Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I don't own anything belonging to Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios, or Disney. I am not making money from this fanfiction.
The Artificer
Chapter 2: Just to Make Things Clear
"The Colonel originally came to me seeking assistance, but I quickly realized that this concerned wizardry and not sorcery, so I was a little out of my depth," Stephen explained, "It definitely appeared to be Asguardian in origin and I remember seeing something similar in your lab a couple of years ago, so I thought you may know something about it."
Harry leafed through the packet of papers until he was met with a picture of a very familiar object.
"Well, I would hope I knew something about the Tesseract, I did make the blasted thing!"
The only evidence of Colonel Fury's disbelief was the raising of his single eyebrow.
"I believe you have the Tesseract confused with something else, Lord Potter-Black," Fury explained, speaking down to Harry as if he were explaining something complicated to a five year old, "Apart from having been in SHIELD custody since the end of the Second World War, our scientists have estimated the age of the cube at approximately twenty-four thousand years." As Colonel Fury was sitting with his blind eye towards Dr. Strange, the man did not see the Sorcerer Supreme just shake his head, knowing what was coming.
"You don't believe me?" Harry asked coolly. He despised lies, finding throughout his long life that they only built upon themselves and eventually toppled down around the person who told them. Anyone who knew the artificer knew that he held honor in the fact that he did not lie.
"It is not that I don't believe you, Lord Potter-Black," Fury tried to give a diplomatic answer, knowing that if the Sorcerer Supreme said that a man who barely looked old enough to shave was an expert in a field, they were an expert in a field… a field in which Fury desperately needed information, "I am only stating that, while you may have created a similar artifact, if you had taken the time to read the file, you would know that it would have been impossible for you to have created the Tesseract."
Harry stared at Fury for a moment, thinking through the possible ways of convincing the man that he was speaking the truth. Finally deciding that Fury was the kind of man who did not believe someone without irrefutable proof (and even then being wary of a deception), Harry stood up. He brushed the ash that had once been part of his work robe off of where he had been sitting on the couch and waved his wand over his clothes, repairing and restoring them to their original, pre-explosion state. The artificer noticed Fury's hands twitch in the direction of his armpits when he had raised his wand, undoubtedly yearning for the comfortable weight of the two pistols that Harry caught a glimpse of as Fury had removed the Tesseract file from his duster.
"Colonel Fury, I think the only way you will believe me is if I show you," Fury looked slightly intrigued, but Harry didn't care. He glanced over to his sorcerer friend, "I'm taking him down to the vault. Do you want to come, Stephen?"
"No," the man said shaking his head, "I've been down enough times. Besides," he glanced over to one of the bookcases framing the fireplace, "I see that you finally got hold of Flamel's treatise on alchemical transmorgrification," the sorcerer pointed at a large leather bound tome sitting in a glass display case inlaid into the center of one of the bookcases, "Could I possible take a peek?" Harry could see that his friend was truly excited to get his hands on the last copy in existence on the definitive work on alchemy. He teased the man by seeming to think it over and chuckled when the normally stoic Stephen Strange resorted to wide-eyed pleading and a small hopeful smile to try to gain access to the book.
"Oh, alright!" Harry flicked his fingers at the display case and the heavily warded glass surrounding the five hundred year old handwritten tome melted into nothing. While he was wary of letting another person touch the book, let alone read it, Harry knew that the priceless book was in good hands with Stephen, "But please steer clear of the directions for creating a Philosopher's Stone. I know that you wouldn't be able to make one, as one needs to be a wizard to create it, but I would rather not have the knowledge floating around out there, even if it is only in your head," Stephen nodded, understanding that even one's thoughts were not safe in certain situations.
"Colonel, if you would follow me, please?" Harry turned his back on the SHIELD Director and started to walk towards the room's open doorway. He did not look back to see if Fury was following him. It would have made him appear weak to bow to the whim of a man who was a guest of his house. That was one of the first lessons he had learned after he had come too in unfamiliar territory after his accident with the portkey and time sand. Sure enough, Harry heard Fury's quick but sure footsteps as he caught up with the artificer.
