and the second die quietly
1.
Unspeakable. Unspeakable. Unspeakable. It her job. It is her profession. Those were her actions. They place her there when she calls for it, hiding within the backlogs of the ministry, her name spread like a legend among the underground workings of those in magic. A legend, a myth, a god, even some would say.
But Harrie knows what she is. She is a broken weapon, set so perfectly that her ammunition hits whatever she is directed at but with no thought. Lethal force allowed indeed. She almost hates Shacklebolt for allowing it, she couldn't have stopped herself, not when her life been so drenched in destruction.
Her dossier only had one order: find something.
Find something new, perhaps – new runes, new spells, and new people. Find something terrible – terrible people, terrible clothes, and terrible choices. Find something amazing – amazing scenes, amazing people, and amazing magic. She finds men who fly high above her with mechanical wings, almost like Icarus but better; finds a man who can make someone as small as an insect, stares at research using spiders and meets a panther in human form. Harrie has always known that those without magical means were marvellous, constantly improving where their world was stagnating since the time of imperial rule.
She finds these things hoping for something to connect her, because there is loneliness clawing at her with an almighty roar. To attack, to have it be nothing but a forgotten whisper, she finds men and women who eagerly jump into her bed. She wonders what Tony finds so absolute about it. Perhaps it's that physical intimacy he receives from it, but as she lays by the countless men and women from all over the world, she feels more alone than ever. She is lonely, constantly so.
Harrie knows though, it had always been there since the moment she left him.
She finds herself in places all around the globe – from Norway to Tokyo, from Kenya to Australia, from Wakanda to America. She learns and watches, she fights and bleeds. She heals from those silent wounds the war had inflected upon her though there are still nights where she wakes half-terrified and a hand outstretched for a body not there. She doesn't dream, just sleeps and wakes up groggily more often than not, magical sleeping pills by her bedside.
Harrie still finds herself around the edges of her society, sometimes with Luna Lovegood who had the name Jane Foster. New Mexico is where they stay, with scientists who speak about something she could never get. Give Harrie curses and dark magic, she'll be able to tell you where they came from and what they would do. But science…that had always been more Tony's realm.
Sometimes she finds herself in the steaming Amazon rainforest with Neville Longbottom by her side as she tries to enter long abandoned magical ruins to find something. More often than not, it was Neville patching her up from singes and burns she obtained – those who used to live in the Amazon had loved their fire. Even after more than seven years, Harrie never knew who Neville had written on his arm.
Harrie makes sure to never appear in large pockets of civilization, though at this stage she wonders if anyone was looking for her. It's been years since she asked for Kingsley to give her this mission.
But her self-exile implodes when she finds herself in Budapest, Hungary. Harrie sits on a bed in an old, run down hotel with two almost-children behind her. Their hands drip with blood, their eyes old and their very being littered with old scars, overlayed with new. She had patched them up, watched them to make sure they breathe. Her own body is half-destroyed, blood caking her face and her hands all but destroyed. She has her first aid kit laid out on an old newspaper, spots of blood and tissues covering most of. But it is there that Harrie reads the words that shock her to her very core:
Stark heir missing.
It resounds in her mind, her heart felt like it stopped in her chest. She makes noise which wakes the young woman up and she watches Harrie with uncertainty in her eyes as she reads the page.
There is a picture of Tony, with that cheeky grin so damningly him and dressed to the nines. A flash of coldness erupts through her, freezing her body before her anger grows hot and steadily rising in temperature until it simmers under her skin, like lava underneath the earth.
Moments later sees her exploding into an office with grey smoke and magic coursing through her body. She thinks she's like Medusa there – anger and vengeance exploding deep out of her with an undercurrent of terror and an almost plea slithering through her movements. There is another man in Shacklebolt's rooms, a man similar in his stature, grand and imposing, only he comes with an eyepatch.
Harrie ignores him.
'Why didn't you tell me?' She snarls, placing the Bulgarian newspaper on the benchtop, staring deep into her supervisor's contemplating eyes. Her question was more of a criticism, a barb set deep for his chest.
