When Harry awoke, he was in a hospital bed.
He groaned. He'd once had a hope that with Hogwarts behind him, he'd also be able to put behind long stays in the hospital behind him as well- a sort of silver lining to his situation- but he would have no such luck.
"Hey, hey." Natasha was sitting beside him, or at least a blurry red-headed woman with Natasha's voice. He'd once worn glasses, but had switched over to contacts, which had been removed while he'd been unconscious.
"How long was I out?" Harry said, his voice raspy. He found a straw placed to his lips, and sipping it brought cool, refreshing water to his parched mouth.
"A week."
Harry blinked, had he really been that bad off? He thought back to the fight- getting shot twice, the fall, hitting his head… yeah, maybe.
"Honestly, the doctors are impressed by how fast you've recovered." Nat continued "You were really hurt out there." There was something tender and concerned in her voice that Harry didn't know how to address. He sipped at his water to avoid having to.
Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately) he was saved from having to respond to her by a nurse's entrance. "Mr. Potter, you're up." She said briskly, proceeding to introduce herself and quiz him about how he was feeling.
"I'm feeling fine." He said. Natasha rolled her eyes.
"Alright, Mr. Potter, how is your leg doing?" The nurse asked. The Winter Soldier had smashed his kneecap, but he didn't feel any lingering pain from it.
"It feels good." He answered.
"And your chest?"
That still ached quite a bit "Its fine." He said shortly.
"I see, Mr. Potter." The nurse said skeptically. Natasha snorted.
After retrieving his contacts, Harry finally was able to get a good look at Natasha. "You look tired."
Natasha raised an eyebrow "You don't look so hot yourself."
"How long have you been sitting here?" He asked "Don't you have other missions right now."
"Technically, my mission is you."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry bristled. Was she a… protective detail? His pride quailed at the thought. He wasn't helpless- that last fight notwithstanding, he'd been ambushed and outnumbered.
"Harry, I have no idea who at Shield decided to send you off like that, but it was a terrible idea. No offense."
"Some taken." Harry grumbled.
"Well you shouldn't. We knew that someone was targeting you. Becoming famous didn't change that."
Harry looked down, frowning. "So now you're supposed to babysit me. That doesn't seem fair to either of us."
Natasha shook her head "I'm not your bodyguard, Harry. I'm your instructor."
"Er, what?"
"You were never trained to be a field agent. You were never given any formal combat training at all back in your world, were you?"
"Er, I mostly taught myself." Harry admitted- most of his Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers had been worthless, with some even actively trying to get him killed. Even Dumbledore's private lessons were singularly about Voldemort's past. It was ironic, he'd gotten private tutoring from the most powerful wizard of his age and everything he taught him was completely, utterly useless to him.
"It shows." Harry grit his teeth, he wasn't exactly in the mood for a conversation about how he fucked up. "I checked out the footage of the fight from your suit. You have good instincts, Harry. You figured out you were being ambushed in time to get out of there- that was huge, you would have been dead instantly if you hadn't. You were able to survive until help came, mostly through tenacity, but I think if you had proper training and the right mindset, you could have won outright."
"The right mindset? What is the right mindset when you've been ambushed from all sides? What was I supposed to do?" Harry retorted.
"I'm trying to save your life, damn it!" Natasha banged her fist against the bed "You were reactive. Even when you got the initiative, you let it get away from you. I don't know a lot about magic, but I do know you Harry, you can do better." Natasha took a few deep breaths and continued more calmly "Look, we can go over stuff in detail later. No one blames you, Harry. I mostly blame the assholes from your world who didn't properly prepare you when they knew you were going to fight in a war. For now, just focus on recovering."
Harry nodded, feeling a little intimidated by Natasha's anger. He'd told her more about his past than anyone in the Avengers, though by now they'd all picked up the broader strokes. The amount of venom she had for people she'd never met, and only had gotten general descriptions from Harry was surprising, nonetheless.
