A little time away from the SSR and the sometimes seemingly fruitless work he'd been doing for them was something Harry had been craving almost since arriving back in London. Just a few days to himself was all he wanted, but once he actually got it his entire day off was wasted wishing he were back at the facility. Any other time that wouldn't be the case, he'd take the day off and catch up on some much needed sleep, but he'd been sent home the day before after being told Howard was finally actively working on getting him a way home and he itched not being able to be an active part of the research and work.

He knew he would only get in the way though, there was nothing he or even Peggy could offer Howard to make his work go any quicker, so he grit his teeth and waited the day out with a patience that should have granted him a sainthood. And if, the next morning, he was back at the facility and heading toward the labs hours earlier than he usually showed up, no one called him out on it.

Howard was there when he arrived, already hunched over a worktable elbow deep in a giant, square…something with wires and strange paneling spilling haphazardly from its core.

"You're late," he said around the wrench clenched between his teeth.

"I'm early actually." Harry stopped a good dozen paces away, too wary of the contraption to come any closer. "It's half past five."

"In the morning?"

"I couldn't sleep."

"Try harder next time. Peggy's been on me about being a bad influence."

"You are." Harry tilted his head in the direction of the box-like device. "What is that?"

Howard brightened immediately, he beamed at the object with more pride than Harry thought a hunk of metal and wires really deserved. "It's a power core. For you."

"Me?"

"You." Grease smeared forearms finally extracted themselves from the device, it only took a few seconds to tuck away the wires and shut the panels, then Howard was hefting the thing into his arms. "Come on, I've been working all night on this for you."

Howard's lab was one large room with various dividers and glass partitions strategically placed throughout to separate certain projects from others. There were a few attached rooms, mostly closets to hold unfinished projects and designated storage areas for equipment and materials; it was to one of the larger of these storage rooms that Howard led Harry.

But where once there had been rows of shelves and unmarked boxes collecting dust within it, there was now an open space and some kind of control console running along the wall. The console wasn't very large, only spanning a few steps from end to end, and on its face were different meters and gauges Harry didn't even bother trying to understand. It was unfinished, he could at least tell that much looking at it, but something told him the core in Howard's arm would slide neatly into the gaping hole in the console's center.

"Is this for me also?" Harry asked.

Howard bobbed his head in an excited nod. "It is, actually. Or it will be once it's finished, this is mostly the bare bones." He hefted the core in his arm. "This will power the whole thing once it's finished."

"What exactly is it?"

"Your way home." A manic grin spread across Howard's face. "You told me before that your magic, specifically the magic of the Hallows, isn't something you can just call upon. The only times you've had access to it were in times of stress and heightened emotion. And that makes sense, it's protecting you, its host. If I can trigger that emotion, that stress, I can trigger the magic. Once the magic is triggered it'll be up to you to channel it, control it. The more you do it and the more comfortable you get wielding it, the easier it should come."

There was a long, long moment where Harry said nothing, honestly lost for words. "That's…that's brilliant." Is what his mind finally managed to formulate. "And simple."

"The best ideas often are." Howard didn't even try to hide his pride behind a mask of false modesty, and Harry couldn't even begrudge him for it. "We just have a tendency to overlook them more often than not for the…flashier, ideas. Myself included."

"So the machine is meant to trigger the stress in some way?" Harry guessed.

"No, actually. It's a suppressor, or well I call it a suppressor but what it really does is absorb and redirect. From the way you've described some of this magic, it's volatile maybe a little violent."

Harry nodded in vehement agreement.

Howard gave the unfinished machine a quick pat. "This absorbs that energy and feeds it back into the machine where its safely dispersed without causing any undue explosions and the like. I actually based the idea off of the energy gun defenses we thought up the day before. The stress trigger is actually this."

It was a small bottle produced from Howard's lab coat, containing only a few milliliters' worth of an unidentifiable clear fluid. "Adrenaline." Another bottle, this one full of a thick tar like substance in an unpleasant shade of bile green, came immediately after the first. "Mescaline."

"Mescaline?"

"It's a hallucinogenic."

"A hallucinogenic?" Something like an incredulous laugh burst from Harry's lips at the absurdity of the situation. "Like LSD?"

Howard shook his head. "I don't know what that is."

"Oh, trust me, you will." Harry eyed the vial of viscous liquid dubiously. "How is that even meant to help?"

"The hallucinations it will trigger, paired with the instinctive flight or fight made more intense by the adrenaline, will be the stressor you need to start seeing some reaction from your magic."

"Is it dangerous?"

