[Emissary] Chapter 34 - Interlude

Many children hated school and couldn’t wait for the weekend to arrive, but, unlike them, Harry dreaded every second of it. When he was at school, the breaks were not great, but during class, nobody messed with him. There was no Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia to scream at him. There was no Dudley to make his life miserable. He didn’t have chores to do when he was in class either. There was only peace and quiet. 

It was Saturday. Although it was the weekend, Vernon and Petunia woke Harry up early in the morning and ordered him to start cleaning the house while the two of them went to do their groceries. If that was everything, Harry wouldn’t mind it all that much. However, they didn’t take Dudley with them.

Harry let out a sigh as he dragged the large vacuum cleaner into the living room. It was not its weight that was making him sigh but the fact that he knew that once he turned it on, Dudley would undoubtedly wake up and come down to bother him.

Nonetheless, he had no choice. He’d rather suffer through Dudley’s bullying and then have his aunt and uncle lock him in a cupboard and starve him until Monday morning again.

And just as he had expected, merely two minutes after Harry turned on the vacuum cleaner and started cleaning the living room’s floor, Dudley came down from his room, yelling, running through the living room, and kicking up a fuss just to mess with him.

“Dudley, come on! I have to finish cleaning before they come back!” Harry pleaded with him. 

“Like I care! Haha!” the fat kid laughed and started jumping on the sofa.

Harry tried to ignore him and continue cleaning, but Dudley got off the sofa and pulled the vacuum cleaner’s plug out of the socket.

“Cut it off already!” Harry said in annoyance as he went to plug it back in, but Dudley took the cord with him and ran away snickering.

Dudley looked back to see if Harry was chasing after him, but in doing so, he didn’t watch where he was going and crashed into a cabinet.

Although he was only ten years old, the little walrus was already heavier than some Asian adults. The whole cabinet was rocked when he crashed into it. Time appeared to slow down in Harry’s eyes as he watched the ornate jar on top of the wobbling cabinet fall down.

The expensive-looking jar shattered into pieces as it crashed on the floor, sending clouds of ash into the air and painting Dudley’s face and clothes grey.

The two boys gazed at the destroyed urn stupefied.

As chance made it, the entrance door opened at that exact moment. Vernon and Petunia were back. 

⁂

Harry, Kara, and Astrid were in front of 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, on the sidewalk, sitting on a bench that Harry had conjured for them. Having cast a warding spell that made the Muggles ignore them, nobody paid any attention to them. Besides, it was quite early in the morning; the streets were empty.

Knowing that it was a different dimension, Harry did not want to jump to conclusions and assume that everything was exactly like in his world of origin. For example, in his world, Bellatrix Lestrange had murdered his godfather, Sirius Black. But, in his second life, Bellatrix never joined the Dark Lord; she had been an Unspeakable, and a woman of character who loved researching magic. Moreover, she had adopted him and cared for him as though she were his mother.

Another example of how wildly things could vary from one dimension to another was the case of the good Lex Luthor and the evil version of Superman from the Crime Syndicate’s dimension.

When the three of them arrived in front of young Harry’s house, the Dursleys had already left, and the boy was in the process of cleaning the house. Harry himself could not see what was happening inside, but Kara and Astrid, with their X-ray vision, could.

Although he had a feeling that things were just as bad for this young Harry as they had been for him when the girls told him that the boy was cleaning the house alone while his cousin was sleeping with no care in the world, Harry resolved himself to wait until he got solid proof.

“God, I’ve never wanted to beat a kid as much as I do now,” said Powergirl, a vein pulsating dangerously on her temple.

“What’s going on?” asked Harry. 

“The fat kid just woke up and started messing with him,” Kara said with a frown.

“Dad, let’s go inside!” Astrid also said while glaring in the direction of the house. 

As chance made it, the Dursleys’ grey Vauxhall Estate car arrived at that moment and parked in front of their garage.

“Oh no!” Astrid exclaimed.

“The half-pint hog just broke an expensive-looking vase. No, not just a vase; it looks like an urn with someone’s remains,” Powergirl elaborated.

“Kara, can I watch it through your eyes?” he asked for permission. 

“Of course.”

Casting the Legilimency Spell, Harry transferred his consciousness into Kara’s mind and watched through her eyes, with her X-ray vision, what was going on inside the house.

