouts filled the café. Harry, Ron and Hermione shot to their feet, wands out and ready. A few other wizards and witches were already fighting their way to the door, their wands crackling with mystical energy in anticipation of a fight.

As they pushed their way to the door, Harry noticed Ginny, her wand out and ready, following him a few meters behind. He turned.

"Ginny," he called. "What are you doing?"

"I ought to ask you the same thing," she replied. "Why are you three heading towards the fight?"

"Ginny--" he began, then broke off. "Look, it'd take too much time to explain. Just get to a safe place. We'll take care of this."

There was a sudden surge of people back from the entrance to the café, as a green bolt of light splashed against the doorframe, narrowly missing the wizard who was crouched at its foot, firing off spell after spell with his wand. The rush knocked Harry off his feet, straight into Ginny's arms.

She pushed him off. "Don't say that to me, Harry Potter. You want a piece of the fight, and so does my brother. What is wrong with you?"

Before Harry could answer, he heard Ron's voice, calling from beside the doorway. "Harry! Hey, Harry! Where are you?" He turned, and saw a hand waving frantically above the heads of the crowd. "Help! We can't hold all these people back ourselves!"

Harry turned and began fighting his way through the small crowd thronging the café door. A hand grabbed at his sleeve and attempted to pull him off his feet; a quick fire-spell, and the owner of the hand abruptly withdrew it, clutching his singed appendage as he did so.

At the door to the café, several wizards and witches were attempting to restrain a crowd of panicked Muggles, and not a few wizardly folk, from leaving.

Ron stood, arms raised, wand waving in sinuous patterns, trying to hold the crowd back with a shield-charm. Beads of sweat sprang forth upon his face, and the veins stood out upon his forehead as the strain of maintaining the shield told upon him. Harry and Ginny found themselves pressed up against the shield by the anxious mob. Pressed between the two, Harry fought hard to breathe.

Abruptly, the doors to the kitchen flew open. Hermione's voice, magically augmented, rose over the din of the crowd.

"The kitchen! Everyone, there is an exit through the kitchen. THE KITCHEN, EVERYBODY!"

Already an exodus had begun. Those timid souls who had, upon the first report, taken cover in corners and under overturned tables, had already begun scrambling out through the kitchen door, through the kitchen itself, and thence to freedom out the back door.

The crowd melted away around Harry, as gradually, its members realized that a new avenue of escape had been opened to them. With a sigh of relief, Ron dispelled the shield--and was immediately tackled by a desperate mother.

"My baby!" she cried, frantically. "My baby's out there! Please, sir, let me out, PLEASE!" She struggled as Harry, Hermione and Ginny attempted to pull her back, away from the vicious firefight raging outside.

"Excuse me," said a voice. A strong hand came to rest on Harry's shoulder. He turned.

A tall man stood there, clad in trench coat over a well-cut suit. He looked expensive, well-groomed, his blond hair coiffed in the latest fashion.

"Is anything wrong? You seem to be having a problem."

Harry stared. There was a pitched battle going on outside, and this man, a Muggle by all the look of him, was standing there calmly, asking questions. As if to emphasize the incongruity of the moment, there was a thunderous crash outside. In his arms, the bereaved mother began her struggle anew, calling out weakly for her baby.

"Sir--" Harry began, but the blond man held up his hand.

"That's all right lad, I know what's going on out there. There, ma'am," he continued, addressing the distraught woman. "It's all right now. Your child's safe, no fear. I'll get him."

"But," Hermione spoke up, "Sir, whoever you are you'll be killed out there."

The man shrugged and smiled. "Probably," he acknowledged, "but most likely not. I'm more formidable than I appear, Ms...?"

Hermione ignored the implied question of her name. "Sir," she repeated, raising her wand, "I can't let you go out there. It's--"

Anything else Hermione might have said was lost as a hideous creature leapt through the door, bowling over the wizards who crouched there firing spells into the hideous melee taking place without.

It was something out of a decadent's worst opium-nightmare, an atavistic, slobbering combination of man, fish and frog. A smell as of rotting seaweed rose from its flabby body. Its mouth worked as it moved, contorting its already hideous visage into yet more repulsive forms. From deep within its bulbous throat, a series of horrible, slobbering sounds issued, monstrous in their every syllable. They spoke of ancient days, of dark things lurking in swamps since before the advent of men, waiting, waiting...