They were once again interrupted, this time by a Doctor, who repeated the refrain that she was 'impressed' with his recovery. The next few hours were a parade of medical professionals, but all through it, Natasha sat silently at his side.
After, finally being given some time alone to process everything, something occurred to Harry. It was a suspicion that had niggled at him during the fight, but he'd had no time to really think it through. "What was up with the two agents that were with me?"
"Harry…" Natasha stalled, but he pushed on, needing to get his thoughts out.
"They led me to that alley, Nat." He said "Isn't that a little weird, a bunch of trained agents leading someone to a secluded alley, right into an ambush?"
"They're dead." She responded shortly.
This brought Harry up short, if they had died… well that did put the wind out of his sails. "How?"
"Single gunshot to the back of the head, for each of them." It still didn't sit right with Harry. Voldemort wouldn't have hesitated to kill his followers for his own ends, or even for just disappointing him one too many times.
He sat back for a moment, in silent thought, and Natasha seemed willing to grant him that. As he stewed a few more pieces slipped into place. "It was really lucky you guys were so close by, wasn't it?" He told her. Nat was beginning to nod, but Harry cut in to drive his point home "But it almost didn't turn out that way, did it?"
"Hill gave Steve and I our own mission in Mexico at the last minute." Natasha said hollowly.
"Would have been mighty convenient for that assassin, to catch me alone, so far away from any help." Harry said "And it was the same assassin that tried to kill me days after Shield found me. What a coincidence."
Natasha's eyes were looking through him, burning into the wall. He'd given her a lot to think about.
-----
A few days later, Harry watched in stunned silence as the news reported that Tony Stark was missing- presumed dead. The television showed the burning wreck of his Malibu mansion, with the words 'THE MANDARIN ATTACKS, IRON MAN MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD'.
Natasha was there too, standing guard over him. Despite her assurances that she wasn't a protective detail, one of her, Clint, or Steve always seemed to be with him now. She'd justified this effectively, by pointing out that if people at Shield really were trying to kill him, the only people they could really trust were the team. Harry'd had no choice but to concede the point.
He felt completely useless. Tony had beelined it straight across the continent to save him, and here he was stuck in a hospital bed while Tony was… missing.
But it wasn't like he could do anything about it, right?
…or was there?
He'd had nothing to do for the past few days but mull over Natasha's words. He'd been angry at first, but he'd grudgingly begun to accede her point. He'd even told her as much, and talked things over now that he was in a more receptive mindset.
He'd been playing it like he was 'back'- that he was back at his full strength with a wand, but he clearly wasn't. He simply didn't have the magical power or repertoire of spells that he did with a wand, he couldn't just go blundering around like he was invincible. He needed to be smarter and more creative with his magic. He should have stopped trying to lob spells at the Winter Soldier once it was clear that he could deflect them with his arm, and tried something different, like blowing out the floor from under him. Instead, he had just played into his opponent's hands and gave him time to act against him.
Natasha was right, he could do better.
"Steve!" He shouted into his phone, getting up despite the nurses' protests "Did you see the news?"
"I'm seeing it now." He said "Stay put, Harry."
"No. If he's alive, I can find him. I know how." Harry insisted.
"Harry, we're picking you up. I figured you'd have something up your sleeve. Is Nat still with you?"
She was, and looking peeved at him. Can't imagine why. "Yeah."
"Good, we're getting the team back together."
-----
Clint, Steve, and Bruce all looked at Harry with skepticism. More specifically, they were looking at the stick he'd retrieved from the hospital garden area. Harry had been worried that the medical staff of the hospital wouldn't let him leave, but a quiet conversation with Natasha had them backing down. She'd then driven him away, for over half an hour, until they reached an abandoned air-strip. The quinjet was waiting for them.
"That's not a wand, right?" Bruce asked "Because I feel like if any stick could be a wand, you'd have taken care of that by now."
"Nope, not a wand." Harry grinned.
"So, why the stick?"