⁂

The two boys gazed at the destroyed urn and the pile of ash scattered all over the floor stupefied.

As chance made it, the door opened at that exact moment. Vernon and Petunia were back. 

Harry’s and Dudley’s eyes met. Then, Dudley sprinted towards the entrance door, his rolls of fat flapping with every step he took.

“Dad! Dad! Harry broke the urn with Grandma’s ashes!” Dudley screamed.

Petunia and Vernon rushed to the living room to see the shattered remains of the expensive vase and ash all over the place.

Young Harry gulped when he saw his uncle’s face instantly turning purple, his big, pig-like nostrils flaring with his rage.

“I didn’t do it!” Harry cried out when Vernon stomped towards him furiously. “I swear it wasn’t me!”

But the hateful oaf wouldn’t hear him out. He reached Harry in less than four steps and grabbed him by his hair violently.

“Every day you’re screwing up one thing or another!” Vernon screamed, his spittle splashing everywhere. “Every day you’re making our lives miserable! We feed you, we clothe you, and this is how you repay us? Ungrateful, wretched freak, you can’t go one day without causing trouble! You ruined a priceless artefact! You destroyed and tarnished my mother’s resting place!”

Harry cried out in pain as Vernon dragged him roughly by the hair towards the cupboard under the stairs. 

“I swear it wasn’t me!” he pleaded. “Dudley did it! Look at him; there’s ash all over his pyjamas!”

But Vernon didn’t listen. He yanked open the cupboard’s door and shoved him inside forcefully.

“No food for the next 2 days! You hear me?” Vernon roared as he slammed the cupboard’s door after him and pushed the lever, locking Harry inside. “You won’t set foot out of this bloody cupboard for the rest of the month!”

Eyes bloodshot with anger, Vernon returned to the living room and stared at the piles of ash on the floor. He suddenly let out a scream and flipped the coffee table in a fit of rage, making Dudley hide behind his mother’s legs, never before having seen his father’s anger reach such a degree.

⁂

Harry’s Legilimency link broke as Kara’s body turned into a blur, moving toward the house faster than his eyes could track.

“Kara!” he shouted after her, but the Kryptonian woman didn’t stop.

She was done waiting. She was done watching. After witnessing what had just happened, her anger reached the tipping point.

The Dursleys’ entrance door was torn off its hinges, and she flew inside, straight at Vernon. The fat hog had no time to ask any questions or at least shout at the uninvited guest before Kara’s slap sent him crashing across the living room. He hit the wall at the back with a heavy thud, and he didn’t get up.

Petunia’s banshee screech in the next moment could have woken up even the dead.

“Kara, don’t do it!” Harry shouted when he arrived inside the house and saw the Kryptonian woman going to the unconscious Vernon and lifting him up by the neck. 

Truthfully, if Harry had been by himself, he would have definitely cursed Vernon with the Cruciatus until he lost control of his bowels. Harry had never had qualms about using the Unforgivables on other people in the heat of anger, not even when he was a teenager, before the centuries of war and battles hardened him. (1)

However, with Power Girl getting angry on his behalf and looking as though she was about to do something that she would definitely regret later on, he remained strangely calm. 

“Don’t do it, Kara,” Harry said again, sending his voice into Kara’s mind through Legilimency. “He’s not worth it. And even if it were, you shouldn't do it. Not in front of Astrid.”

At the mention of Astrid, Powergirl gritted her teeth but relented. Vernon’s body fell on the floor bonelessly.

Ignoring the skinny, horse-faced woman and the tube of lard hiding behind her, Kara went straight to the cupboard under the stairs and pulled the lever. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down and schooling her face into a neutral expression so that she wouldn’t scare the boy.

When she opened the cupboard’s door, a thin, frail 10-year-old child stared up at her, his bright green eyes wide with fear, no doubt due to all the crashing and screams he had just heard.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Harry,” Kara said kindly, trying her best to smile at him.

“How do you know my name?” the boy asked, his voice steady despite his inner anxiety.

Powergirl couldn’t reply because Harry ran to her and said in a rush:

“We have to go, Kara. You triggered the wards when you broke in. Dumbledore and the Aurors will be here in seconds.”