It was perhaps understandable, therefore, that at that very moment, everyone lost their heads. Hermione's wand whipped round to point at the horrid beast, her mouth open to speak a curse in the thing's direction. Ron cried out, and shook himself free of the mother's grasp to point his own wand at the slavering monstrosity. The struggling mother broke free with a shriek from the grasps of Harry and Ginny and retreated into the far corner of the room.

Ron and Hermione both fired at the same instant, twin bolts of the Stupefy charm racing forth from the tips of their wands. The hexes both splashed into the creature's slimy hide--and then, rebounded forth, back along their original paths to strike their horrified casters before they could even shout.

Harry was just getting his wand around to point at the creature when the blond man gripped his shoulder with an almost superhuman strength and tossed him aside to land on the floor. A grunt from the other side of the man told him that Ginny had been treated the same way. The monster howled.

And then, Harry heard the blond man cry out, in a voice that rebounded of the stone walls of the café:

"KIMOTA!"

And there was a thunderous detonation, a flash of light so bright that Harry, his head turned in the opposite direction, was almost blinded.

And then, silence.

Slowly, carefully, Harry raised his head.

The creature lay there, its neck broken, its head almost severed by the immense force used.

"Wha--what happened?" asked Hermione as she got up.

Ron was staring at the corpse. "Unbelievable." He looked around. "Where'd that guy get to?"

Cautiously, Harry poked his head out the door.

The station was a shambles. Great splatters of blood and other bodily fluids marked the walls--including the one that led to Platform 9¾, where the Hogwarts Express waited. Bodies lay everywhere: Muggle policemen, civilians, a few wizards. Scattered about were the black-clad forms of the attacking Death-Eaters. They had not died pleasantly--most of their corpses looked as if they'd been struck by an artillery shell at point-blank range. One of the great trains had been lifted bodily off the tracks. As Harry looked, he saw a hand and a foot sticking out from underneath one of the carriages. A broken wand lay just a few inches beyond the hand's fingers. Harry shuddered.

There was a commotion at the end of the concourse. Harry looked up.

His breath caught in his throat.

"Oh, shit!" It was not often he swore; he could count only three occasions within the last two years when he had done so. On this occasion, though, he was so overcome with shock, so utterly dumbfounded by a sight which, prior to this he had believed impossible, that the obscenity seemed the most natural thing to say.

Hermione came up behind him. "This has got to be a joke!" he heard her say.

Ron looked from one of them to the other. "Harry? Hermione? Give me a clue guys, I've got no idea what's going on here. Who're those people over there, with the captured Death-Eater?"

Six people stood, bathed in the sunlight streaming down from the broken roof, at the end of the concourse, holding a struggling Death-Eater in their midst. Five people out of legend, out of tales so outlandish, so strange that for years they had been dismissed as mere children's stories, consigned to exist only in the world of four-color inks and cheap newsprint.

The blond man, standing tall above the rest, his muscular form clad in a skintight costume of sky blue, two letters 'M', one above the other, emblazoned upon his chest: Miracleman, the science hero, the product of British ingenuity and scientific genius.

Beside him, the broad-chested man with the British flag displayed proudly upon his chest, and upon his head a mask with the same flag down to just above his mouth, his every move speaking of power controlled, and majesty: Captain Britain, the Pendragon, heir to the mantle of King Arthur, his mighty form empowered by the magicks of the great wizard Merlin himself.

In the center, holding the Death-Eater captive with what looked like a very vicious arm lock, another man, clad also in the colors of the flag, though slighter and more slender than the last two: Union Jack, Britain's champion of the common man since 1942, the man who fought the forces of evil armed only with his wits, his automatic, and his own two fists.

Standing by his side, her silvery hair blowing in the wind, clad in leotard of gold that reflected the sun's rays, turning her into a living sun herself: Spitfire, the speedstress of World War II, able to outrun airplanes and catch speeding bullets before they ever found their targets.

On the other side of the couple stood a grim-faced man, clad head to toe in black armor. Upon his shield, a great star blazed forth, brilliant against the background so black that no light ever reflected off it, while his sword glowed, even in the day, with an uncanny light: The Black Knight, last scion of a line of proud heroes, stretching back to the days of the Round Table.