Harry laid the stick onto a table, touched his finger to it, and said "Point me." The stick spun in place until it pointed north.
"A compass?" Steve guessed.
"Not just a compass." Harry said, still grinning "Point me Tony Stark." The stick jerked and quivered until it was pointing straight past the intrigued scientist. That particular spell had been invented out of whole cloth by Hermione in fourth year to help Harry with the third task. He was inordinately proud of not just getting the spell to work, but also changing the targeting of it. He'd tried it, and it worked, if only because he'd been stubborn about it.
Magic was… weird. Clearly the structure of it- the incantations and wand movements- mattered, but it was like those things were just guideposts for his magic to follow. He didn't think he could have just asked his magic to find Tony with nothing else to guide it. At the same time he could still improvise. He now realized he'd been doing exactly that with some of his spells- how different was levitating something, summoning it, and dispelling it? All of it was just controlling the object's motion, it was just in how it was applied, and the more Harry had been using those spells without a wand, the more similar they'd been feeling to him. He imagined he could use those spells much more naturally than he had been, perhaps even seamlessly controlling the motion of objects.
"Are you sure he's alive?" Natasha asked "It could just be pointing to his body."
Harry deliberately placed the stick askew on the table, and said bluntly "Point me Tony Stark's corpse." The stick, thankfully, didn't so much as wobble in response to Harry's morbid spell.
Clint clapped Harry on the shoulder "Looks like he's got it, Cap."
Harry sat heavily into a chair. Steve looked over to him "Take it easy." Harry smiled wanly. The initial burst of adrenaline had worn off, leaving Harry feeling… tired. Clearly, he wasn't at 100%, even if he wasn't actively hurting. His recovery had astonished the doctors, but when asked to explain how, all he could say was 'magic', which didn't win him much goodwill. However, the healing process had also apparently sapped his energy, leaving him feeling wrung out.
Natasha sat next to him while Clint took the controls, smiling knowingly back at them. "What do we know about what happened to Tony?" He asked.
"Well, he gave out his address on live TV and challenged a terrorist organization to attack him." Nat said evenly.
"Dumbass." Clint snarked. Harry privately agreed, even he had never run around asking Voldemort to please take his best shot at him. Well, except that one time.
"He's going through a lot." Bruce defended halfheartedly.
"I'm sure he is." Natasha said placatingly.
"And then said terrorist organization blew up his house, and Tony hasn't been seen since." Harry surmised. "What do we know about these terrorists?"
"I'm looking into it." Nat said "The guy calls himself 'the Mandarin'. Claims responsibility for a series of explosions, but… it doesn't add up. The targets seem completely random. The explosion doesn't match anything we've seen before, and no explosive device was ever identified by eyewitnesses, and…" She paused "In several cases the 'perpetrator' appears to be in distress before the explosion. That's not a typical pattern."
"I agree, something smells rotten." Clint said "Not sure what, though."
"Have we heard from Pepper?"
"Nothing." Clint said "We think she's laying low. A Shield team is looking into it."
Harry sighed, resting his head back into the seat. Part of him wanted to go to sleep, but if he did the spell would probably fail. "Never a dull moment, eh?"
They did find Stark, after spending a good twenty minutes circling a snowy forest in the middle of Tennessee. The strength and accuracy of Harry's spell seemed to increase with proximity, until his stick was swerving in Tony's direction with fluid precision. So it has a range, sort of like apparition.
"Why the hell would he go here?" Natasha mused.
"Knowing him, it was an accident." Clint deadpanned.
And yet there he was, dragging his suit along the ground like it was luggage. He stopped, releasing the suit and letting it slump to the ground as he stared upward when the quinjet appeared overhead.
"Surprised, Tony?" Steve asked him, as Tony staggered aboard looking worse than Harry felt.
"A bit, how'd you find me? Harry?"
"Harry."
Tony struggled for a minute to drag his armor into the quinjet, until Steve, with a half-smile, effortlessly lifted it up and inside.