'You were on a mission.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' it's a growl this time and both the men in the room stiffen. For here is a predator, awaiting them with a prowl of death. But Shacklebolt knew her in a way not many knew her, he knew the darkness and inhumanity that arose after her flicker with death. And he knew how to handle her without getting singed.
'You were on a mission, Potter.'
'Which you should have pulled me from, the moment he disappeared!'
'You wouldn't have saved two of his agents if I did.'
'To hell with them.' She whispers. 'He could be dead.'
'But he isn't, Potter.' He points to her wrist which blazes his name, those sharp letters constant in their light.
'If he dies, Kingsley – if he dies before I get to him. I will rip those agents for living when he doesn't.' She twirls and starts to walk out, graceful ease to every step.
'And where do you think you're going, Potter?'
'I just told you: to find Tony Stark!' And the door slams and then a crack could be heard.
The next moment sees Harrie come face to face with a piles of sand and a long arid landscape. She thinks she must be on an alien world, like those one Hermione would tell her about where famous witches and wizards had travelled a long time ago.
It is inhospitable, hot air pounding against her and her throat feels parched even though she drunk enough. She glances around and realises she had made a mistake.
She can see why wizarding folk didn't stay around muggles as much as they once had – there was always a fear of the unknown with them. And Tony had shown them all that a muggle was just as deadly without magic than they were with magic. Harrie has faced much during the years exploring the globe but this type of scenario never sat well with her, after all the last time it happened was in Valencia, Madrid.
Fifty armed soldiers, wearing the brown military fatigues all faced her with guns aimed directly towards her. Harrie glances down, eying the red dots and then back up at them instantly placing her hands up. If she thought back on the scenario, she's pretty sure she'd laugh about it – but her terror regarding Tony's situation and anger towards Shacklebolt made her stop. Normally, she was shoot first, ask questions – but this was for Tony, this was for him.
'My name is Harrie Potter and I am here to help you find Tony Stark.' She says. 'Is Colonel James Rhodes here? He can confirm what I'm saying.'
And there, like Moses parting the Red Sea, stands Rhodey looking older and more tired than ever before. He looks at her with a hard gaze and Harrie knows he sees not the teenage girl that went running from his greatest friend, his brother, but someone so very different. She stands tall, head held up and looks at him without guilt in her face but plenty in her heart. And he knows it too.
'I can vouch for her.' He says finally and leads her away from the inquisitive people who wonder how someone could have appeared out of nowhere, with only a pop to signal her arrival.
2.
'Tony says you guys meet in dreams.'
'Yeah,' Harrie says, arms coming to wrap around herself as she sat against the wall of one of the buildings. 'We do.'
'Then why don't you sleep and find where Tony is?' Rhodey says.
'Platypus, I've been medicating myself so I don't dream. I haven't seen him since that night.'
'Damn it, Harrie.' He whispers, placing a hand on her shoulder as he comes to sit down next to him. They sit outside, facing those endless miles of desert plains. Harrie faces the mountains, knowing without truly understanding that he's there somewhere. Hidden among absolutely nothing, a needle hidden among needles.
'You left Harrie,' he sighed then, giving her a cup of badly brewed tea. Rhodey had always chased the bitterness of coffee over the flavoured water that she and Tony had enjoyed. 'It destroyed him. You saw him now and you wouldn't know who he was. He was begging for you to come back and you cut him out like he was nothing.'
Harrie closes her eyes, breathes deeply and then opens her eyes to gaze back towards the mountain.
'Do you know why?'
'He never said why. He wouldn't.'
'I almost killed him Rhodey, I dreamed and I almost killed him.' He gets up then, back straight and facing the desert outside the army compound. Harrie closes her eyes, knowing that she had lost Rhodey – he had always been Tony's in a way that Ron and Hermione…Sirius had been hers.
Finally Rhodey turned around, looked towards Harrie with another look in his eyes, this time she was unable to describe what it was. She thinks it's pity, sadness and desperation all slot together. He knows that she was…is a child of war, born and bred on it, like Ares or Odin, demanding it in strides and actions.