Howard hesitated for only half of a second. "Separately? No. Together…I'm not sure. I'll have to run a few tests-"

"No, I'll do it. I'll be your test subject."

"Um, no. I mentioned already Peggy's been on my ass about encouraging your reckless behavior. She'll take my head off if I let you try this without having tested it beforehand."

"It won't do you any good to test it on an animal or even another human," Harry reasoned. "The Hallows make me a good deal more durable than the average man, or even wizard."

"Durable enough to survive a heart attack?"

Harry shrugged. "Yes?" For all he knew, it was true. He hadn't had much chance to explore the whole immortality side effect of the Hallows, but he'd already been assured something as mundane as a heart attack wouldn't be the thing to take him out.

"That wasn't even a little convincing."

Harry glared at the man. "Trust me."

"Sure, and when we both wind up dead, you because I pumped you full of two incompatible drugs and me because Carter will take my head off, you can be the one to sweet talk us through the pearly gates."

"I'll do you one better and persuade Death to give us another shot at life."

"You're a fucking cunt."

Harry perked up, not daring to fully hope his wheedling had actually worked. "Does that mean you'll do it?

"You're telling Peggy."

Harry made a big show of being against having to be the one to inform the terrifying woman of their admittedly dangerous plan, if only to make Howard feel a bit better about caving in to him. But the joke was on the scientist because all it took was one look in his eyes and the steel laced assurance that a bit of recreational drugs and adrenaline wouldn't be the thing to do him in and Peggy was, if not agreeing, at least not outright against the plan.

"You're not serious," Howard sputtered, outraged by her easy acceptance. "That's it? What about your lectures about responsibility? How many times have you told me off for being reckless and influencing him into doing the same?"

"Nothing I say will change his mind," Peggy shrugged. "And I trust him. If he says the procedure won't kill him, I believe him. He wouldn't risk dying and never getting the chance to return to his family."

"Well of course he's right. I know it won't kill him, even without whatever magical invulnerability he thinks he has, but a little indignation on your part still would have been nice. I can't even count how many times I've been chewed out because of my "reckless decisions". I was looking forward to seeing someone else on the receiving end."

"Would you like to try it again?" Peggy asked, mockingly serious. "I can put on a good show if it makes you happy."

Howard looked between the two of them for a moment, then heaved a put upon sigh and shook his head. "Not that good of a show. Just next time he decides he wants to do something this reckless, because I'm sure it's going to happen, I expect you to put up some kind of fight."

"You have my word."

The older man sniffed haughtily, not fully appeased but at least aware that he wouldn't be getting much else out of her. "What I have is enough for just one dosage, but I have more on its way in if we need it."

Harry frowned in confusion. "What would we need it for?"

"We don't know how effective the stressor will be in regards to breaking past those barriers between you and full access to your magic, we won't until we've tested it. Chances are it'll take more than one try to see it done."

Harry's sigh was full of disgruntled mourning. "And here I was hoping this would be a quick fix."

"I'm afraid not, my friend." Howard gave him a bracing clap on the shoulder. "But at least it's a fix."

"How soon were you thinking to start?"

"I'll need a few days, a week at most. This," he gave the machine built to suppress any accidental magic on Harry's part a loving tap, "still needs a bit of work. Once it's done we have enough for a test run."

"I can wait a week."

And he could, seven days was nothing compared to the weeks and months he'd been waiting. He was a few days short of a month away from having been in this time for an entire year, and in that time he'd endured enough failures and disappointments to help temper the impatience he was so infamous for. It didn't make the wait any less torturous for him, but at the very least he wasn't driving his colleagues halfway to insanity with a constant badgering for updates. He kept himself occupied helping Howard where he could and, when he was only getting underfoot, shadowing Peggy as her unofficial secretary.

And then a week and a few days had gone, and Harry arrived at the SSR facility one morning to the notice that they were finally going for that test run.

"It's a lovely morning for some highly experimental and potentially deadly drug therapy, isn't it?" Was what Howard greeted both him and Peggy with when they entered the lab.

Peggy leveled him with a look that expressed just how not funny she found him.

"Everything is ready then?" Harry asked, just a touch nervously.

"As ready as it can be at this stage," Howard shrugged. "Today is meant to let us know what we're missing, what needs improving."

A tilt of his head beckoned Harry and Peggy to the back of the lab where the room for the entire procedure had been set up. The small closet seemed to have shrunk even more in size, perhaps due to the formidable iron door that had replaced the previously flimsy wood, and the metal plates lining the walls from floor to ceiling.