Last of all, there was a girl, blonde hair tumbling to her waist, carrying a jeweled scepter and clad in white, all white, looking for all the world like a fairy-tale princess come to life: Sailor V, pretty champion of light and justice the world over.

Harry clapped his hand to his forehead; he felt as if he'd fallen into one of Dudley's comic books. "This can't be happening. I must be hallucinating. I must be hallucinating." He turned to Ginny. "Ginny, tell me I'm not seeing this," he pleaded.

"Um, Harry, no," she replied. "I can see them too."

Harry groaned. He took off his glasses and pinched his nose. "Days like these, I wonder if anything's real anymore." He sighed.

Ron looked at him as if he'd gone mad. "Will someone clue me in as to what's going on here? Who are these people, and why are you and Hermione so upset about seeing them here?"

"They're superheroes, Ron," said Hermione.

"What're superheroes?"

Hermione sighed, and closed her eyes for a few moments.

"Superheroes, Ron," she said, in a tired voice after she opened her eyes, "are fictional characters. They're from a genre of Muggle literature where people with marvelous powers dress up in funny costumes and go out to fight crime."

"Kind of like Aurors, then," said Ron.

Harry leaned back against the solid stone wall of the train station and laughed, hysterically. "Yeah, something like that. Except that they're fictional. Only thing is," and he jerked his head at the six figures standing over the struggling Death Eater, "That lot are characters from one of the most popular Muggle comic books now on the newsstands. Do you see what's wrong with this picture now?"

"Yet some stories, young Harry, may have a basis in truth. And that of Excalibur, the Defenders of the British Isles, is among them," said a voice behind them.

From out of the shadows emerged Albus Dumbledore. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny started.

"Professor Dumbledore!"

The old wizard nodded fondly at the four of them. They were, when all was said and done, his favorite pupils, his protégés in the secret war against the Dark Lord.

"Hello, Harry," he said. "Ron, Ginny, Hermione." He nodded at each of them as he spoke their names.

"Professor, what's going on here?" asked Harry. "Who are those people?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Them?" he asked, nodding in the direction of the superheroes. "They, Harry, are exactly who they appear to be. No more, no less. Us wizards and witches are not the only things hiding in the shadows of this strange world."

Miracleman walked past, bearing in his arms a sleeping child. He went into the café.

"He did save her baby," breathed Hermione. There were tears in her eyes.

Dumbledore smiled again. "Yes," he agreed. Then he sobered. "There is a proposition for you, young Harry, and also for your friends, if they so desire."

"What is it, Professor?" asked Harry. The war had demanded a great many things of him since it had begun; he had a feeling that this would be another. No matter, he thought. Whatever it takes, I'll do it. I'll see Voldemort defeated if I have to die to do so. "What is it?"

"Well, Harry, first, I must remind you: as I said, some stories do have a basis in truth. Do you understand this?"

Harry nodded. What was all this about?

"Good." And Albus Dumbledore turned, and gestured to a figure standing behind him, and a tall, thin, man, aquiline of face, with a high, intelligent brow and piercing grey eyes stepped forward and extended his hand.

"Hello, Mr. Potter. I'm Sherlock Holmes, and I've come to help you in your war against Lord Voldemort."

The Heroes' Return Reader's Guide to Crossover References

Hello, and welcome to the Crossover Reference Guide. A few days after I posted the first chapter to this fic, a reader mentioned in my review board a need for a guide to the several references I made to various elements outside the Harry Potter fandom. This is it. I plan to update this guide every two chapters, but for now, here is the first edition of the reference guide to Heroes' Return.

John Yik

Chapter 1:

"Sherlock Holmes, the man who for one hundred and fifty years had been, and still was, the greatest detective on the face of the planet, laughed."

We all know who Dumbledore's visitor is: the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes. Despite his rationalist approach to life and reality, it is altogether possible that Holmes was involved in stranger goings-on than is generally admitted to by Dr. Watson, his biographer. Hence, his appearance in the office of the headmaster of a school of magic.

"...they had succeeded in preventing the notorious vampire William the Bloody from continuing his black-handed reign of terror over London town."