"I am not here for show and tell, Lord Potter-Black," Fury grumbled as Harry led him through the penthouse, "If you had read the file first, like you were supposed to, you would know that I need the information I came for as quickly as possible. Lives have already been lost over this incident and I can guarantee that more lives will be lost if we waste time." Harry stopped as they reached a stretch of hallway wall adorned with framed moving photographs of friends and family, both living and deceased.
"And I can guarantee you, Colonel Fury," Harry's voice grew icy. The wizard's words seemed to pierce Fury's hardened exterior and the Director could not help the small shiver of fear that ran down his spine due to the unequivocated power held within the wizard's words, "that we are not wasting time. In the small time I have known you, I have found that you are a man who will not believe something that goes against your immediate perception without evidence to back the claim," Harry turned away from the man and faced the wall adorned with photographs, "I am giving you your proof that I speak the truth and Dr. Strange was valid in his assertion that I was this world's foremost expert in Asguardian and Norse magics," When Fury did not respond Harry cleared his throat, took a calming breath, and waved his hand across the wall.
"Haraldr Œvisonr inn Dróttinn Ellri!" Harry spoke the name in a whisper, but it resonated so heavily with magic that Fury, a man who did not have a drop of magic within him, felt it resonate within his very bones.
The wall rippled and faded from view, revealing the heavy metal door of an old freight elevator. Once Fury recovered from a supernatural force resonating in his skeleton, he noticed that the slim wizard had hefted the rusty door open with seemingly no effort and was waiting for him to step inside the machine. While this was not the most shocking thing Fury had experienced after nearly sixty years in an agency that dealt with the paranormal on a daily basis, what he had just experienced had definitely taken him out of his usual perception of 'normal'. He would never have expected powerful magic to hide a rusty old elevator of all things.
One could not be the Director of Shield and not take things like this in stride, so Fury stepped into the metal deathtrap and nodded to his host to close the doors.
"I have heard about SHIELD, you know," Harry's voice broke the silence after five minutes of traveling downward into the earth. The single bare light bulb above them revealed that they had long left the brick elevator shaft and were now barreling into the earth below New York City if the rocky walls outside of the freight elevator were any indication, "The agency does quite a bit of good around the world," At this statement, Fury turned to Harry. That was not how most described the agency, "You're goal is to protect the continuity of the human races, be it Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Homo Sapiens Superior, or Homo Sapiens Magus," Harry stated, giving Fury a knowing look. It had only been recently that SHIELD had begun to dally in the politics of the International Confederation Wizards as they tried to secure the rights of mundanes and mutants within the wizarding world. Fury wondered just how much Potter knew, "I have had experience with this type of world outlook and I have found that all too often it causes those with the best intentions to lose sight of the value of the individual."
"Lord Potter-Black," Fury responds, "I don't know how this applies to the current sit-"
"Don't patronize me, Fury," Harry cut him off, "I know that you have done your homework on me. You know my history with Voldemort. What your precious file on me may not have told you was the real reason I left Britain with Teddy. Publically, I left because I was bored and had nothing to do. In reality, I left because I was fed up with people just using me as a tool to get something they wanted. As much as I loved that old man, Albus Dumbledore used me as a tool to defeat Voldemort. Kingsley Shacklebolt used his association with me as a reelection platform so he could make needed changes to the government. Stores wanted to use me to endorse their products. They did not see me as a person, but rather for their own motives, even if the motives were altruistic like Albus and Kingsley.
"I am revealing this to you only to convince you that I can help you," Harry turned his attention away from the rock wall speeding past them and looked Fury in the eyes, "I will help you, but only because I swore to do everything I could to protect the Tesseract from falling into the wrong hands when I made the mistake of ever creating the thing. The things you are about to see will only leave this vault on the off chance that I decide when, where, and how to use them. There is truly nothing you can do to force me to use them against my will and I will destroy anyone and anything that tries," The icy chill had crept back into Harry's voice by the end of his impromptu speech and it took all of Fury's concentration not to swallow to calm his nerves.
"Is that a threat, Mr. Potter?" The Director asked, confirming that he knew exactly who he was stuck in a small metal box with miles below the earth.
"No, Director," Harry sighed, "I am only explaining what the only possible outcome could be, should anyone try to breach the security measures I have in place. The items in this vault could cause either the salvation or the destruction of the human race, depending upon who gets their hands on them. If no one is able to access them apart from me, I know that I can limit the damage they can do to the world," Harry turned back to watch the rock fly past them.