"I commissioned a few chromium panels to be used to line the walls, in the event the suppressor doesn't…suppress, they should hopefully contain any magical blowout to this room."

Harry frowned at Howard in concern. "Is that a possibility? The suppressor not suppressing?"

The older man could only shake his head. "I don't know. I hope it will, I think it will, but I don't know. I've never tried to build anything like it, no one has. Those shields we developed are the closest thing, but not even those are this. Until we let your magic rip at it full force we won't know."

"Explain to me again exactly how this is going to work," Peggy demanded, a small divot carving itself into the space between her brows.

Howard nodded, suddenly the epitome of patience despite having explained the entire process in detail to Peggy at least a half dozen times by now. That uncertainty she'd claimed not to feel regarding the procedure was obviously rearing its ugly head.

"The purpose of everything we're doing is to see you, Harry, stressed enough to grant you access to the magic of your Hallows, to do that, we'll start by restraining you." He gestured to one of the newer additions to the closet sized room, a bare cot like structure with several heavy and ominous looking straps running along its sides. "They're to keep you from dislodging the suppressor. Once we begin, neither Peggy or I will be allowed in the room with you, so once it's on it needs to stay on for the duration."

"I won't like that. Being tied down will only aggravate me more." Harry noted. "That's good."

"An unexpected benefit." Howard agreed. "Once you're secured, I'll inject you with our two drugs. I've come across a good few ways to ingest mescaline, but taking it intravenously seems to be the method that allows it to be most potent. If all goes to plan, it will begin producing hallucinations quickly, within forty-five minutes to an hour.

"The adrenaline will be injected slowly, it'll be around half an hour before you've been administered the full dosage, after which it should take effect in a matter of minutes. The adrenaline is acting as the stressor, it is what's going to get that reaction we're hoping for from your magic."

"If the adrenaline is the stressor, what is the purpose of the mescaline then?" Peggy cut in.

"Being distressed won't be enough," Howard explained. "We need a target, a supposed cause to the stress so that his magic has something it can attack. The hallucinations from the mescaline will do exactly that.

"But something we'll want as much control over as we can get is the nature of your hallucinations, what your mind is dreaming up. If it's something you've personally experienced and have felt threatened by before I can almost guarantee we'll see some kind of reaction."

"I've got a few things in mind," Harry said morosely. "So all I have to do is think about it?"

"Peggy and I will speak to you through the intercom, once the drugs are in your system it might be harder to keep your mind in one place, so speaking it aloud should help keep you focused."

"Recreational drugs and talk therapy," Harry sighed. "Sounds like a hell of a time. How long will this all take?"

"It'll be an hour for the drugs to take effect, after that it's fully dependent on how long it takes to get a reaction from your magic. I'd predict it won't be any more than two, two and a half hours before we see the results we want. Once we do, we'll gas the room."

That hadn't been mentioned in the plan before. "Gas the room for what?"

"The effects of mescaline can last up to twelve hours, more depending on the dosage and we're going for a big one. We don't want you in constant distress for that entire time, so we'll sedate you until the worst passes.

"You'll stay here for at least another day after, so I can keep a close eye on you and any reactions from your magic."

"You want to keep me locked in that closet for two days?" Harry asked incredulously.

"You'll be unconscious for most of the first and you'll be free to roam the lab for all of the second, as long as you keep away from my more sensitive projects there shouldn't be much of a problem."

The thorough explanation seemed to have at least eased Peggy's worry a bit. "And you said you won't know how many times this will need to be repeated in order to be effective?"

"Correct," Howard confirmed. "We won't know until we drug him up and stress him out." He paused, waiting for the next onslaught of questions, but no more were forthcoming. "Should we begin now?"

"There isn't-"

"Yes," Harry cut off Peggy's protest before it could be fully formed and didn't feel the slightest bit sorry for it. He'd done his waiting, he was ready. "Drug me up and stress me out."

"None of this is going to be fun."

Harry peered over at Howard from his prone position on the frankly uncomfortable cot; the older man was kneeling near the foot of the cot, securing his legs almost painfully tight in the restraints.

"I figured as much, actually."

Howard scoffed at the sarcasm Harry hadn't quite managed to keep out of his voice. "What I meant is it's going to be actively miserable, this could be considered psychological torture in some circles. Most circles."

"I'm asking for it."

"And you're crazy for it." Howard laughed. "But I guess I can't blame you. I don't have much of a family, but if I did, I'd like to think I'd be just as willing to do anything it took to get back to them should we be separated."

"You would."