William the Bloody, also known as Spike for his habit of torturing victims with a railway spike, was an English noble before he was embraced into vampiracy by Liam O'Rourke, the Angelus. Both men eventually moved to America, and at the time this fic take place, were last seen lurking about the town of Sunnydale, California, as seen in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"...though being recorded by Holmes' friend and chronicler Doctor Watson, passed totally unnoticed by the public at large."

This is why, when you look through the list of Holmes' published adventures, you will find relatively little reference to the supernatural: because Watson, afraid of public ridicule, did not release his files for those particular cases to his publisher.

"...created an immortality elixir from the royal jelly of honeybees..."

Though I'm unsure when this was first used, Holmes' royal jelly immortality elixir is a common device among Holmes fans wishing to prolong the Great Detective's adventures until well into the twenty-first century.

""Ah," he said, "the divine Ms. Sparks.""

Holmes and Dumbledore here refer to the superwoman Jenny Sparks, one of the first superhumans to appear in the twentieth century. Jenny, who along with several other extraordinary individuals was born on exactly the stroke of midnight on January the first, 1900, went on to have an adventurous career, her path crossing with those of many important personages who would later influence the course of twentieth-century history. In 1919, gates to an alternate reality opened up in the skies over London. Radiation from the portals activated Jenny's latent superhuman abilities, transforming her into a being of living electricity. As Holmes mentions, she is the living embodiment of the zeitgeist of the twentieth century. Her adventures, especially those taking place in the years leading up to the end of the century, were chronicled by Warren Ellis in his Stormwatch and Authority series of graphic novels.

"That disgraceful incident with the dead babies..."

Holmes refers to an incident in the 1980's, when two members of a vigilante organization in which Jenny Sparks was involved, a couple, were accused of murdering babies for body parts which were used to construct a composite baby as a substitute for a real one for the woman of the pair.

"Nemo and McLeod, Masaki and Cranston..."

Here Holmes talks about several of his colleagues, contemporaries of his who have survived to the present day. Nemo is of course Captain Nemo, also known as Prince Dakkar of Bundelcund, the Indian captain of the Nautilus, as described in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. McLeod is Connor McLeod, the Immortal Highlander. Masaki refers to the alien prince Masaki Yosho, who came to Earth in the twelfth century to fight a space pirate who was cutting a swath of destruction through the galaxy, and, after the battle, elected to stay on, in disguise as a temple priest. Yosho's adventures in the present day, as well as those of his grandson, are told in the anime series Tenchi Muyo!

Lamont Cranston, the final name Holmes mentions, is in fact a cover identity for the mysterious vigilante known only as the Shadow. His adventures were related in a series of pulp novels in the 1920's and 30's by the author Maxwell Grant.

"...him who had faced down Moriarty and Fantomas and Doctor Nikola..."

A great detective like Holmes is, of necessity, forced to take on some very formidable villains indeed. These names are just a sampling of the many evil men Holmes has faced in his career. Moriarty is, of course, Holmes' old enemy Professor James Moriarty. Fantomas, the Parisian crime lord, was the commander of an immense army of street toughs, and was renowned for committing crimes in an outrageous, over-the-top style just for the sheer joy of it. Examples of his deeds include blowing up hundreds of people just to kill one man, crashing buses into buildings in order to break into a bank in broad daylight, and replacing all the perfume in a department store with sulphuric acid. His deeds were chronicled by a pair of French journalists, Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, in a series of 34 novels in 1911.

Doctor Nikola, the last of this unholy trio, is an extraordinarily handsome scientist of Eastern European ancestry. Besides being a genetic manipulator and vivisectionist, he is also a minor psionic, capable of mind reading and hypnosis. Nikola's plans are usually fiendishly tortuous and twisted; it's impossible to see how one step or the other will enable him to, like all other supervillains, achieve his goal of conquering the world. The good doctor's adventures were chronicled by Guy Boothby in his 1895 novel, A Bid For Fortune, along with its three sequels.

"I recently received a visit from an old student of mine. Elijah Snow."

Elijah Snow, one of many adventurers who received instruction from the Great Detective himself, was born, like Jenny Sparks, on the stroke of midnight, January First, 1900. Able to drain the heat from anything in his immediate vicinity, Snow became a chronicler of the fantastic, investigating strange locations and occurrences, and publishing his experiences in the Planetary Guide, a yearly almanac.

