Chapter Text
If you had ever walked the streets of London, you most likely missed most of the interesting aspects of the city.
No, I’m not talking about the grand buildings blooming with rich history your average tourist likes to frequent or one of the world-famous sights the city has in abundance. I’m talking about the really interesting things.
Have you ever looked beyond the red double-decker buses and boarded the Knight bus?
Have you ever abandoned the busy city centre to seek refuge in a very peculiar and quiet bookshop?
Have you ever glanced at the shadows late at night and saw them… moving?
You have most likely never spared a second glance for a white marble building standing over one of the largest ley-line junctions on Earth. You have never spared much thought on certain buildings in Whitechapel, Kensington, Bloomsbury, Soho or really any other parts of the city.
And the cemeteries in its vicinity? Well, not even the locals like to dwell there any longer than needs be.
You probably never noticed some of the more exotic people that walk her streets either.
A man in a dirty trench coat with a cigarette always hanging from his lips. The ever present oddballs that roam the city in an attire better suited to a medieval fantasy fair than a 21st century metropolis. A considerable amount of people whose bodies are littered with small white scars left behind by God knows what.
The countless 'people' looking just a bit too normal for it to be natural with small quirks that give them away for what they truly are. The same with the superpowered people hiding all over the place. Like the kid with a sword disguised as a pen that's been camping out here for a while now and a family with a wardrobe serving as the interdimensional portal to a distant kingdom.
The odd pair of the man in the sunglasses and fiery red hair with his constant companion all in beige, driving around in an old-fashioned Bentley. That thing surely breaks more traffic laws than the rest of the city combined the second it leaves its parking space. And, of course, one mustn't forget all of the other human-like creatures constantly on their tail.
Some of them have been quite a thorn in several important sides as of late.
There's also the famous local ‘consulting’ detective and her blogger that give the MET a headache and a clean slate every time they do a run through the local crime scenes. The headache sometimes spreads to a certain umbrella and its owner whenever DI Lestrade decides he's had enough.
Another fixed feature is a man with many different faces that pops in in a blue police phone box and the exasperated people who follow him all the time. They say that one likes to stop in Chiswick for tea.
There also seems to be an entire armada of secret agents, all from different secret organisations, roaming about. Some of them talk about swords and some of them about shields. The worst of them mention something called a hydra.
One is better off staying away from those.
London hides all of them and so much more behind the glamour of her tourist attractions and famous landmarks. She does it to keep the focus off of them and so much more. It’s her way of keeping them safe. Her way of maintaining balance.
Because all of them are a part of her, just like every other normal and naively oblivious soul that walks her streets.
And maybe, just maybe she has a favourite.
Though if she does, it is most definitely not Xena.
Her whole life seems to be cursed. I have it on good authority the girl wouldn’t put it past the city that she was in on the cruel joke God had devised for her.
But who is Xena, you might ask?
Well… that is both a simple and a complicated question.
She’s a girl. An orphan. A sister, a niece and a cousin. But she’s also a witch, a sorceress and something much more unusual than that.
You may know her twin brother, though. At least you know him if you’re from the Wizarding community.
Harry Potter. The Boy who lived.
And while the story they tell children on Earth 271 is somewhat similar, the real Harry Potter from Earth 734 walked a slightly different path. The Multiverse likes to work like that – in strange, often ironically, funny and twisted ways.
Just, if you ever meet Xena Potter, you might want to skip over the fact that she is not part of a world-wide bestseller. She’s been through enough as it is.
Don’t believe me?
Well then, better scoot a little closer. I’m here to tell you about the Girl who Cheated Death. And about the girl who brought many changes to the world.
What is one war compared to several and then some?
What are a few flimsy little Death Eaters compared to gods, angels, demons, aliens, superheroes and curses of the old?
What is one hidden society on a tiny little planet when you have the whole of the multiverse at your fingertips?
Not much is it?
Not much at all.
And this is the story of her mortal death.
You’d think that’s where this is all gonna end; that this is going to be an epic ode about a life of struggles and endless battles, most of them won by barely an inch.
You’d be wrong.
It is a life of endless battles and struggles. But however bad Xena and Harry thought they had it with Petunia and Vernon Dursley, it was practically a breeze compared to what came next.
Not the abhorrent family part, no, no. That turned out fine. It was everything else that went downhill.
And yet, the day Harry's sister died is the day their life truly began.
For Harry, it was the day predjudice was put aside to let logic and self-thought prevail... or at least start to.
And for Xena... well, her life took an interesting sort of turn, sending her down a path forged for her long before she was born. Well, almost forged for her before she was born, but we'll get to all of that when the Moirar finally think to ask the Norns about why the Weave stayed intact even when everything seemed like it was unravelling.
For now, let's just say Xena's soul broke the first of many restraints placed upon it and ended up in the Underworld of Hades, the old ancient Greek and Roman afterlife if you will.
More specifically, in what the locals refer to as Old Tartarus.
She came face to face with a particular Titan that used to rule the Olympian planes. You might have heard of him. His name is Kronos.
And as you might have guessed, he’s not exactly the most hospitable type.
It was his power, his meddling in the streams of time, that sent her free-falling trought the past and propelled her on a rather long journey of some very deep self-discovery.
She made some odd choices. She learned some very weird things, but most importantly, she made enemies and allies. And eventually, she cracked the most arcane form of magic and managed to find her way back to her arse of a little brother.
The fact that it took her way, waaay too long to do it is, if you ask her, a minor detail.
And here’s the fun part; the moment she snapped herself back into?
It was just 7 minutes after she was officially declared dead for the whole of the Wizarding world to hear. She is intimately familiar with the exact timeframe because Tywin Lannister had taken it upon himself to lord it over her until his final breath.
Apparently she was ‘late’ or whatever.
And they say Xena is the odder of this unlikely duo.
So here we are, at the very crossroads that had the Potter twins starting out their journey in life, properly starting out their journey in life, on the day Death got cheated by a little girl and several Reapers were left scratching their heads as to how this could have happened.
I'll give you a clue, one they will only pick up on several years down the line: what is the one thing you can't kill?
An idea.
You can kill a man, but so long as humanity remains standing, you can never truly kill an idea.