S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
By AGX[tail]
This is something that came to mind while I was playing STALKER: shadows of chernobyl. Clearly, i don't own Harry Potter and if you recognize a few of the other characters... well, then, i don't own them either... Alrighty, now that that's clear, on with the show....
Summary: War raged on in the wizarding world. The ministry's adamant denials of the return of Voldemort allowing the mad man time to plan and mobilize his forces. Harry Potter disappeared sometime after the end of his fifth year… 8 years of war and now he returns.
Chapter 1 – Or How to Kill a few Wizards…
"Son of a bitch!" His shoulder throbbed, the fresh blood caking it along with the gleaming silver liquid he poured on it. The fucking lab techs had told him that at most, the healing compound would sting. "I'll show them how much this shit stings…" he muttered darkly as the gash slowly knitted itself closed and after a few moments leaving only pale fresh skin where the almost inch and a half deep gash had cut across his shoulder.
After a few seconds of moving the arm around to test its limits, he turned back to face the assholes who had managed to get slice him. The black robes were dead giveaways as magical even if the wands hadn't been present; after all, not many chose to wear shit like that in the normal world.
His mission had been a simple one. The daughter of a very high person in power had been kidnapped; her entire guard detail decimated and not one of them had managed to hurt the attackers. His mission was her retrieval and the elimination of bastards who'd done the kidnapping.
And of course, he was sent in because from the security footage, it was obvious that it wasn't normal people. The house held that dark, tangy electric taint of dark magicks and the costumes themselves just added to that.
It had been a pretty easy mission, tracking the girl down with a locator beacon surgically inserted into her body. Getting into the house was even easier, the wards sliding off of him as his own magic rejected them and allowing him access to the house.
Through out the house he stalked; the silenced Taurus 24/7 pistol bringing death to whoever crossed his path and allowing him to remain unnoticed. He was right outside the door to the girl's holding cell when a shrill alarm started ringing throughout the house. One of the bodies had been found, meaning that there might've been more in the house than originally expected. He slipped the silenced pistol away and drew a pair of Jericho 941's; kicking the door open and mowing down the hulking idiot in death eater robes trying to rape the girl.
The shrill screams of the brunette got annoying very fast, as she struggled to push the dead man off of her. "Shut the fuck up and stay the fuck down if you want to live to make it back to daddy." She pushed herself towards the corner, staying on her stomach as the sharp cracks of multiple apparations filled the room.
He inhaled deeply, his lungs filling to capacity before exhaling and repeating the sequence again. The world seemed to slow down around him and he moved. He stood in a crucifixion position, his guns aimed at a pair of death eaters on opposite sides when he let loose. The first pair of gunshots were loud but easy to ignore as he flowed into his next position, a gun aimed behind him and one forward firing even as he shifted again. To the death eaters, he seemed to blur into motion, the muggle contraptions in his hands spewing death.
In less than thirty seconds, the world seemed to speed back up and the click of his empty guns filled the room. He glanced around the room, satisfied with the massacre he'd orchestrated, as eleven bodies lay on the floor in various places and positions.
He grinned before ejecting the empty clips out of his guns. He slapped one into place when he heard the spell. "Sectumsempra!" The purple curse flew from the door behind him. He spun, his right arm going up and with a snap, a shimmering dome of magick popped into being. With a sharp crack the Protego broke and the dark cutting curse sliced into his left shoulder even as he nailed the caster in the face with a burst of gunfire.
It was moments after he finished patching up his arm that he realized his mistake. "SHIT!" He turned and with a slight wince, he picked up the girl that had curled herself into a fetal position. He was running out of the house when another series of cracks reverberated through the night, he slid to a stop as once more, he was facing wand points.
"Harry!" He frowned, looking at the scarred red head facing him, thinking for a few moments before recognizing his once best friend Ron Weasley. 'Well, they fucked him up…' the thought brought a smirk to his lips.
"Guess the spotlight isn't so forgiving…" His words earned him a scowl from Ron, twisting his heavily scarred face into an even uglier form. He looked at the three others, recognizing Nymphadora Tonks, even as she lacked her bubblegum pink hair. Her heart shaped face was still pretty, but her violet eyes were filled with anger… no, wait. Not anger, but loathing.
He didn't recognize the other two chumps, just another pair of nameless idiots for the war machine to grind. Goodie.
"What the fuck do you want?" He kept his ears open for anything, including the asshole trying to get around him in the invisibility cloak. 'Probably mine, too.' He thought darkly. He put the girl down, where she proceeded to scramble behind him and leaving his hands free.
"You need to come back!" The intensity in Ron's voice was nothing new; after all, he'd heard him speak in that tone about the Slytherins and their evil.
"Why? So you fucks can crucify me once I solve your little problem? I meant it when I said fuck the wizarding world." Predictable, the moment things wouldn't go the way he wanted them, Ron immediately resorted to violence. With a deft twist, a stunning curse headed his way in all its weak, illuminating glory.
Sidestepping it was easy and the shotgun blast that blew Ron's knee cap out was satisfying. Without hesitating, he turned and fired his second shell into one of the two men left standing. He dropped the sawed off shotgun, rolling forward to avoid the three rapid fire bone breakers that Tonks had fired at him. With a flick of his left hand, three knives sailed smoothly through the air only to bounce off a hastily cast Protego.
He dodged once more, avoiding another three bone breakers from Tonks and pulled out his silenced pistol. He pulled the trigger, only for another Protego to come up, barely holding the bullets back. Tonks' other companion was stumbling backwards, trying to hold his shield but another three bullets hit it and one more buried itself in his head.