"Your confidence in me means a lot."

A sharp tug at the restraints tested and subsequently ensured that he wouldn't be going anywhere.

"How does it feel?"

Harry shook his head, restraints wound from the base of his throat to the top of his foot in restricting, suffocating waves. Not a single bit of him could so much as wiggle and it was awful. "I hate it."

Howard's laugh was a short, humorless bark. "We're off to a good start then. I'm going to strap you into the suppressor now."

There was small space on each of Harry's wrists that had been left unbound where deceptively thin cuffs that wired back to the machine against the wall were secured. A similar band was wrapped around his forehead and tightened enough where he knew he would have a hell of a headache later.

"Please try not to fry this," Howard only half-joked. "It'd be a hell of thing explaining to Phillips how we burned this place down."

"Considering the amount of volatile chemicals and equipment you keep down here, and your infamously reckless reputation, it really wouldn't be that hard. But I'll try my best not to anyway."

"I suppose that's the best I'm going to get. Are you ready to begin injecting?"

"That shouldn't even be a question. Yes."

"All right, this might pinch a bit."

A wicked long needle, one attached to a line that led to a suspended vial of clear fluid went, into his right arm without much fuss. A second syringe, just as intimidating, but this time full of the dark colored, liquid Harry remembered seeing that first day was the one Howard hesitated injecting him with.

"Final chance at getting out. Once this is in you, we can't stop."

"I'm not backing out."

Howard sighed. "I didn't actually think you would."

The injection was quick, nearly painless and followed by a near immediate rush of warmth flooding through his veins. There wasn't any other reaction aside from that, but Howard had said it would be a while before it to really begin to take effect.

"All right, you're all buckled in and the good stuff is working its magic now," Howard said with a nervous clap of his hands. "I hope you went to the bathroom, because you're going to be here a while."

Harry rolled his head on the cot just enough to pin the man with an unamused stare. "I should be fine. Now what happens?"

"Now I lock you in here nice and secure, and me and Peggy will begin psychoanalyzing the darkest moments of your past to really make sure you get the fullest, shittiest experience out of all of this."

"Can't wait."

Howard didn't leave immediately, to Harry's amusement he lingered for maybe just a moment too long, struck by a sudden hesitance. "If it gets to be too much say the word and we'll shut the whole thing down," he said, uncommonly sincere. "Don't go trying to play the hero. This isn't our only shot at this."

"I won't." The expression on Howard's face had Harry pressing against his restraints just enough to tap a reassuring finger against the back of the man's hand. "Promise."

"It wouldn't be any fun if you died before I could collect the proper amount of data."

The door creaked heavy on its hinges as it swung behind Howard, slamming shut with a finality that Harry would admit to no one was maybe a bit terrifying.

Even now, strapped down to the uncomfortable cot, actual drugs finding their way deeper into his system with each frantic pulse of his heart, and preparing to experience what was no doubt going to be the most unpleasant trip in his history, he wasn't rethinking his decisions to give this crazy idea a shot. But at least in the privacy of his own mind Harry could admit how mad it was, if it didn't kill him he was sure to feel like shit in the morning.

"Comfortable in there?" Peggy's voice, tinny with interference, crackled through a speaker mounted to the wall above his head.

"Better than a room at the Ritz."

"Glad you're liking the accommodations," was Howard's snarky reply. "We at Casa Stark strive to provide a quality experience. I'm afraid we don't have any drink specials on offer at the moment but the drug cocktail we've injected into your veins should more than make up for that, and we have a truly spectacular evening of relieving some of your most unpleasant memories planned for you."

Likely at Howard's command, the lights dimmed to barely anything; the brightest source now coming from the flickering red light from the suppressor. It didn't escape Harry's notice how deep the shadows suddenly seemed, or the jagged shapes they sent spilling along the floors and walls.

"Sounds like my kind of night. I was thinking the dark wizard who murdered my parents and spent near a decade trying to do me in might be a good source for traumatizing memories."

There was a beat of surprised silence, then Peggy's voice. "I'd be inclined to agree. That's not one you've told us."

"A bit too morbid for everyday conversation. But yeah, he was a manic."

"All right, let's hear it."

Harry allowed himself just a second of silence, bracing himself for a long and unpleasant recollection of his past. "He called himself Voldemort and he believed that only those of a certain birth should be allowed a place in the wizarding world, those whose parents had magic and their parents before them and so on. A lot of people, not just wizards and witches, died because of the belief. My parents were among those who did. I should have been too, but magic got involved, the kind I still don't fully understand and I survived and Voldemort was banished from his body for a bit. He took that as something of an insult and an open declaration of war on my part even though I was one when this happened. When he got his body back, or a body, he spent the next few years trying to kill me until I figured enough was enough and killed him myself.