"Show off." Tony muttered good naturedly. Then he turned to Harry. "So, you got a spell that can just… find people? We need to pick up Pepper. I sent her a message that I was still alive, but I have no idea if she got it."
"While you're at it, you might as well track the Mandarin's location. Get the drop on him." Clint added. Harry startled, he hadn't thought of that.
"That's nothing." Natasha continued "Harry, you can find Loki's Staff."
Harry blinked, and blinked again. How hadn't he thought of that? "So, I'm somewhat of an idiot."
"You aren't." Natasha smiled, lifted her hand up to him, but then jerked it back suddenly. "You just need to adjust your thinking."
"No, no, he has a point." Clint snarked.
Harry rolled his eyes good naturedly. "Well, at least I'm not the guy who asked someone to blow his house up, and ended up in Tennessee of all places."
-----
The operation itself had gone smoothly. Natasha staked out the compound, evading detection and planting bugs. Then they observed… and learned.
'The Mandarin', as Natasha had speculated, wasn't a traditional terrorist. His true identity was Aldrich Killian, and his company held the rights to a gene editing treatment called 'Extremis'. It had started out as a method of healing lost body parts, but had morphed into something… worse. Bruce had done a deep dive on the literature- both publicly available and accessible through hacking- and came out of it a little exasperated. "You'd think that after what happened to me, people would think twice before doing this kind of human experimentation."
Steve was a little more sympathetic "That's basically what they did with me, and honestly I get it, to some extent. Imagine how many people we could save; how many lives could be improved if we could just… regrow organs."
Nat looked sharply at Steve "Not like this, though." She said, looking back to a video that Bruce had pulled up. It was recorded from a clinical trial of Extremis, and had been buried deep, for obvious reasons. A man who had lost an arm writhed on a bed in agony, screaming and struggling against the restraints that held him down. Then, his skin began to glow orange, the glowing flesh seemed to try to mold a new arm, but it never finished. The man just… melted down- his flesh glowing hot orange and melting off, until finally he exploded and the camera cut off. "That's not treatment, that's torture."
They all shifted back to silence for the next few minutes, each of them consumed with their own tasks. Harry was glum. It wasn't like magic could heal everything- Mad-eye Moody's peg leg and eye, and Dumbledore's hand came to mind- but it was usually dark magic at work that prevented that. Madam Pomfrey could mend bones in a heartbeat and regrow them entirely over one very uncomfortable night. And here he was, perhaps able to cure a nosebleed.
Fuck that! He told himself with a sudden will. He may only know Episkey, but he'd be damned if he didn't make it into the best Episkey ever cast. All it would take is some creativity, a lot of determination, and a lot of practice.
Having rallied himself, he turned back to the room at large "So, what's the plan?" He asked them, though really, he was asking Steve.
The man looked around at the assembled group and nodded to himself. They were more than a match for whatever Killian could throw at them. "Avengers, it's time to suit up."
And that was how Aldrich Killian, tech CEO turned terrorist and the self-styled Mandarin, got a very big surprise.
-----
Alexander Pierce frowned at the latest report. The Avengers had taken down the so-called 'Mandarin' about a week ago in a fight with over a dozen genetically modified super-soldiers. The operation had been clean, very clean, with no civilian casualties. By all appearances, the Avengers had pulled it off without breaking a sweat. Now the press was parading them around again, and Peirce, as Secretary of Shield, had to act pleased with the development.
He didn't know what irked him more- that this sort of thing had happened right under their nose without them having time to intervene, or that the fight had ultimately been so easy for the Avengers. That group had been the wrench in the works ever since they had come onto the scene earlier that year. They presented a powerful force that could stop Hydra in its tracks if they discovered its existence at the wrong time. Their attempts to separate them and pick them apart one by one hadn't gone well. If anything, it'd brought them closer together.
