Then
Strucker gave them the news of their lost savior turned downfall and the wizards were ecstatic, beside themselves with relief, exhilaration, anticipation. But there was trepidation there too.
Potter had been a source of awe for them since his start, he'd killed their dark lord at one, then again at seventeen with a borrowed wand and unwavering grit. Then he'd united what were arguably the most powerful artifacts known to their kind, mastered them as if it were nothing, and brought plague and war upon their people for it. And now they were expected to fight him, subdue him, and keep him contained until their world was put to right.
They were cautious when forming their plan to bring him in, overly so, but Strucker could find no reason to blame them. If the boy was half as powerful as they believed him to be there would be a fight on their hands, and that was without taking into account the organization he had at his back. Potter was with the SSR, he was working alongside Stark and Carter, Rogers and his Commandos, to go in unprepared would be suicide.
So they chose their best, debriefed every wizard and witch with care, and when they went back to the era of worldwide war, it was with the understanding that some of them might not be coming back. They were sure the fight ahead would be just as awful and bloody as the one hosted in the Great Hall of Hogwarts near four years ago.
It wasn't.
The group of wizards, led by the British head Auror Gawain Robards, touched down where they'd left, an outcropping of rocks at the seaside, far from muggles and wizards alike, they got their bearings, shook off the effects of the drain on their magic then apparated as one to their first destination.
See, finding the when Potter had fallen had been their toughest challenge, but it wasn't their only one. Where he was holed up was just as pressing of a matter and one that posed a challenge in its own right. The SSR, by nature of the sort of organization that they were, didn't have their address listed in the directory, and the exact details of any missions carried out in their name were vague. So they followed the history books, what little they explained, alongside newspaper articles archived for over half a century, and battle reports and plans with more redacted than visible all the way to a secret facility at the base of a mountain range that spanned much of Europe. They arrived several hours too late.
Their boots touched the ground and they were slipping in dirt churned up and turned muddy with blood. Some of it congealing, most of it still fresh and bright and red. The air stank of magic, the destructive sort that put all their hairs on end, and bodies were everywhere. Torn apart, blasted full with holes, burnt to husks barely recognizable as human. Potter was among none of them.
"Did he do this?"
The Auror who spoke was the youngest of the crew, but not at all lacking magical proficiency because of it. Robards had chosen him because he was only a few years fresh from Hogwarts, he'd walked the halls the same time Potter had. And even if they'd been in different years, and different houses, he still had a better idea of how he operated than the rest of them did.
"Could only be." Robards tried breathing through his mouth as he spoke, but it only made the stink of recently deceased bodies coat the back of his tongue instead. He closed his mouth. "With muggle help maybe." The corpse just left of his foot was plugged with muggle bullets. "But he was here."
"Some of these men were wizards."
Unease swept across their ranks when Scabbord, an Auror from the French division, retrieved a wand, snapped clean in half but still unmistakable for what it was, from a close corpse.
"What was he doing fighting wizards? This is a muggle facility."
Robards didn't have answers. The muggle Strucker had said Potter had aligned himself with a muggle military organization, one that, before this awful plague had hit, knew nothing of magic.
"Let's find Potter," he ordered, voice quiet and stern, but still more than enough to bring his men back in formation. "And we'll ask him ourselves."
The facility and its grounds were empty of anyone still alive, it was lucky only that Potter wasn't among the dead, unlucky that he was nowhere to be found. But that was what they had the Unspeakables for.
They might be close enough to narrow in on their wayward savior's location with the help of a bit of obscure (and perhaps a little dark) magic. Flakes of blood carefully scraped from where it had been smeared across the skull of a creature most of them hadn't even known existed was mixed into a potion of a deep umber color that was then poured right into the dirt at their feet.
They all waited, breath held in anticipation, then the head unspeakable, Fowler, began moving, following tracks only he could see.
"He went on foot?"
And that was a relief for Robards, if Potter had simply disapparated, there would be no way their potion and its magics would be able to find him. Not even the unspeakables could track magical signatures.
"He was hurt." The unspeakable whose name he'd never learned explained. "Badly. The blood he's left behind makes it that much easier to see. He's moving west."
They'd studied the area and all that surrounded it in depth before apparating to it, the map of the terrain was etched into the back of his eyelids. He knew Potter was headed for the closest bit of civilization, a little settlement where he was sure to find some way to contact his comrades. They had to get to him before he did or else he'd be lost to them.
He lifted their only map from Scabbord's belt and painstakingly worked out the coordinates for a spot just outside of where the little village would be.
"Let's find him quick and quiet and let's not make a mess when we do it," he ordered. "Potter might be hurt, but animals fight fiercest when they're wounded. Don't let him take you by surprise."
He recited the coordinates to his men once more, just to be sure they all had where they were going locked in tight, then he gave the order to move.
They disapparated in tandem, moving seamlessly through the space to land with less pomp than the average wizard. Rows of neat little houses and perfectly cut squares of farmland stretched before them, too many for their few to search successfully for their boy-who-lived, but there proved to be no need. Fowler moved on sure feet through deserted streets and past silent homesteads until they reached a small farm, clearly empty and in poor repair.
Robards looked on the place with suspicion and more than just a little nerves. "He's here?"
"Around back."
The unspeakable led them to what had once been a barn or a shed of some sort; its doors were closed tight and there wasn't a sound from inside, but a smear of blood, bright and shockingly red across the wood confirmed they were in the right place.