"He's pretty much the reason I'm here, if it weren't for him I would never have got my hands on two of the three Hallows and so they never would have been united, not by me at least."

"Okay," Howard said, "let's go back to the part where you decided to kill the guy."

"I didn't exactly decide, there was a prophecy involved."

"That doesn't actually make this any easier to understand."

"An old professor of mine who was only a proper seer when it was most inconvenient foresaw a future where I would be equal to the most powerful dark lord in our history, in that future we were doomed to fight one another until one died at the hand of the other. That prophecy was the reason the dark lord went to my home that night, killed my parents, and attempted to kill me."

Peggy took a turn to speak into the intercom's microphone. "What was he like? Your dark lord?"

"Disgusting. Unnatural. He was hairless, pale as spoiled milk, his pupils were slits and he didn't have a nose, just gashes were his nostrils should be."

"That sounds like…"

"…a snake. Yeah."

"Did he frighten you?"

Harry laughed humorlessly and stopped short when the restraints around his chests made it hard to breathe. "He terrifies me."

"Why?"

He understood what Peggy was doing, why she was asking the questions that she was, Howard had only just explained every detail of this awful procedure. That didn't mean he liked it.

But he answered anyway, because he wanted this to work. He needed it to. "Aside from the obvious? He was so…intense and so sure that he was right, that he would win. And he could have. I won because of luck only; he had decades of experience on me and it showed. He was more intelligent, more powerful, he should have decimated me."

"But he didn't," Peggy reminded. "You won."

"I did."

"So what else is there?"

"What?"

"You said he terrifies you. As if he were still here, as if you're still at war with this creature."

Harry laughed again, this time from amazement at how accurate the statement was, and of course it would be Peggy to stumble upon one of his deepest rooted fears without even realizing what it was she was doing. "Because I am, I suppose. Or I will be. I went back on purpose, I told you that already. The plan was to go back to a time before the Hallows had united, but the only time like that that existed was also one before the dark lord had been defeated."

"I see…"

"But you don't," Harry pressed, and maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the restraints and the dark room and the flickering lights but he could feel something deeper and darker than simple agitation building in his gut, "because it was the Hallows that allowed me to kill him. I was able to do it because I was their master and when he tried to wield one against me it defied him and killed him and allowed me to win. Without them I'll have nothing but a broken wand and six years of learning to turn teapots into cozies to go against the most powerful and evil man in our history."

"You're afraid you're going to die."

"I'm afraid my friends are going to die. That they'll see me fall-because there's nothing else I can do when I go against him- and know that they'll be next, that their parents and children and siblings will be next because I had failed."

His stomach churned in one wild, disgusting mesh of fear and anger and desperation at just the thought of having to go against Voldemort again. What was the point of preventing the union of the Hallows, of stopping the wizarding world's end before it had even begun, if it was at the cost of their freedom from Voldemort? Was being alive really worth being under his rule?

"And once they and everyone else who opposed him are dead, the rest will be forced to live in a world where those like my brilliant Hermione will be outlawed, locked away and tormented because they were born to what Voldemort deems the wrong families. Where men like Ron will be shunned and isolated and disowned because they won't allow themselves to be blinded by hatred and bigotry Where magic is controlled and prohibited to fit the narrow-minded world view of a handful of fascists."

As he spoke his fear into the world, each word painted the air around him bright as the red of Voldemort's eyes, dripping and curling like a noxious fog with every poisoned thought he finally put to words.

"They'll die if I don't go back and stop the Hallows from uniting. But they might be facing something just as terrible if I do."

"Damned if you do…" Was Howard's response.

Bitter cynicism bared Harry's teeth in a poor parody of a smile. "And damned if I don't."

"You were always such an awful cynic."

The hair-raising grind of metal on metal shrieked through the tiny room when Harry jolted suddenly in his bonds, stretching the reinforced straps to their limit.

"What was that?" Peggy's voice was back on the microphone, concern in every syllable. "Has something happened?"

"Something must have. You look awfully pale all of a sudden."

Harry's lips trembled around the words he struggled to form. "I-is this real?"

"Is what real?" Peggy snapped. "Harry, I need an answer. Are you all right?"

"Hermione is here."

