B7/Harry Potter crossover: In which advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
"Give it back!" said Hermione furiously. "It's no use to you anyway. No spell you could ever think of would get you into it."
"I haven't got it." Malfoy smirked despite the three wands pointed at him.
And indeed he couldn't have, thought Harry, at least not on him. He was horribly tempted to use the spell he'd found at the very back of the Half-Blood Prince's potions manual, and when a single tear rolled down Hermione's cheek, he decided to give it a try. "Millefuturus!"
Malfoy disappeared.
"Where'd he go?" asked Ron.
"Into the future, I think," said Harry, though he wasn't sure just how much time the 'mille' bit referred to.
***
Malfoy blinked at the large room he found himself in, and the three people who stared back at him. "Where am I?"
"More to the point, who are you?" A dark-haired man raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"Draco Malfoy." He looked around. There were hexagons everywhere: the doors, the blinking panel on a wall, the screen showing ... a moving starfield. Malfoy's jaw dropped.
"Singularly uninformative," said the man. "One of your relatives, Vila? He has a certain expression in common."
"Oh, very funny," said the sandy-haired one on the couch.
Just then, Hermione's diary (which, it was true, seemed to have an unbreakable spell on it), achieved its normal size in Malfoy's pocket to the sound of ripping cloth and fell to the floor.
"Ah, molecular reduction," said Vila. "Only lasts so long, doesn't it?"
"And what do you know about it, Vila?" The woman sounded amused.
Vila gave Avon a quick and furtive look. "Oh, just read about it, Cally."
If they knew about the reductio ad absurdum spell, perhaps they weren't the muggles he'd assumed. Yes, on second thoughts, there were all those hexagons. Relieved the miniaturisation hadn't worn off a bit earlier, Malfoy bent to pick the diary up but Vila was too fast, and they collided.
Vila straightened, holding the diary. "What's this, then?"
"Nothing."
Vila pulled out a tiny silvery wand which he touched to the diary. His mouth didn't even move, but the book sprang open straight away to Malfoy's shock. Despite his harmless look, Vila had obviously mastered the art of silent spells. "Just a kid's diary." Disappointed, Vila flipped a few pages over. "What a swot, just like you probably were, Avon." He grinned at Malfoy. "Fancy someone called Ron, do you?"
Malfoy blushed bright red. "It isn't mine."
"Ah, in the same business as me then? Bit old to still be at the petty stage, aren't you?"
Crossly, Malfoy brandished his wand. "Accio diary!" The little book leapt from Vila's hand and flew to Malfoy's.
"Oh, I see we have something else in common," said Vila amiably. "I like playing with magic too." He showed Malfoy his empty hands, made them into fists, then opened them again and the left one held Malfoy's watch. "Yours, I think."
Malfoy was stunned. Once again, Vila hadn't spoken and he hadn't even felt the watch remove itself, or seen it fly to him.
Vila came up close to him. "I think you've got some coins in your ears. Here." Looking mock-concerned, he extracted three Hogsmeade bronzes and handed them to Malfoy, who clapped horrified hands over both his ears, dropping the diary. Vila laughed.
"Stop playing with him, Vila," said Avon. "We should send him back to wherever he came from."
"No!" Malfoy thought fast. If he stayed long enough to learn from these people, he would be more powerful than Snape or even Dumbledore.
"Come with me." Avon stood.
Desperate to stall, Malfoy said the first thing he could think of: that spell he'd heard some Gryffindors talking about the other day. "Levicorpus!"
Avon dangled upside-down as if held by one ankle; he crossed his arms and looked exasperated. "Not that old trick. Zen, negate the local gravity anomaly."
"Confirmed," said someone Malfoy couldn't see, and Avon fell to the ground and glared at Vila who was rolling on the couch laughing. "Shut up, you fool, and get that gravity generator off him."
"It might be an oldie but it's a goodie," said Vila, still grinning. He stood up and reached for Malfoy's wand.
Malfoy backed away, in no doubt that such a powerful wizard would be able to disarm him. "Cruciatus!"
"Hey!" Vila looked affronted. "That tingles!"
"It's meant to hurt. You should be in agony."
"Like I was a few hours ago when we went through that barrier thingy? Nothing a drop of adrenaline and soma can't fix." Vila raised a glass of bright green liquid. "I think I've gone right off you though."
Malfoy was stunned. He'd never heard of a potion that could counteract a cruciatus.
You're a very nasty boy, the woman Cally said in his head.
Legilimens and occlumens were well enough known, but a scribimens? They were spoken of in theory but there'd never been one. Malfoy whimpered, stepped back again and fell over the diary.
"Oh, he's just playing with a gravity generator and pretending it's a real wand," said Vila. He waved his hands mockingly and said, "Abracadabra!" and laughed.
Laughed! Laughed at the worst curse Malfoy had heard of. "All right," he said, terrified. "Send me back!"
"Wherever that is," said Vila. "I suppose we could teleport him to the nearest inhabited planet."
Teleport? These people could disapparate someone else that far?
"Any place with a breathable atmosphere would do," said Avon, still dusting his leather trousers down.
"Avon is right, Vila." said Cally. "This boy has darkness in him."
"Stay out of my head!" Clutching the diary in one hand and his wand in the other, Malfoy scrambled to his feet. "I want to go home."
"Then wave your little wand and say the words," said Avon sarcastically. "A brief analysis seems to show that any contorted Latin phrase will do."
"Home to my own time," Malfoy pleaded.
"Homus domus!" Vila sniggered.
Avon gave him an appreciative look. "I'd go for 'domus tempus' myself."
Malfoy waved his wand. "Domus tempus!"
***
...and was never more pleased to see Harry, Hermione and Ron.
"That's mine!" Hermione grabbed her diary and checked the Muggle padlock on it.
"Where've you been?" asked Ron, his face alight with curiosity.
"The future." Malfoy forced a sneer. "On a huge spaceship on the other side of the galaxy, actually. Thanks for the trip, Harry." He swaggered over to where Crabbe and Goyle were waiting.
Harry and Ron looked at each other. "D'you think if we pointed our wands at each other and said it at the same time—"
"No," said Hermione firmly. "Didn't you see how terrified he really was?"
***
"It was awful," Malfoy said to Moaning Myrtle. "That spaceship was full of really powerful wizards who just played with me and laughed at me."
"Oh, you poor boy." Myrtle patted him insubstantially. "Never mind. You'll get better in time."
The end