He sighed and began logging off the official Shield systems. While the Avengers presented difficulties, their activities had also given them their biggest boons. Even this situation had presented them with an advantage. Some of the people who'd been enhanced with 'Extremis' had been captured, and the induction process had already begun. A team of researchers had been assigned to perfecting the Extremis process, though for now they might have to accept using the enhancement as is- even if they didn't truly present a threat to the Avengers. "This is the Secretary, report, and make it quick."
Hydra's infiltration of Shield had been a project decades in the making. Ever since their defeat at the end of the second World War, largely due to Steve Rogers' efforts, the organization had had to go underground. They'd been patient, and while that patience had served them well, it could easily come to nothing if they misplayed their hand here and now. The sensitivity of the situation required more direct coordination that Hydra had typically operated under. There were dozens of Hydra cells operating semi-independently- it would do for them to take action and not have every resource at their disposal.
"Project Insight is coming along-"
"I don't care about Insight, Zola." Pierce snapped. "That program won't mean a damn thing if we don't take out the Avengers first. Give me some good news, Strucker." Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker's facility had taken control of Loki's Staff following the Battle of New York. While other cliques had analyzed Chitauri weaponry and prisoners, and had already gotten results, it was clear that Strucker had won by far the greatest prize.
"Potter's notes on the Staff, and magic in general, have been inspiring." Strucker said with a hint of mockery directed at the Avenger. "Two volunteers have survived experimentation and are already exhibiting… enhancements. We're putting them on a rigorous training regimen. Given time they should be more than a match for the Avengers."
He was clearly proud, and he had every right to be. It was their best lead at getting more 'enhanced personnel' on their side. One super soldier, no matter how successful the Winter Soldier had been for them, wasn't going to be enough. Agent Sinclair- though not very forthcoming about her abilities or the source of them- was a potential addition. They had a few other leads as well, but they all had their drawbacks. Regardless, it was clear that they needed more.
And time, as Strucker had obliquely admitted, was no longer on their side. The disappearance of the staff had made Potter suspicious, and he'd gotten Romanoff to start sniffing around. It was why a second attempt had been made against him, but it was safe to say that had backfired horribly. The conclusion was obvious, they needed to act soon and they couldn't afford to hold anything back.
"Sinclair, I've heard that your new discovery could be game changing, let's hear it." He'd heard rumors trickle in about the 'gate' they had discovered, and the experiments to be conducted on it. He'd also heard rumors about Sinclair herself, though it was impossible to tell what was based on truth and what was pure fabrication. Did she truly gain her powers from ancient deities? He would have bet not, until Thor had made his presence known to the world.
As the seconds ticked by, though, he heard only silence.
"Sinclair?"
Fuck.
-----
Elisa Sinclair watched patiently as the agents led the subject into the room. The man's jaw dropped open at the site of the gateway.
"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Mattock." She said politely, betraying no hint of what the future had in store for him. He was a death row inmate who had volunteered for this project, though if he'd had known exactly what they would have him do, he may well have just chosen execution. "As you can see, we have made quite a discovery, and you will be indispensable in helping us understand it."
Tossing the scientist through the gateway had given her nothing, other than the satisfaction of no longer having to deal with the annoying man. He'd never returned, of course. Any electronics that passed through burned out immediately, 'bricked' they said. Further examination by technicians had revealed that electronics, and indeed all inanimate matter, was rearranged at the molecular level. Animals however, simply disappeared without a trace.
She'd suspected that all these initial experiments would fail to reveal anything. An artifact like this wouldn't reveal its secrets to mundane methods, it would require a… sacrifice.
The prisoner was strapped into a harness strapped on a rotating platform. He would be rotated into the veil and then back out without any further intervention on their part. The setup and his ultimate fate must have been obvious to the prisoner "W-wait, you aren't going to send me through that thing, are you?"
"Of course we are." She said. It was easy to calm him, just a light application of magic, and he melted back to complacency. She liked the subtlety of it, it allowed people to extrapolate and draw their own conclusions about her. The agents that she commanded had no idea how far her powers extended. She didn't get to where she was by being blunt, she'd done it with patience, deception, and nerve.