Snow's adventures where chronicled by Warren Ellis in his Planetary series of comic books.

"...a tale of four adventurers involved in a secret American space initiative..."

Holmes is referring to the Four, the main villains of Planetary. A sort of dark mirror to the Fantastic Four, the Four were, as described here, astronauts from a top-secret project to achieve moon flight in the 1960's. En route to the moon, a spatial rift opened up in front of their craft, irradiating its crew and sending the vessel out of control. When the capsule was recovered after having slingshotted around the moon, it was found that the voyagers had gained fantastic powers.

The Four then proceeded to take over the project for their own ends, and, having done so, went on to destroy every trace of the secret history of the world that they could, intending to make themselves the only representatives of the fantastic in the world. The existence of these people was first made known to the world by Warren Ellis, in Planetary #6.

"...a giant American science-city, deep in the Arizona desert."

Science City Zero, where the Four transformed victims of the Communist witch-hunts into 1950's-style B-movie monsters, was introduced by Warren Ellis in Issue Eight of Planetary.

"Do you remember, old friend, the fate of the Vril-Ya race, back in 1974?"

The Vril-Ya appeared in the 1871 novel The Coming Race, by Edward "It was a dark and stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton. As is mentioned here, the Vril-Ya are tall, winged, red-skinned and black-eyed. They have a matriarchal society, and are extremely advanced, having robots, heavier than air flight, instantaneous communications, and extremely powerful weaponry. The society on the whole is peace-loving, however.

"...his first encounter with the time-traveler who called himself the Doctor."

The Doctor, is, of course, the rogue Gallifreyan Timelord whose adventures were chronicled in the British TV series Doctor Who. The Gallifreyans are an extremely advanced, extremely ancient alien race who've perfected time travel.

"And those colorful heroes, those men and women who ran, fought, flew and wielded the powers of gods--they were the Justice Society."

The Justice Society was formed in 1942, a confederation of super powered beings dedicated to combating evil wherever they found it. Several important members of the Society include Hourman, Starman, the Atom, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Dr. Midnight, Wildcat, and Johnny Thunder. Their adventures were told by various authors, all working for DC Comics, in All-Star Comics.

"The Great Bird of Flame, the mother of all your race."

What's Dumbledore talking about? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

""Yes. I remember. Back in 1986, when the skies turned red as blood...And again in '97, when the Sentinels ran amuck.""

Dumbledore and Holmes are referring to two separate events, in which reality and history were manipulated on a heretofore unknown scale, erasing entire events and people from the timelines: The Crisis on Infinite Earths, as told in the 1986 DC Comics maxi-series, and the Onslaught, as related in the Marvel Comics crossover in 1996 of the same name. In both events, large numbers of heroes were killed, their names seemingly forgotten by those who survived. Of course, we all know they really didn't die. They just went...elsewhere. ;-)

"The Kherubim are unreliable; they are caught up with their own war against the Daemonites."

Millenia ago, forces from two incredibly ancient races crash-landed upon our planet. Extremely powerful individuals all, they commenced a secret war behind the scenes of human affairs, using native-born Earthlings as their pawns. That struggle, and the series of events that led to its ultimate conclusion, was related by, among others, Jim Lee and Alan Moore, in the Wildstorm Comics series WildCATs.

"The Men in Black are also distracted; according to our sources, they have received intelligence indicating that the Colonization is imminent."

The Men in Black are, of course, the secret organization regulating the alien presence on Earth, including such things as customs and immigration. The Colonization refers to the event which several government agents, including a certain individual fond of Morley's cigarettes, helped prepare the way for by conducting experiments merging the DNA of Grey aliens with that of humans, while at the same time attempting to discover a vaccine against a plague with which the aliens intend to use to wipe out humanity. The story of this conspiracy is told in the TV series The X-Files, by Chris Carter.

"It is proposed that we form a league of extraordinary individuals to undertake our most hazardous missions."

And, as we shall soon see, this is not the first time such a gathering of extraordinary people has been proposed, either.

Chapter 2:

"Only the intervention of the stranger known only as "Alucard""

Read the name backwards. 'Nuff said.

"...by vast and unutterably alien beings from beyond the stars."