After a few moments, a small sly smile graced his lips, "You believe in the old-fashioned notion that remarkable people can change the world. Do you think that I am remarkable enough for you to let me change the world by keeping what lies below us safe?" Fury could only stare in shock at the man beside him as he tried to comprehend how the wizard could know that about him. In the end, he only came to the conclusion that: yes, Harry Potter might just be one of those few remarkable people he believes in.
The jarring halt of the service elevator broke the two men out of their thoughts and Harry couldn't help but smile when he thought of the possible reactions Fury could have to the sight and story his was about to experience. With ease, Harry hefted up the heavy door and gave Fury and unimpeded view of the room before him.
"Welcome," Harry said with dramatic wave of his hand, "to my Artifact Vault."
A/N 1: Hey y'all, here's the next chapter. I am making a commitment to try my hardest to get a chapter posted every Monday. This is not to say that I might not post a chapter during the week if I finish one early. I just want to assure you that I am hopefully going to post at least one a week. One of the big problems I ran into with my previous fanfics was I tried to keep most of the chapters around 5k words. Doing that, there was usually a longer time during updates, and I lost my drive for writing.
A/N 2: Let me just say, "WOW!" For a small story with one chapter, less than 2,500 words, and has only been out for a week it has gotten a lot of attention. As it stands, I've got 56 reviews, 3922 hits, 11 C2s, 181 favorites, and 403 alerts. This is already in top 3 most responsive fics and this has only been up for a week, whereas the other two have been up for two and a half and two years respectively. I just want to say, "MY READERS ROCK!"
A/N 3: Thank you all for your reviews, especially for your corrections on my grammar and continuity. I don't have a beta reader (it would be great if one of you would like to volunteer) and I actually would like you to point out mistakes in reviews or PMs. There are a few reviewers I would like to thank personally and address questions they raised.
NotaFro, sidestory, MayaStormborn, Firehedgehog, neverfound29,¡Ficti0n!, Guest from Nov 25, Pumpkin cream pie, Godlikelover16, senshiHg, lordamnesia, silverscale, and Morbious20: Thank you for your concern and well wishes about my health. I went to the doctor last Tuesday. He had some blood work done and is sending it to a Neurologist with whom I am going to make an appointment with this week. He thinks it might be nervous because I have been having headaches that I didn't realize could be connected and he found that my right hand and arm is a good amount weaker than my left, even when I am not having the tremors. So, all I can do is take it one step at a time and just keep on going.
Mojtaba13: Yes, I was thinking of writing a spinoff of when Harry had the accident, but it will be within the confines of the HPxThor genre as where and when Harry was sent is very important to this story. If I do create a spinoff, it will be a series of one-shots about episodes in Harry's absence since if I wrote the whole story, it would be longer than this fic is planning to be.
Swallow-Tailed Kite: Thanks for the note on the dialogue tags, I'll fix it later today when I have the chance.
shiroyuuko: I didn't know that Teddy's name was actually Edward. Thanks for that fact. I am, however, going to change his name to Theodore. I don't know if it's an English thing, but I have never met a guy named Edward that was called Ted or Teddy. I do, however know a guy named Theodore (well, it's actually Theodoro, but he's Philippino, so it's really the same thing) that everyone calls Ted and Teddy, so I really am just going with what I know.
discb: Harry made the cube when he was thrown back in time and space with that accident with the portkey and time sand I mentioned. As to Teddy, I wanted Teddy to be raised as Harry's son, so I made Andromeda die when Teddy was 3 in a retaliatory Death Eater attack against Harry by killing his godson. Andromeda sacrificed herself to buy time for Harry to come and save Teddy from the Death Eaters. Hasn't come up yet in the story, but there's the explination.
Mad about the Boro: Thanks for the note about the spelling errors. Sometimes I miss them in my own writing, so could you please send me a PM with the ones you found so I don't overlook any? Thanks. As to your question about SHIELD, I made a mistake. It was meant to be Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, but I wrote that part of the chapter in a lull between classes and didn't think to check the name against the marvel wiki. I am going to change it when I have time later today.
A/N 3: I hope all those in the USA had a happy Thanksgiving!
Olorin the Maiar out!