The young boy was about to ask another question, but he froze. His words died in his throat when he saw the face of the man who had spoken: he had messy black hair just like his, and his eyes were the same vibrant green too. He was above average in height; he had a well-built body and a face that was almost identical to his.

Heart suddenly starting to drum in his chest, the boy blurted out before he could stop himself:

“Dad?”

A loud crack was heard, and bright flames seemed to engulf the interior of the house as an old man wearing long, purple robes and a fiery, swan-sized magical bird appeared in the living room out of nowhere. It was Dumbledore, and the bird was his phoenix, Fawkes.

Without as much as a greeting, the old man instantly fired a spell at Harry. 

Not even turning to look at Dumbledore, Harry waved his hand at his back, and the floor of the living room suddenly rose up in the air, turning into a wall.

Petunia and Dudley broke into shrill screams of panic when the newly created wall exploded, pelting everything around it with chunks of debris.

Harry took out his Invisibility Cloak and threw it at Kara. 

“Astrid is waiting outside. Take her and Harry and fly away. Keep him under the Invisibility Cloak no matter what. There are Tracking Charms on him,” Harry said quickly before turning to face Dumbledore. 

If it had been in different circumstances, Harry would have just used a portkey or his Rune Magic to teleport together with everyone back to Kara’s dimension.

However, Dumbledore was not like other wizards and witches. There was a real possibility that the old man might actually be able to track them down and find out about the existence of alternate dimensions. Harry would rather avoid that scenario.

Having already come to an agreement and made some plans before they arrived at Privet Drive, Kara did not argue with him.

Dumbledore’s eyes widened in disbelief when he felt his connection to the charms he had placed on Harry Potter break. Then, his disbelief turned into outright shock as he watched a blonde woman wearing muggle clothes demolishing the outer wall of the house with her bare hands before flying away.

He fired a second spell, trying to stop her, but Harry swished his wand again, making the ceiling of the house collapse, the falling debris stopping Dumbledore’s spell midway.

With Kara’s Kryptonian speed, it was impossible for Dumbledore or any other wizards to catch up to her, and with the Invisibility Cloak cancelling all the Tracking Spells on young Harry, it was impossible for anyone to track them down too. Harry was certain that Kara, Astrid, and his younger self were already dozens of kilometres away, likely about to teleport back to their dimension.

“What have you done with Harry Potter?” Dumbledore shouted in a thunderous voice.

Harry didn’t reply. He Disapparated. 

Dumbledore did not relent. He tracked down his Apparition and teleported right after him. 

Finding himself in an unknown forest, a silvery phoenix came out of Dumbledore’s wand. It was the physical form of his Patronus Charm.

‘He’s calling for reinforcements, huh?’ Harry thought.

It was not entirely unexpected—after all, Harry had booby-trapped that forest with his Rune Magic in preparation for facing a group of enemy wizards—but he was still surprised to see Dumbledore call for backup from the get-go instead of trying to solve the situation by himself first.

The old wizard studied the young man in front of him with an intense look on his face. 

“Who are you?” he asked again. “What have you done with Harry Potter?”

“Harry Potter is safe,” Harry said calmly. “I have no intention of hurting him. It’s the opposite. I came to rescue him.”

The young man’s calm only made Dumbledore’s feeling of crisis grow. Nobody was calm in front of him, not when his magic power lashed out with his anger. Not even Grindelwald or Voldemort. But the man standing across from him seemed entirely unaffected. 

“I’m a relative of Harry,” he said. 

“Nonsense,” Dumbledore shot back right away. “I know every single relative of Harry Potter. And you are unfamiliar to me.”

In spite of how similar he looked to James Potter, Dumbledore did not take his appearance at face value. He assumed his looks to be a result of Transfiguration. 

Sounds of Apparition echoed in the forest as half a dozen Aurors teleported around him, encircling him. Harry recognised the grizzled veteran, Alastor Moody, and the tall and well-built Kingsley among them too.

Unbeknownst to them, right after they arrived, Harry activated his Rune Magic.

Despite their numbers, Harry’s calm expression didn’t change. In truth, he could fly away with his Wraith form any time he wished and then teleport back to Kara’s side through the use of his Rune Magic once he was far away from Dumbledore and the Aurors but he decided to stick around. 

No sooner than he arrived, Mad-Eye flung a spell at Harry, but the curse ended up ricocheting off an invisible wall and slamming back into him, blowing up his wooden leg into smithereens.