'I want to show you something,' he says, rolling up his sleeve as he sits down. Harrie watches as he looks at the wrist before extending it so she could see it. The light is dull, constant like Tony's was – an undercurrent of loyalty, a constant. She wants to weep when she reads the name.
For it reads: Anthony Howard Stark, in the same penmanship hers was in.
'Go.' Rhodey says, placing forehead on forehead. 'Go find him.'
And she did.
3.
It was almost too much of a coincidence, but Harrie had known for a long time that the universe had always wanted them together than apart. And finally, when she ignores all the pushes and prods – all the whispers of Tony Stark by scientists in New Mexico, the financial aid presented in Amazon within Brazil, and the gadgets she noticed in Budapest – the universe gives her a beacon of hope.
Harrie is the first there, magic propelling her so she can finally see him. She finds herself in the sand, next to Tony almost sobbing with peace and acceptance. Harrie grabs him by the worn-out clothes and just holds him close to her, ignoring the piece of metal protruding from his chest.
'Oh,' Tony says, blinking up at her, the desert sun high above them both. 'You came back to me.'
'Of course, you silly man. Of course.' She looks down at him and has never seen something so beautiful. Oh, this man – this strong, hopeful creature with stars on his fingertips and eyes set for the sun and beyond. She does love, she does and now, maybe, she can finally, finally show it the way he had deserved. 'I'm not going. I'm not going.'
Around them broken bits of metal and the mountains behind them are on fire, hiding the terrors and desolation of Anthony Stark.
'Good.' He says. 'Good.'
4.
They don't talk, not truly, not during the time he devoured those five cheeseburgers. Her cheek still stings from where Pepper Potts slaps her and her body prickles with the venomous glances of Happy Hogan. Rhodey says nothing when it happens because she minutely shakes her head, allowing this protectors of Tony do with her what she wished she could do to herself.
She likes the fact that he has brought these people around him, these loyal, loyal individuals. When she sits back from them, letting Hogan and Potts overtake her role as someone to stand by his side, she watches as they fret and touch him the way she wished she could.
When they come to the press room, Harrie sits right at the back sitting next to Rhodey. She can feel both of their bodies just relax, their adrenaline that had been keeping them on their toes, Rhodey longer than her, finally crashing.
'You wouldn't think he spent a three months in captivity with the way he's acting,' Harrie says. Tony sits without a care in the world, eating a McDonald's cheeseburger, it's his third since they pulled up through the drive through and the second since they entered the building. Tony acted the way Tony always acted, flamboyant and obvious – but the more you look, the more those understated changes are more obvious.
'He always does.'
'What? Rhodey are you saying he's been abducted before?'
'A few times, but never as long as this.' Rhodey sighed and leant back in his seat.
'Why am I hearing about this now?' Harrie snaps, looking back at Tony. She wonders how many of those scars hiding under his clothes he got because she wasn't by his side, protecting him as he would her. 'I should have been told. I should have.'
'Tony didn't want to bother you – that Kingsley guy, the big one who's supposedly your boss, wanted to but Tony made sure he shut his mouth.'
'Wait – Kingsley knew. Tony was taken by wizards?'
'Witches, vampires, giants and I think there may have been a hag sometime as well.'
'I should have been told, he wouldn't have bothered me.' Harrie whispers and then places her head into her hands, 'Oh god. What have I done between the two of us?'
'You fucked it up, witchy. Fucked it up big time.' Rhodey leans back, putting a hand through his hair and grimacing. 'God, I hate travelling. I'd give my left hand for a shower.'
Tony then places the last of the cheeseburger into his mouth, closes his eyes and looks directly towards Harrie. He speaks of accountability, death and his father. Harrie has an inkling of where this is going and then when she hears the words, she wonders what exactly had happened over there.
'Effective immediately, the weapons division of Stark Industries is shut down.'
5.