And as he said it, a beatific smile spread across his friend's face and she perched herself on the small bit of unoccupied space of his cot. She was more shadow than substance in the low, pulsing light of the room. He could really only make her out by the untamable curls haloing her head and the sweet tenor of her voice, but if she turned her head in just the right direction and he squinted hard enough he might get lucky and catch just a glimpse of those intelligent, umber eyes.

"Hermione…Your friend from the future, Hermione?"

"You've told them about me?"

"Are you hallucinating already?" Surprise was heavy in Howard's voice, and for good reason. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since the injection, nowhere near the hour they'd predicted it would take for the drug to really begin taking effect.

"You've told them all about us, haven't you? You've broken the statute, if the Ministry finds out they'll have your head."

Harry shook his head, ignoring Peggy and Howard's questions to focus fully on Hermione. "Different time, different rules."

"You don't honestly believe that, do you? They know, they've always known; who are you are, where you, what you're doing. They've only been waiting, patiently biding their time until they can get you and as many others as possible in one, quick swoop."

"No."

"They'll come for you when your least prepared, wipe your existence from their memories and lock you away in the deepest, darkest pit they can find and you'll never get home and you'll never save us."

"It's not true," Harry spat. "I have time, I can fix this."

"We're going to die because of you, Harry. I already have." She leaned forward then, thick, dark curls mere hairsbreadths away from brushing his face, and in the scarce few moments were the room was illuminated by that single, blinking red light, he finally saw her clearly.

There was nowhere Harry could go, strapped down as securely as was, but there was no way he wasn't at least going to try. He cringed into the unyielding mattress of his cot, turned his head in the farthest direction from her, and screwed his eyes shut until he could see nothing of that fucking red light and the terrible image it illuminated.

She was dead, long dead. Rot had begun eating away her face, having already claimed an entire eyeball and much of the skin down the left side of her jaw, exposing the muscle and sinew and gleaming bone and molars that lay beneath. The only remaining eyeball was milky white and shot through with the red of burst blood vessels and what little flesh remained had already begun to bloat and peel away.

"You're not real."

"Who says I'm not?" Pale white hands, shriveling and clawed with decay, stroked along the divots of the mattress, still not touching him though, never touching him.

"Go away."

"No. You never want to hear what I have to say. But this is important." There was no warning before she was suddenly halfway across the room, moving swiftly and unnaturally in a back and forth pacing too dizzying to track for long. "You left me alone to face that mob, and I died because of it. Horribly. Miserably. Alone. And it was all for nothing, because you can't fix this. All this time you've spent here, every opportunity you've been presented and somehow you've managed to muck it up every single time. If it had been me, it would have been done already."

Her words burned; they set something that felt like fury but growled like magic alight in his chest.

"You told me to go. You said it had to be you who stayed behind to perform the ritual."

"You should have stayed anyway. You should have fought. You should have protected me. You should have saved me."

Harry shook his head, frantically denying the words he himself had thought when at his lowest. "It's not my fault."

"It is your fault."

"Leave me alone."

"After everything we went through together, all the atrocities I endured for you, the things I sacrificed you repay me by leaving me to fend for myself?" Hermione wasn't angry when she spoke, and that perhaps made the whole thing worse, she only sounded defeated. "I thought I meant more to you."

"Please forgive me," he begged, desperate for this to end and willing to say and do whatever it took. "Please. Please."

"No."

The red light flashed a familiar green and she fell, a marionette violently released from her strings. And then Voldemort stepped over the corpse that seemed to grow more rotted with each passing second, a wide, cruel smile carving an unseemly gash across his face.

"Harry Potter." The simple greeting could barely be heard over the hissing of the dozens of snakes that bled from beneath his robes, they spread across the floor one giant, writhing carpet that whispered evil nothings in the sibilant language he'd been so eager to be rid of.

Harry groaned in horror, his hands twisted in their restrains, trying desperately and fruitlessly to claw their way up to his chest where an inexplicable pressure was caving it in. "No. No, go away."

"Failure in all that you will ever do. You are a disease. A plague. A curse. The world would have been much improved if you'd died that night on that cold doorstep."

"Go away."

The sea of snakes parted silently as the dark lord glided forward on bare feet to hover over his trapped form. "Because of your foolishness I've been given the chance I was denied. You have no hope of standing against me, so you will fall before me. On your bones and the bones of your loved ones I will build a world in my image, and your kind and the filth you associated with will be purged."

The snakes coiled around each other, forming twisted shapes and crippled forms that could just be distinguished as the broken bodies of his friends and family. All dead at Voldemort's feet.