"Of course I am." He echoed her dully.
"Don't worry." Agent Taylor chortled "We'll pull you out right away." They all clearly expected that they'd be pulling on empty air, or perhaps a corpse. The consensus was that the gateway was a one-way ticket to certain death- perhaps somewhere in deep space.
Elisa doubted it. Oh, she suspected it was a gateway to death, but perhaps in a far different sense than more mundane minds could comprehend. She wondered what it would do to a person, staring death in the face. It was something no mortal had done and could tell of.
Well, except for one.
When she had heard Harry Potter's story about how he had died, and wound up here, she hadn't believed it. Why would he just reveal something like that? But when she saw the interview tapes herself, with dawning apprehension she realized that he was being truthful. He'd held back information multiple times many times over the interview, that was plain to see, but when he talked about how he got there, she saw nothing but honesty. He had died, he had woken up in this world, he didn't know why or how- it was that simple.
Since that revelation, Elisa had sought out every scrap of information on Harry Potter she could get her hands on. Her Hydra contacts were only happy to help her, and soon she not only had his intake interviews, but his research notes while at Shield and recordings of him inside his apartment from cameras that Maria Hill didn't even know about. It was those recordings, of Potter while he didn't know he was being watched, that most intrigued her.
She watched him draw, cook, and sleep- trying to catch a hint of what might be under the surface. She'd even watched him shower, but all she'd really learned was that he had an eclectic taste in music, terrible singing voice, but an incredible body. Elisa had to admit that her intentions weren't entirely pure. She'd love to get him to fully submit to her once she had him in her power.
She felt almost vindicated when he rose to prominence as an Avenger. Though she was… miffed that she was no longer the only magic user in town, there was also the thrill of having her own little pet project being put front and center. It had done a lot to help her worm her way up Hydra's ranks.
It had been others who had pushed for making another attempt on Potter's life. She'd been against it- she was convinced that he was the key. To what, she didn't know, but that was part of the mystery of him. Who exactly was Harry Potter?
But of course, in order to get the answers she wanted from him she'd have to have him completely under her control. She'd seen enough of him to know that he would never be swayed to Hydra, any more than Steve Rogers could be. He was too weak. He may be able to do magic, but he hadn't earned it, he didn't understand sacrifice. He'd never accept that in order to make a better world, those with the strength to do so needed to purge the undeserving from it- the malcontents, the dregs of society, the leeches and parasites, and anyone who stood in their way.
"Are we ready?" She asked the room at large. After a last round of checks, she turned back to their subject "This will all be over before you know it."
It was indeed over quite fast. The apparatus flipped him through the veil, and when it rotated back… Elisa gasped involuntarily. The chill permeating from the veil amplified tenfold as the thing appeared at the boundary. The shadow of the man's body writhed as it was unnaturally forced to return to the mortal plane, contorting as the veil resisted it. The electric motor of the rig was failing, so Elisa intervened with her magic, pulling him back. A shrill shriek rang out as the body pushed through, the veil seeming to wrap around it in a dark cloak that obscured all features.
She felt despair. She shouldn't be, she should be triumphant over this success, but all she could feel was soul crushing dread. What… what?
Taylor, who had been closest to the… thing, collapsed to the ground, trembling, tears flowing down his face. The being floated to him, lifted him into the air with a withered, blackened hand, lowered its head to his and… latched on, lunging forward suddenly like a viper. The agent convulsed as the life left his body. His skin shrunk against his frame until he looked like no more than a living skeleton.
When he was… used up, the being dropped the husk to floor. To Elisa's horror, she saw that he was still alive somehow- his chest rose and fall, just slightly. The thing hadn't killed him, it had done worse.
She'd been frozen in place in sheer terror, but then the thing's head whipped around to lock on her. She was the next target.
No, no, nonono.
Mustering every bit of her strength, she willed her magic to take her as far away from here as possible, and she vanished, leaving the rest of the team to their fates.