She had never liked the house in Malibu, having been in it once already. There was something oppressive, something distinctive – Harrie had always known it had never wanted her there. Pepper watched her for a moment before leaving, Happy too. But Rhodey whispers something to Tony, something she can't hear and then he too is gone.
And so, it's Tony and her. And as the door closes, it almost thunders with absolution. Harrie watches Tony as he putters around the rooms. He had done this all the time after the war, touching things and making sure they would been safe. Finally he stops when he comes to the bar, eyes focused upon her.
'You're drinking again.' Harrie says, leaning against the glass of Tony's house. The bar was stocked full and she hated the sight of it. It had been a source of constant antagonism between the two of them, similar to the way her seeking of those adrenaline-pumping behaviours. There had been a moment there where they both stopped.
But, well. A fight. And it had just happened again.
'You weren't in the dreams.' He says, pouring himself a little too much of the whiskey he adored during their youth. This one is something old, something different and expensive judging by the smell – a man Harrie had killed in Russia had enjoyed a similar drink.
'No,' she says, 'I wasn't.' She watches as Tony pours her a drink and slides it across to her. She sees how he doesn't want to touch her – she noticed it on the plane. In the end, she had placed things next to him to be picked up. Harrie doesn't take the drink, merely nurses it in her hand when she walks over to stand in front of him.
There's a kitchen benchtop between the two of them now and she hates what it signified. That echoing chasm that had been fractured thanks to her actions. She doesn't know if Tony would extend an arm. She wouldn't had she been faced with herself after what she had done.
'Four years Harrie.' Tony said.
'Long time.'
'Yeah.' Tony says. 'Long time.' He was quiet now, eyes downcast and Harrie knew she said the wrong thing. 'I hope you founded what you needed.' Tony laughs, humourlessly. 'Did you?'
'Somewhat. I found what I had to.'
'What you had to? You could have founded it here. I needed you.' He snaps.
'And I needed to go.' Harrie snaps back. 'Tony. I was fading away here.'
'Then go.' He roars. 'Go and run Harrie, if that's all you know how to do.'
'I nearly killed you Tony.' Harrie snarls right back. 'If you want to know what I found by leaving – it was a way to stop that. I couldn't live knowing that there would one day be a moment where I would wake up, see a flash of green and spend the rest of my life knowing that I killed you.'
He looked at her stunned. She wonders if Tony was feeling what Ariadne felt when Theseus had left her on that island. She wonders if he felt like Jason and Medea when both of their betrayals erupted between them. She wonders if he felt like Menelaus when Helen had fled.
'You…you didn't know, did you? You had no idea what my magic would have done to you? What my mind would have made me done?' Harrie whispers, a sob nearly erupting from her throat. But this was not needed, she didn't need all these emotions. Not now. 'I was going to kill you that morning. I was going to say the words and I didn't know it was even you. You weren't you…you were Bellatrix, Tom, Barty…you were every man and woman who would utter the same words I would have said to you.'
'Harrie.' He says.
'I'm not running. Not anymore. I think I'm better. I know I am,' she says, looking at the darkness of the ocean. She turns her back to him, safe in her knowledge that he was still there. Tony comes to stand next to her, slightly behind. She feels the movement and then it drop from her senses – was he going to touch her, place a hand on her shoulder? 'Do you hear me, Tony Stark? I am staying right here, in sunny Malibu. They will have to rip me from you. You're going to get so sick and tired of me,' she laughs here. 'That you're going to wish I was gone.'
Tony is quiet, the whisky long forgotten from his touch, but lingering on his breath. Harrie could feel his gaze as he looks down at her and she felt like a criminal awaiting her sentence – she feels little, weak, unable to do anything. It is so different from who she portrays herself to be – Harrie Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived, the Woman-Who-Hunted, the Devil, the madwoman. Normally she's strong, walking into a room as if she owns the place, constantly being greater, made greater than what she should be.
But Tony saw through it all and broke her down to her basic components.
His hand hovers again for a moment, before they clasp at her arms and spins her around. He places his forehead onto hers and just breathes. Harrie lets out a stuttering breath, slowly before relaxing into his hold and watches a small smile.