Something in Harry shattered, his scream was one torn from his chest and amplified by the unfiltered magic that had been building in his chest, waiting for this perfect moment to let itself and his fury known.

The world around him warped but Voldemort remained the solitary, steady figure. Laughing at his pain even as everything else stripped away. Then there was a concussive banging, the sudden gush of unnaturally thick air, then nothing.

He didn't wake easy. Five, ten, twenty hours passed and Harry jerked to consciousness with a heaving gasp and a mouthful of bile. Peggy and Howard were on the other side of the room, crouched over something he couldn't yet see and so were luckily out of the splash zone.

They were at his side a moment later though, Peggy with a soothing hand between his shoulder blades and Howard with a rag at the ready and a sheepish smile.

"Too many drugs in your system," he said as the rag was tossed over the watery mess. "I knew they wouldn't sit well with your stomach, should have had a bucket at the ready."

"Mark that down for next time," Harry rasped around his sore throat.

"Any other symptoms we should take note of? Dizziness? Disorientation?"

"My head feels like someone took a sledgehammer to it." Harry tucked his head between his knees, struggling to form rational thought around the pounding in his head.

"Want something to take the edge off?"

He moaned in protest. "Please, no more drugs."

Howard barked a quick laugh. "I meant something more along the lines of bourbon. But I feel that would receive about the same warm reception."

"You would be right."

"Aside from the headache. How do you feel?" Peggy asked. "How does your magic feel?"

Harry took a good long moment to seriously consider the answer, hesitantly focusing inward in search of his magic. It didn't take much to find it. The second he sought it out, it was there, itching beneath his skin like a rash he couldn't quite reach; he felt alight with energy, restless and unsettled, the same as he'd felt the day he'd seen the girl die and the reaper who took her soul. It was different, more, and indisputable proof that it had worked.

"We had a feeling it did," Howard said when Harry relayed as much to them. "You had a pretty serious reaction in no time at all." He hurried across the room to collect what he and Peggy had been looking over when Harry had first woken, then quickly returned to his side, the strangely marked paper held loose in his hand. "I went ahead and did an EEG while you were out, just to make sure we hadn't rendered you braindead, and even unconscious and not actively casting your markers were off the charts. This one experimental procedure had an enormous impact on your magic."

Howard was near vibrating out of his shoes he was so excited, and Harry was growing to be near as bad. "So that means we can continue? We can actually do this?"

"Yes, not now but soon. That half hour took a lot out of you, you've been out almost twenty-four hours and I still need to observe you for at least another twelve to make sure there aren't any surprise side effects. But we can continue. I really think this can work."

Harry slumped back onto the cot, heaving an enormous breath of relief. "Thank you."

"Thank you." Howard beamed down at him. "I've never worked on something so incredible, I don't think I ever will again."

"I wouldn't be so sure." A matching grin was quick to spread across Harry's face. "Don't forget the disintegration rays powered by an object of possible alien origins stored in the room over."

"Good point."

"If you're feeling up to it we'd like to get you up on your feet," Peggy cut in. "There's even food out in the main lab for you to give a try."

"The only time I'll allow it," Howard said, faux-sternly. "Try and keep it down this time around?"

"I can't make any promises."

Harry grunted softly as he swung his legs over the side of the cot, he allowed himself a moment to firmly ground his feet to the floor before pushing forward onto unsteady legs. Peggy and Howard were at his side in an instant, close enough to provide support should he need it, but allowing him just enough space to maneuver on his own.

It was dizzying the first few steps, but he shook off his vertigo quickly enough and managed to stagger out into the main lab without any assistance. A chair was waiting for him, already invitingly pulled out in front of a cleared off work station.

"Soup to start," Peggy said imperiously. She unscrewed a clunky, metal thermos and placed it in front of Harry. "If you're able to keep that down and in the mood for more after I might have a few biscuits I'd be willing to share."

"Cheers."

The soup was the bland kind of fare that spoke of how heavily rationed anything with any kind of flavor was, but it was warm and hearty and did wonders to fill the gnawing pit in his stomach so there wasn't much he could say in complaint. Especially when, after finishing off the entire thermos and waiting a good few minutes, it didn't make a second appearance and he was allowed one of the raspberry biscuits Peggy liked to take with her tea.

"How did the whole thing look from your end?" Harry asked as he steadily worked his way through his lunch.

Peggy hummed thoughtfully. "A bit disconcerting," she finally settled on. "It wasn't so awful when we were speaking with you, but when the hallucinations began and you grew upset it was difficult to watch. The reaction from your magic wasn't at all what we were expecting either."