“I advise you not to make any sudden moves,” Harry told everyone. “You are in my Territory. I have set up Runes in advance over the entire forest. If you still try to attack me, you will suffer the consequences.”

Unlike the hot-headed Mad-Eye, Kingsley tried to shoot a Disarming Charm at Harry instead of a lethal one. The bright red bolt of light bounced off invisible walls three times, revealing the fact that he was trapped. Kingsley, knowing what to expect, tried to dodge the reflected charm by stepping aside, but when the spell bounced off the second time, he got hit in the back, and his wand flew out of his hand.

“I’m not here to fight you, Dumbledore. I just want to come to an arrangement,” Harry said.

The display of unknown magic befuddled not only the Aurors but Dumbledore himself too. Some Aurors tried to Disapparate, but they realised that they couldn’t. They also tried to move away from their spots, but they noticed they were all stuck inside invisible, square ‘rooms’ no wider than two meters, unable to take a step out of them.

The Rune Magic of Earthland was extremely versatile. All that Harry did the previous time he came to this forest was to inscribe two ‘rules’ through the use of runes:

[People possessing magic cannot leave this Territory.]

[Magic spells cannot leave this Territory.]

Extremely powerful mages in the leagues of Laxus Dreyar or Gildarts Clive could overpower the rules of the Territory, but Earthland’s mages were on a completely different level in terms of magic power and combat strength. Harry Potter’s world of origin did not have any wizards or witches of that calibre.

The Aurors were helpless. Nevertheless, Harry didn’t let his guard down.

‘Killing Curses could still bypass the rules of the Territory.’

Therefore, he remained alert even though he appeared to be calm and relaxed as he spoke to Dumbledore.

Understanding that he had fallen into a trap, the old wizard’s mind raced as he tried to make sense of the situation and come up with a solution.

“What is your aim?” asked Dumbledore. “Why did you kidnap Harry Potter?”

“Because he was being abused. And don’t even try to feed me any lies,” Harry said in a threatening tone before the old man could come up with some half-assed excuses. “I saw it happening with my own eyes. As you can probably imagine, I have prepared for this. It’s not something I did in the spur of the moment. You left James’ and Lily’s son with his magic-hating Muggle relatives. They kept him locked up in a cupboard, under the stairs, like he was a rat.“

“He may have not had an easy time, but he was safe,” Dumbledore replied, not liking where the conversation was going, especially with the dozen Aurors around them hearing every word of it. “His mother’s sacrifice and the spell I cast on him made it impossible for Voldemort or any followers of his to harm him there.”

“Voldemort will no longer be an issue now that I’m here,” Harry said impassively. “There is no reason for Harry to continue living with those abusive muggles anymore.”

One of the older Aurors snorted at his words. 

“The arrogance on this brat. . . Do you think you’re some hotshot? That you’d defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named when so many other skilled wizards and witches couldn’t? When even Dumbledore couldn’t?” the wizard said in disdain.

“Twelve of you, mighty Aurors, and even Dumbledore himself are trapped by my spell,” Harry said with a deadpan. “Your lives are literally in the palm of my hand now. So yes, I can be as arrogant as I want."

The tip of his wand appeared to have become a blur as he used it to write a series of Runes in the air.

[People possessing magic cannot breathe in this Territory.]

Merely five seconds later, the disdainful Auror started gasping and hyperventilating.

“I- I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” he shouted in a panic. 

He cast a Bubblehead Charm on himself, but it was to no avail. 

Dread and horror washed over everyone as they watched how their colleague started asphyxiating, collapsing on his knees.

“I didn’t kill him,” Harry told them. “I cancelled the spell just before he fell unconscious.”

Turning his attention back to Dumbledore, Harry spoke:

“As I was saying, Voldemort is a non-issue now that I’m here. No place in this world is as safe as being at my side. There is no greater security than that.”

“Be that as it may, you appeared out of nowhere and kidnapped Harry Potter. You have not even given us your name yet. You will have to forgive me for being unable to trust you,” said Dumbledore.

“It’s Henry. Henry Black. I’m a Muggleborn. I am distantly related to Harry through my paternal grand-grandfather, who had been cast out from the Black family 300 years ago for marrying a Muggle woman.” Harry lied as easily as he could draw breath.