'It's your choice now. I have a place, small – just a ten minute drive from here. I'm happy to go there, if you need.'
'You need to figure out what you want, Harrie.' Tony says after a moment of silence. 'I'm here. I've always been here. It's time you make your choice.' He looks at Harrie then and says, 'I'm done begging for you to return.'
'I know.' She says. 'But I'm here too. And it may take a long while before you realise this, but I'm willing to wait.'
Green eyes meet brown again and Tony says, 'Stay. Here, with me. Don't run.'
6.
Tony came with his own quirks, the same way she had come with warning labels. It was interesting relearning them. He had always been a man who would spend many countless nights awake, whether it was welding, writing, or working. She had known this, but she never had realised until then how much it could take over his life.
When they had been young, Rhodey used to tell her of their days at MIT. Of those countless nights where he slept with a fire extinguisher by his side, becoming friendly with the firemen that came and always making sure there was something there to say thank you. He would tell her of the way that mind work, different in the way it was to his and hers.
Rhodey and Harrie had always been warriors, soldiers – maybe not bloodthirsty in the way their youth had once been, but their vigilance was obvious. They would gaze at reflections, catalogue those they've seen again throughout the day, assessing exits and entrances. They would talk one day about only able to sleep on hard surfaces, how the slightest sound woke you up and the way that day could be so oppressive that you wished for something real.
Tony had been different. The way he could look at something and connect it to something entirely different in some sort of roundabout way of thinking. His time with her, during what should have been her seventh year had honed his weaponry and he looked for weakness and strength alike. Tony had known danger, truly lived and breathed it with her. And by doing so, he knew how to destroy any whisper of it until it never rose up against him.
It was why Harrie wasn't shocked with suit of armour that cloaked Tony in the way her cloak of invisibility did her.
'This is how you go out.' She says, hands placed upon the metal of the suit. It was bright red and gold. Her colours. His colours now.
'This is how I got out.' He says.
7.
She never liked Obadiah Stane, hated him from the moment those ugly and jealous eyes landed upon Tony like he was nothing but a piece of meat. Once, a long time ago, when she entered a soiree upon Tony's arm, a dignified woman of upmost social standing she promised Obadiah Stane one thing:
'If he is hurt by your hand, you will see why my enemies are terrified of me.'
It appears he didn't take that to heart. His descent to tyranny and treason against Tony and everything he stood for didn't shock her. But what shocked Harrie was his lack of belief that she would hurt him.
There's a slither of skin, underneath the metal helmet that Stane wears. Harrie's wand is too far away and Pepper too close by for her to release uncontrolled magic. But there is a gun, the gun she's carried since Tony had killed Tom Riddle, because sometimes it's the non-magical means that ends the conflict. It takes the same amount of bullets that Tony had when he killed Tom Riddle to bring down his enemy.
Bang.
Bang.
And it echoes as the man in the metal suit falls, gasping as the blood is drenched around him.
Harrie rises, up and towards him, grabbing her wand where it had rolled from her and she looks down at the breathless villain. She watches him, eyes cold and a look of absolute hatred on her face. She kneels down, ignoring the blood seeping into the leg of her pants. She wrenches the iron helmet off.
Obadiah Stane looks up, not with fear in his eyes but anger. Harrie watches him breathe wetly, a hand goes to his face and that is when he changes. She could watch the rippling change from surety in survival to fear when something greater comes to stand in front of him.
'I told you to never lay a hand on him.' She says and brings the gun up, eyes damning with her conviction. She presses the trigger again and Obadiah Stane is no more.
Later, when they're waiting for Happy to return and the start of what would one day be SHIELD cleaning up their mess, Pepper turns to Harrie where she sits under Tony's arm.
'I guess I was wrong about you.'
Harrie raises an eyebrow, 'Wrong?'
'I thought you were a cold bitch.'
Harrie starts laughing at this, a full laugh. It was not often that someone called her cold – she had always ran hot, a temper that no one she knew could rival, a person that would shoot first, and make split second decisions. She wasn't like Tony in this respect, who had always run cooler, who would devise plans to bring down his enemies and watch before acting.