"What did it do?"

"Nothing," Howard said, looking the slightest bit bemused. "We were expecting a big, destructive display from the things you've described, but all we saw was you shouting at an apparition and then you were screaming. When we gassed the room we didn't know your magic was having a reaction, we thought something had gone wrong. It was only when we did the EEG that we realized otherwise."

"Do you think it was because of the suppressor?"

"I can't say. Maybe? Or maybe whatever your magic was trying to do wasn't a physical attack. You've said that it's inflicted auditory and visual hallucinations on both you and another before, maybe it was trying something along those lines this time around too."

"We'll just have to be careful next time," Peggy said. "We know what it looks like and how quickly everything happens so we can be prepared. Are you still feeling all right?"

Harry shrugged. "A bit itchy and full of energy, but all right otherwise."

"You should be fine for me to step out for a bit then, yes? Rogers and his men are leaving this evening to bring down a HYDRA facility in the Tatra Mountains, I'd like to be there to see them off if I can."

"I promise I won't blow Howard up with my newly manifested powers," Harry said, maybe just a touch insincerely.

"And I promise not to goad him into blowing me up with his newly manifested powers," Howard added, no more believable than Harry.

Peggy rolled her eyes even as she battled a small snort of amusement. "If either of you winds up dead the other would do well to follow him, because I'll have no mercy on you."

"Noted."

She left with a short nod and the sharp click of heeled shoes on concrete, Howard was rounding on Harry with a grin full of mischief the moment she was gone. "Should we test to see how much more effective at making explosions the procedure has made you?"

"Yes, please."

Twelve hours and several demolished slabs of granite later, Harry had worn himself out near to nothing, but no surprise side effects had reared their ugly heads in that time and Howard eventually gave him a pass to head back home. He offered to call him a car, save him exerting himself any further, but he opted to walk instead. His legs still worked just fine and the boarding house the SSR had put him up in didn't take long to reach by foot.

That was a good decision, as it turned out. Death made an appearance without any sort of warning, as he often did, halfway through the walk and it would have been horribly awkward trying to carry a conversation with the entity visible only to his eyes without completely freaking out a driver.

"I take it you're here because of what we did." Death never wasted time on any kind of niceties, Harry figured he should get into the habit of doing the same.

"It's fascinating and very stupid."

Harry shrugged not even a little perturbed. "I had a feeling you wouldn't approve."

"I could care less what you do to your weak little body so long as my Heart remains unbroken."

"How poetic," Harry laughed, however Death wasn't yet done speaking.

"But if you damage it or yourself in this pointless crusade, the infinity gem may never be recovered."

"And that upsets you."

"Yes that upsets me," Death snarled. "Were we not both in agreement that the last thing we wanted was for Thanos to get his hands on the space gem?"

"Well, of course, but in my present, when I left, did Thanos have the space gem?"

Death took on an expression eerily similar to the scrunched nosed, pursed lip grimace Aunt Petunia seemed to always sport whenever Harry was near. "Not when you left. but there were whispers, he was making moves to begin collecting."

"But we'll still have time. I won't have forgotten anything once I'm back in my time, I can still help retrieve and hide it. I just need to make it back first."

"You intend to give up the Heart, and while I have no complaints about that, once you do there is nothing you can do to contain an infinity gem. You will be mortal, weak, powerless."

"I won't be completely powerless," Harry protested. "I'll still have my magic."

Death scoffed mockingly. "Your parlor tricks are nothing when compared to even one of the gems."

"A mortal has it now. A magicless mortal. The way I see it, I already have an advantage."

"You're a fool."

"Maybe." Harry's mouth ticked up in a small smile. "But I'm determined fool. And I know how to get things done."

The look Death pinned him with was surprisingly free of malice or disdain, but it sent a shiver down Harry's spine all the same. "One day, you'll find yourself facing odds not even you and all your dumb luck can overcome."

And wasn't that just an awful repetition of the very same thing his drug riddled mind had considered one of his most deeply rooted fears? But Harry only smiled wider in the face of Death and refused to be cowed.

"As long as that day is not today or the day after, I'll make do." He snapped the entity one last jaunty salute then marched his way home.

A/N: This is not at all the chapter I had intended to write. I wanted to just add a quick scene to the beginning of an already fully planned and plotted chapter and it just…snowballed. I'll just have to save the fun explosive death powers and Harry & Bucky bonding for next chapter.

On an only somewhat related note, the next time you all hear from me I will have seen Infinity Wars and so will be a changed woman. Please come cry with me on Facebook and Tumblr.