With so many Squibs and "blood traitors" who had been cast out of the Black family for mingling with Muggles over the years, keeping track of all the estranged Black family descendants was nearly impossible.

Dumbledore did not reply right away. 

‘I can tell he’s concentrating intensely on finding a way to break the Territory,’ Harry mused.

A look of urgency flashed on the old man’s face. He had cast Finite Incantatem and tried out several other counter-curses and ways of dispelling jinxes, but none seemed to have any effect.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” he told Dumbledore. “I believe you will find a way to escape from my Territory soon enough, but just in case you won’t, the enchantment will disappear after three hours. As for young Harry, he’ll be safe with me. You don’t have to panic. I will visit you in three months and bring Harry with me so that you see proof of his well-being. I also plan on sending him to Hogwarts in September. I don’t want to take that away from him. But he will never set foot in the house of those Muggles again.

The Aurors’ shock was renewed as they watched Henry Black’s feet leave the ground. He started flying. There were no broomsticks or magic carpets; it was unsupported flying, something that, to their knowledge, no witch or wizard had ever succeeded in. (2)

Harry did not use his Wraith version of the Flying Spell. Only after he went out of their sight did he turn into a wraith and start flying at a much faster speed. Once he was thirty or forty kilometres away from the forest where Dumbledore and the Aurors were trapped, he activated his Rune Magic and teleported away.

⁂ Six months later⁂

Plans to combat desertification in Africa had existed for years, with several attempts made to put them into action. 

The Green Wall of Africa was an initiative that aimed to put a stop to the ever-expanding Sahara Desert towards the south by planting a belt of trees 15 kilometres wide and 8000 kilometres long, from the west of the continent in Senegal to the east in Djibouti. 

Alas, progress had been painfully slow, hindered by many factors such as insufficient funding, lack of interest, political instability, corruption, terrorist threats, the harsh climate, and so on and so forth.

However, that was a thing of the past. Starting with 3 months ago, thanks to Kara’s wealth and the Justice League’s connections and influence, Kara obtained the rights to spearhead this project.

The Green Wall of Africa was a complex project that went beyond simply planting some drought-resistant species of trees. Different species had to be planted, and, due to Sahel’s harsh, arid climate with a dry season of 8 months and a rainy season of only 4 months, the designers had to come up with a way of maintaining the trees after they had been planted.

Most of those technical details fell on Kara and other scientists’ shoulders. Harry’s role was to help implement it, to follow their orders, not to think about it.

This project was expected to take at least 20 years to complete. Its goal was to restore an area of 1 million square kilometres, which was four times the size of the United Kingdom or roughly equivalent to the combined surface area of Spain and France. 

This colossal task was made even more difficult by the fact that trees could not be planted during the dry season. 

But that was the case only when talking about it from the perspective of people who possessed only conventional means. Magic changed things drastically. 

Numerous water towers had been erected along the Green Wall of Africa. Having inscribed a Water-Making Spell and a Gemini Charm with his Rune Magic on each one of them and various formulas that would draw ambient magic, Harry had created endless supplies of water.

Emissary’s restoration of New York City after it had been obliterated by Vandal Savage’s meteorite, had been an awe-inspiring, almost godlike feat, fantastical in its display of magic. But when it came to the far-reaching consequences of that act, it seemed insignificant compared to the creation of those water towers.

It was an unprecedented blessing not only for the project but for all the people living in those countries because a lack of water had always been one of their main issues. With no water, there was no vegetation; with no vegetation, there was no food, and livestock couldn’t be raised either.

With that being said, thanks to those magical water towers, it became possible for trees to be planted during the dry season as well. In the present, tens of thousands of people could be seen swarming the land. Not only were they planting trees, but they were also digging half-moon pits for the sake of harvesting the rainfall during the rainy season. After collecting water, those pits would turn into tiny oases that would keep the surrounding vegetation alive during the dry season even without Emissary’s magical water towers.

Once the workers finished planting an area, they would be asked to free the field, and Harry would cast his [Arc of Time] magic, speeding up the time over that place. The spell could not affect humans and animals, but it did work on plants.

Emissary’s [Arc of Time] magic became a worldwide sensation, an object of awe and veneration even. Watching plants grow from seeds and tiny sprouts to fully matured trees in a matter of seconds was something that defied people’s sense of reality, especially when it was done on such a massive scale.