8.
They meet in the dreams again, despite sleeping next to one another. It is the first time that Harrie has left the drugs she took by her bedside, untouched. It's Tony that sees her first, like he had done all those years ago. There's a softness in his gaze, and forgiveness too.
When they wake up, it is Harrie that looks at Tony first. The dappled sunlight of outside drifts across his still face – he is peaceful. She watches the shadows make him look younger than their ages and she could almost imagine him at nineteen, when they were at the top of their world, before they came back crashing to the ground with hidden wounds seeping their strength.
As Tony wakes, there is no fear – not in the way there was when he first came back from the desert that broke him. He knew, without a speck of doubt, that when he opened his eyes – she'll be there. And there she was, physically there – always there.
There is blood on her hands, cleaned now – but Harrie had always been a creature who could never get rid of what she was. And she had always been someone who had enjoyed the physicality of a fight, especially in her later years where she'd once come home covered in blood and bruises. He takes her hand in his, placing it up into the sunlight above.
There are callouses on her palm, her fingernails all but ruined and scars on her knuckles. At least this had remained the same.
'I think I may love you.' Harrie says.
'You may?' Harrie laughed at the incredulous tone. 'Sweetheart, you always did, like me. Like me - I loved you the moment I saw you.' Harrie looks over to Tony. He was open, always was when it came to her – wearing that heart on his sleeve. She pushes him down, places him on the mattress. A hand is placed on his cheek, another on where his heart pulsed a steady rhythm.
'Yes. You're right – I have always loved you. And I am sorry for what I did. I should have stayed and gotten better by your side.'
'No.' He whispers, shaking his head. 'No. You stayed and we would have destroyed ourselves, witchy. You did what you had to do.'
He moves a hand to her face and then lays the other warm one on the slither of skin peeking from where her shirt was raised. There is a question there, in that touch and Harrie answers it with a kiss.
Deep and powerful, constant and soft. Tony's hand tightens on her waist, his other goes to clasp her cheek to bring her flush against him.
Harrie took off his shirt, slowly, eyes ignoring the glowing blue arc-reactor, his heart but rather touches the scars that littered his chest. He had grown old, they both have and here was the statement to their time away from another. There were more scars than she knew – while there were once she recognised like the one from Bellatrix in Malfoy Manor he sustained or the soldering burn he had on his left-hand knuckle, there were more she didn't. There were scars over the ones she had known, hiding their story with more terrible ones.
He whispers their stories in the breaths between their kisses, devises some ludicrous scenarios she knows are a storyteller's dream.
Tony breaks the kiss between them and says, 'I have loved you. I always will.'
'Good.' She chuckles as she kisses his neck. 'Good.'
9.
The man with the eyepatch is sitting on the couch, looking across the ocean. Harrie, wearing nothing but Tony's ragtag shirt and a pair of scandalous panties, looks at him for a moment.
'I know you from somewhere, don't I.' She goes over to the bar and pours herself a glass of orange juice. She clicks her fingers, 'Kingsley's office. You're that eyepatch fellow, the one that looked after those children who botched that mission in Budapest.' She takes a big gulp and then looks at him. 'That was a fuck-up that even Tony and I could never do.'
She comes to sit in the chair across from him and smiles, 'What can I do for you, Fury-man?'
When he tells her of the blue cube found in a cold ocean, she laughs in his face.
'No. Fuck no. You leave that for stronger creatures than those of this world.'
10.
There are aliens in New York City.
Harrie stares up at the gaping hole in the sky and feels a coldness at the spectrum of space that peaks through. It comes from Stark Tower.
Harrie Potter faces a god.
And for her troubles, she gets a staff to her midsection.
'JARVIS?' She whispers, ignoring those sickly blue eyes that watch as she stumbles into the bar, holding tight on the marble countertop. She leaves sticky red handprints as she slides down the red wood. Thankful that the colour of the bar allows her blood to seep in, making it seem that it's not so bad, not so destructive to have a hole in the middle of her body. 'JARVIS. Where is Tony? I…I want Tony…I need Tony.'