Just as these beings drive insane any who look upon them, so it requires a mind with a touch of madness to even comprehend the task of chronicling the interactions of these Great Old Ones with common humanity. Such a man was H.P. Lovecraft, the man whose horror-filled narratives of the lurking menace of the evils from beyond the stars, of great Cthulu, waiting in his house in sunken R'lyeh, of Yog-Sothoth, Ithaqua and Azathoth the mad. Sadly, even Lovecraft himself was only human, and, like many of the unfortunate individuals whose adventures he chronicled, he too succumbed to the horrors beyond the threshold, and went to an early grave.

""KIMOTA!""

This is the legendary cry of Miracleman, the quintessential British superhero. A test subject in a combined government experiment in both superhuman research and mind-control, Miracleman, and his young protégés Kid Miracleman and Young Miracleman, underwent procedures in which the British government caused them to experience various comic-book style adventures, all inside their own minds. At the experiment's conclusion, the three were taken out to a desert field and a nuclear device was detonated over their heads. Young Miracleman was killed, and Miracleman trapped, amnesiac, in his normal form. Kid Miracleman survived, and went on to build a corporate empire, until, drunk with power, he was deposed by his former mentor, who had recently regained his memory, and forced to revert to his human form: that of a young boy.

"Beside him, the broad-chested man with the British flag displayed proudly upon his chest..."

Brian Braddock, a student was fleeing a gang of toughs on his motorbike when he crashed. Near death, he had a vision of the magician Merlin, who informed him that though he was dying, should he choose to accept the mantle of the next great champion of Great Britain, he would live. Brian was offered a choice of two weapons: the Amulet of Right or the Sword of Might. Considering himself a scholar, he accepted the Amulet, and was granted great strength, speed and flight, a costume, and a golden mace, which he used to protect his homeland as Captain Britain.

"Union Jack, Britain's champion of the common man since 1942..."

In 1914, the first Union Jack, Lord Montgomery Falsworth, put on a costume resembling his nom de guerre, and waged a one man commando campaign against the Germans. Sometime during the Second World War, his son, Brian, took over the mantle. Some time in the 1980's, Lord Montgomery, under threat from his old nemesis the vampire Baron Blood, issued a call to both his old friend Captain America, as well as a friend of his grandson's, Joey Chapman, for help. Chapman took up the mantle of Union Jack after the encounter, armed with the same weapons the old man wielded: a Webley automatic, good fighting skills, and his own two fists.

"Spitfire, the speedstress of World War II"

Jacqueline, the daughter of Montgomery Falsworth and sister of Brian, was injured during one of the latter's missions, bitten by the vampire Baron Blood. Desperately needing a blood transplant, she was infused with the synthetic blood of the android Human Torch. The robot blood, along with the vampire bite, reacted with her body chemistry to grant her spectacular powers: the ability to move at speeds hundreds of times greater than that of any other human. Donning a golden costume, she fought at her brother's side as Spitfire. Still young after more than fifty years, she continues to fight crime alongside Joey Chapman, heir to her father's heroic legacy.

"The Black Knight, last scion of a line of proud heroes..."

Dane Whitman, scientist, was exploring an ancient castle left to him by his uncle when he came across a mysterious blade hung in a scabbard deep within the castle's dungeons. Drawing the sword, he found himself transformed into the Black Knight, latest in a long line of heroes dating back to the time of King Arthur.

"Sailor V, pretty champion of light and justice the world over..."

Yes, THAT Sailor V. Minako Aino was an exchange student in the United Kingdom when she was approached by, of all things, a talking white cat. Greeting her as the reincarnation of a warrior from a long-lost civilization, the cat presented her with a pen that enabled her to transform into Sailor V, the pretty soldier of love and justice.

"...Excalibur, the Defenders of the British Isles..."

While the characters mentioned above come from different sources--Miracleman from Warrior magazine, Captain Britain, Union Jack, Spitfire and Black Knight from Marvel Comics, and Sailor V from the Sailor Moon manga and anime series, it is logical that, in a universe where all these characters co-exist, they would have met up, and, having met up, decided to form a team. Thus, while in Marvel continuity, only Captain Britain was affiliated with Excalibur, with all these other heroes already present in this universe, it's only natural that, here, they are all members of the same team.