The Green Wall of Africa, the initiative to create a forested territory of 8000 kilometres in length and 15 kilometres in width, a project that was estimated to take at least 20 years to implement through conventional means, was now halfway done after only 3 months.

Having just finished summoning Death’s magical power to cast a large-scale [Arc of Time] spell for the second time that day, Harry had officially finished with Niger. From west to east, the portions of the Green Wall of Africa that passed through Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger had been completed. 

Thoroughly exhausted, Harry activated a Portkey, teleporting himself back to Southern France, to his bunker. He was done for the day. Even though he was borrowing Death’s magical power for his large-scale [Arc of Time] spells, he also used his mental and physical stamina to cast them. He was unable to cast a spell large enough to speed up the time on a surface of over 300 square kilometres more than twice a day.

When he arrived in France, Supergirl descended from the sky to greet him. The bubbly teen girl smiled when she saw Astrid flying past her like a bullet and throwing herself into Harry’s arms. 

“Daddy!” the little girl cried out in joy and tackled him to the ground. 

Not one to miss out on the fun, young Harry also plunged down with his Nimbus 2000 in a free fall before instinctively pulling a Wronsky feint at the very last moment and jumping off his broom. 

“Dad!” he also cried out happily. 

Harry felt as though half of his tiredness vanished when he saw his two children jumping in his arms. There was no greater joy for a man than to be greeted with love by his family when he came home after a hard day of work. 

Half a year passed since Harry had rescued his younger self from the Dursleys and brought him to his and Kara’s world. Harry had told his younger self from the beginning that he was not his father, but eventually, the boy ended up calling him ‘Dad’ all the same. Harry couldn’t bring himself to be mad at him. After all, he could imagine perfectly what his younger self must have felt after being taken away from his horrible family. He had dreamed of something like that happening to him many times when he was his age.

“I hope you didn’t give Supergirl a hard time,” he said half-seriously, half-jokingly. “Did they behave while I was away?” Harry turned his attention towards the blonde teen and asked. 

Supergirl smiled softly. 

“Of course they did. They’re great kids. We were playing a game of tag when you arrived.”

“. . . I hope that you, Kryptonian brutes, didn’t bully Harry too much.”

“Hey!” “Hey!” Astrid and Supergirl protested at the same time. 

“That’s not fair of you!” Supergirl said with her hands on her waist. 

“Yeah, Dad, we played fair!”

“Tell him, Astrid, we limited our speed to 240 kilometres per hour, just like the maximum speed of his Nimbus!” 

Astrid and young Harry let out a squawk of surprise as their dad suddenly levitated them off him so he could stand up. 

“Thanks for watching over them, Kara,” Harry said with a smile. “I’ll owe you one.”

“You owe me a few dozen,” Supergirl said, laughing before she waved it off. “Don’t sweat it. We’re pretty much family, aren’t we?”

“Hear that, Harry, Astrid? You should call her ‘Auntie’ from now on.”

“Don’t give them ideas!” Supergirl said in annoyance, making the two children burst into giggles. "I'm way too young to be called an Aunt!"

“Speaking of family, how is Kal doing?” Harry asked. 

“I was actually planning on visiting him today,” she answered.

“The Eradicator has been feeding him ion radiation for half a year already, hasn’t he? Any idea when he’ll wake up?”

“I think it’s only a matter of weeks now,” the girl said, smiling wistfully. She missed her cousin terribly.

Powergirl, Emissary, and their two children were nice and welcoming to her every time she felt lonely, and so were Superman’s adoptive parents too. But Supergirl still missed her cousin. She couldn’t wait for the day when she and Superman would fly through the skies above Metropolis City together again. 

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

AN:  we are getting increasingly closer to the final arc of the story. Hope you enjoyed the chapter.

(1) Harry had once cast the Cruciatus Curse on someone in the books simply because he spit on McGonagall. He wasn’t exactly a goody-two-shoes in the canon. 

(2) Voldemort showed his flying spell to other people for the first time during the Battle of the Seven Potters. There is also Quirrell's flying scene but that has not happened in the world of young Harry because he has not even started his 1st year at Hogwarts. 

Half-moon pits:
(this region was reclaimed from the desert with these pits in real life)