'It's okay Harrie, he is coming. Just stay a little longer.'
But she doesn't because Harrie dies.
11.
Harrie sees Howard Stark and Maria Stark in front of her; there is a snarl exploding across her face. She punches Howard Stark and tells him, 'Get out. Get out. Get out. You're welcome nowhere. You're never welcome here.' Harrie stands proudly with blood dripping down her body as she looks at him. 'Tony Stark is an easy man to love and the fact that you couldn't means that you are a monster.'
Maria Stark looks at Harrie and flinches from the anger in her eyes.
'And you. Why couldn't you love him?' Harrie demands. 'He's so easy to love.'
12.
Harrie wakes for the second time with death on her breath, the metallic taste of blood and the first thing she says is, 'I punched your dad in the face. Do you know he has a face fit for punching?'
And Tony cackles and clutches her to his chest. As she steadily rises, Harrie sees Loki sitting in the middle of the crater and she goes forward, but Tony's hand as always holds her back.
'Let me go,' she snarls, trying to move from the ironclad grip Tony had on her. 'Let me go – let me at him!' But Tony merely brings her closer, holds her closer into his metal cocoon.
'Honey, you're brave and courageous but you're an idiot.' Tony whispers into her ear, his helmet up and the two soulmates look upon the god with wary eyes. 'Don't go fighting a god.'
'I won't be fighting a god,' Harrie proclaims. 'I'll be fighting a spineless fuckwit! You prat, you absolute prat.'
'I love you, I do but you really are an idiot,' Tony closes his eyes and opens them to look upward, asking something to give him strength. 'Harrie! Did you not see what he did?'
'Yeah I did. I felt it. He–'
'I know what he did and I'd shoot him here if I was sure he'd stay dead. But come on, you know the tales better than I do when it comes to Loki.'
'Fucking hell.' Harrie finally frees herself from Tony's arms and sits on the seat by the destroyed bar staring at those blue eyes that watch her with cocky smirk that hid his fear. 'You're bloody lucky because if I had you and he didn't convince me, you'd be begging for mercy. So I suggest you go on your knees and thank him for his forgiveness.'
'I'm just happy that he has a brain as it's obvious you don't.'
Tony goes forward and drags her back to him as she snarls, 'Let me at him, let me at him, you let me at him! For fuck sake, that arse deserves to be twelve feet under. Let me at him!'
And that when the Avengers meet Harrie Potter.
13.
Tony makes sure to wipe all evidence of Harrie's death, keeping a copy in his private servers to remind him of his fallacy. To remind him of his greatest weakness.
14.
Central park in spring is perhaps only second on her favourite places in the world, Hogwarts in winter would always strike a chord of home in her. They look to where gods and heroes stand side by side.
Harrie looks towards Loki, who still looks at with those cold, cold blue eyes.
'In my war,' she says to Thor, a living god in front of her. Tony had been giddy in his excitement, in much the same way she was too. 'Our enemy would do things to our friends to make them unlike themselves, your brother carries the same eyes. I'd suggest healers, because even gods can be persuaded.'
15.
'I'll keep your secret, deathless.' Loki tells Harrie moments before he is set to leave. Harrie says nothing and looks into eyes filled with magic and mischief. She gives a solid nod and watches as he walks towards his brother, ready to face whatever trials and tribulations of their father.
'He would have looked better in thread.' Harrie mutters to Tony, she smiles at the glacial glare that the Old Norse god gives her. The god should tremble at their feet as does the rest of the world, she thinks – they do not go quietly into the dark for the dark do not want them.
They leave, arm in arm, together as the universe had decreed it.
So after a few more days then I thought this would take, I finally finished this! I'm happy with where I ended this - I had wanted to continue it on, but I was ready for it to finish here and I think it ends quite nicely! I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed!
As always, you can find me at mallasia on tumblr where I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Thank you as always,
mallasia