A small beeping filled the air and he glanced down at the watch strapped to his wrist before looking back at Tonks once more. "Sorry, babe. Time to go."
"You're not going anywhere, you bastard!" she hissed, raising her wand and taking aim. Her eyes widened for a moment and she slumped to the ground with a small black dart protruding from her neck.
"Come on, time to get you home." He found his target laid out on the ground, most likely having fainted. He slung her over his shoulder, stopping only to appropriate the invisibility cloak that covered another body on the ground. "Killed their own partner… how very smooth." He rolled his eyes and took off at a run, dodging through trees and other foliage on his way out of the grounds.
15 minutes later, in the same clearing where he'd been dropped off at, a helicopter took off with the completion of another mission under Harry's belt.
***
"We need a healer! Fast!" Tonks rushed through the room, the bodies of both Ron and the rookie Jeremy floating behind her. Many of the other Order members leapt out of the way while Pomfrey bustled over towards them quickly.
"What happened? It was just retrieval." She guided both of the wounded on to beds and with a couple flicks of her wand, she started working on the worst of the two, Jeremy.
"Where's Potter? And Tobias?" Tonks turned to face the speaker.
Minerva McGonagall, still the same stern faced witch but with more gray in her hair than before, stood by watching as Pomfrey extracted the buckshot out of the rookie's stomach. "What happened? Ronald said it would be an easy job and yet?"
"He was inside a death eater safe house."
"Are you telling me he is a death eater? I've never believed all the garbage printed in the Daily Prophet after he left and this, I find hard to believe."
Tonks grimaced as she watched the last of the buckshot be extracted from the stomach wound on Jeremy. After a few spells to set the skin to heal, the old medi-witch started pouring potions down the unconscious man's throat. "No, he isn't. Apparently, he killed all the death eaters inside the house for some girl he was carrying."
"That is a relief. But what happened?"
"Ron told him to come back and he point blank said no. Ron tried to stun him and that's when he fired at us with muggle weapons. As you can see, his first shot took Ron in the knee and the other shot dropped Jeremy."
"Then it is safe to assume that he killed Tobias. But what of you?" McGonagall sighed as she watched Tonks.
"I don't know. He looked at his watch and I got shot by some kind of dart that knocked me out. If I hadn't woke up, both Ron and Jeremy might've died." Tonks watched as what was left of Ron's kneecap was pulled out and potions poured down his throat to heal the leg and regrow the bone.
"We need to talk to Albus."
It took them the rest of the evening to finally speak to Albus, who'd been in a closed doors meeting with the minister. Once informed that it was about Harry, he made his way down to the infirmary to speak with Ron. Both Tonks and Minerva found him extracting a silvery wisp of a thread from Ron's head and placing it into a vial and sealing it.
"Follow me, and Minerva, if you will please call Ms. Granger? She might be able to help us in this situation."
A silver tabby cat flashed through the room and out of sight, on its way to send a message to Hermione, who upon receiving it rushed to the headmaster's office. The gargoyle leapt out of the way without a password and once she reached the door, she was ushered in by Minerva. In the middle of the headmaster's desk, she saw his pensive with its surface gleaming silver with the various memories stored inside.
"Thank you for arriving quickly, Ms. Granger, your sharp mind might be able to help us with this." Albus gestured to the memory in the vial, which he poured into the pensive before adding a fresh one from Tonks.
"Where's Harry? Ron said they were heading out to get him when the sensor's caught his magical signature."
"That is precisely the reason why we asked you here. If all of you would please enter the pensive?" They all took up places around the desk before dipping their heads inside the pensive. After what felt like falling through a cloud of miasma, they landed in the memory they were to watch.
The first thing Hermione noticed was the changes her best friend had gone through. No longer was he gangly, looking underfed and mistreated as he had always looked throughout his time with them at Hogwarts. He was tall, if she assumed right, he was almost 6'ft tall. His body had filled out, his build still slim but with muscles visible under the clothing and his once untamable hair was slicked back into thick spikes that cascaded to his neck. Gone were the glasses and the lost look in his eyes that he wore sometimes, replaced with a surety and a dangerous air.
He wore black combat fatigues, black boots that reached his calf and a tight short sleeve black cotton shirt under a bullet proof vest. She took noticed of all the weapons strapped on his body and the dangerous grace with which he moved. She was saddened as she saw him shoot both Ron and the other members of the retrieval team, including the man he killed. But what hit her worse was the callous way of which he spoke of the wizard world and his disregard for their plight. After Tonks' memory ran its course, they entered Ron's.
That's when she saw it. Tattooed across the back of his forearm was a word she'd heard of before. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Once the memory ran its course, she brought it up, reluctantly.
"That name, you saw it, right? The word stalker tattooed on his arm?"
Immediately everyone in the office perked up and gave her their attention. "It is the name of an elite mercenary organization that specializes in putting down conflicts across the world."
"Is there anyway of contacting this organization? A few moments to explain our plight to them so they'll return Harry to us?" Dumbledore was a cunning man, no one doubted that, and felt that with a few moments he would be able to convince such an organization to return their savior to them.
"That's just it. Only high end people in government can contact them and they're very expensive to hire. I only know about them because of a grand uncle that told me about them when I was younger." Hermione explained even as she continued to think about her friend.
"Do not worry, we'll bring him back. He wouldn't ignore the plight of the wizarding world after seeing everything that has happened." Dumbledore sounded confident and that meant he was already concocting a plan. Minerva sighed and Tonks continued glaring at the pensieve on the desk.
"I shall contact the prime minister; he should be able to help us."
A/N: And well, hope this wasn't too horrible. I'd be grateful for any comments and suggestions for this or any type of constructive criticism.