"Give me some wards," Robards ordered, careful to speak even lower than a whisper. "Anti-disapparation, anti-portkey, and a few for proximity."
His team moved quickly, the wards were up in only a few minutes and finally it was time. Robards was the mission head so contact fell to him; he was nervous, near shaking with it, but he was ready for a fight. He moved forward until he was within touching distance of the little shed, and then he spoke.
Now
Harry's second trek through time was markedly different from the first. It was deliberate and carefully controlled, the perfect example of how it was meant to go when compared to the mad tumble he'd experienced when falling back. This was the ritual done right. When they landed, he was still conscious, even if just barely; his injuries had gone long enough untreated and that short bit of travel, while smoother than he'd first experienced, still exasperated his wounds enough to have him biting down on his tongue until it bled.
It took him a moment to breathe past the agony and blink away the black spots that danced across his vision; long enough that the auror contingent grew tired of waiting and began dragging him forward and out of the room they had arrived in. He'd lost his glasses sometime during the tumble through, or maybe before, during the fight with Grindelwald, the world had already been so fuzzy with pain he hadn't even noticed their absence until now. But even without them he could tell they were somewhere he'd never been.
He got just a glance of the room they'd landed in, cavernous and empty with dark walls and a smooth floor, before he was being hauled into a long corridor without a single door marking its white walls and harsh fluorescent lights that stretched in either direction. There were men waiting for them at the end of the hall, another dozen to join their already numerous group, but these men were carrying rifles. Slimmer and more modern than anything he'd seen Steve and his team carrying, but still unmistakably muggle. As he stumbled along he could feel the press of their gazes on his back, open and curious.
"How long has it been?" Robards demanded of the closest man as soon as they drew close enough.
"Five minutes, if that," was the prompt reply. "The Baron went to do one last check before you brought him in. We're putting him in I4."
"Lead the way."
At the end of the corridor there was an elevator wide enough to fit the entirety of their group. There were only three buttons on the panel; Sub-1, Sub-2, and one marked only with a star. They moved up to Sub-1 and out into a second corridor, just as white and harshly lit, but the wall to his right was made up entirely of glass, allowing him the perfect view into a room just as big as the first. It was a lab as far as he could tell, equipped with monitors and consoles and hulking equipment he could never hope to identify even after spending so much time learning from Howard. But the lab wasn't their destination. He was taken around the corner and shoved into a room that was all too familiar.
It was missing the mirror that usually took up all of one walls but the inconspicuous camera in the corner that blinked red to show it was powered on made up for its absence, and the two chairs separated by a cold slab of a table were hint enough. He was to be interrogated.
Robards shoved him into the chair facing the door but also the camera. Any other day he might have fought to remain standing, even if it was a fight he'd never be able to win, but his legs were shaking from the effort it took to keep himself upright and he was sure he didn't look at all intimidating as battered and bloody as he was. So he let himself be manhandled and didn't even protest the shackles that looped around his wrists and anchored to the floor.
Robards left without a word, likely retreating to wherever feedback of the camera was playing, but they didn't keep him waiting in the silence for long. Five hundred, eighty-two labored breaths passed and the door opened to allow in an unfamiliar man; his hair was buzzed short, nearly to the scalp, the hairstyle gave him a sharp, no nonsense sort of look that was only exacerbated by his ramrod posture and the strange monocle settled over his right eye. He was followed by a woman, entirely unremarkable in every way save for the bulky duffle she carried with her and who lingered by the door that hissed shut behind them. She remained there until the man, still silent, settled in the chair opposite Harry and gestured her forward.
The duffle bag was placed on the table and unzipped to reveal a whole assortment of first aid equipment. Up close, the nervousness in the woman's posture and gaze was evident, but her hands were steady as she began treating his wounds. They were numerous; ribs were wrapped, the gashes and punctures caused by spells stitched up and taped over, burns treated with salve and bandages, and all the while the man watched in silence.
Harry mimicked his silence, not making a single sound even as the woman punctured him repeatedly with her hooked little needle, dragging the thread unpleasantly through his skin without any offer of anesthesia.
After every break, bruise, and laceration had been sewn up and patched over she reached into her bag for a strange mechanical device made up entirely of a copper metal and formed in the shape of a half circle. He blinked at in confusion, mind slow in its exhaustion, but then she placed curve of the object around his throat and the missing half of the ring sprung from within it, clamping the circle shut around his throat. It was a collar. He jerked in his manacles, snarling with sudden rage, and the woman fell back against the table with a gasp of fear. The man however, remained still unmoved but he finally spoke.
"Settle. Conserve your energy." His voice held the hint of an accent, faint but there. "I have questions for you."
"Uncuff me," Harry demanded. "Get this collar off and you'll have all the answers you want. I've cooperated until now and I'll continue to as long as you do."
"I would like to." The soft placation only agitated Harry more. "I really would, but I have many employees here and I'd like to keep them safe."
"I'm not a danger." His beaten form was testament to that.
"Not now. But only because of that." One of the man's long fingers tapped against the base of his own throat, mirroring Harry's to refer to the collar they'd shackled him with.
The thing was tight, sitting flush against his skin, he wasn't sure he'd be able to worm a finger beneath it if he had one free. Where it met the nape of his neck a low, consistent buzz was emitting; he didn't know what it was doing but it made his head swim and something inside him roll with unease.
"Give it time, let everyone's settle. Then we can revisit the idea of getting that removed."
Harry didn't believe him for a second.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"I am Strucker, a scientist, an innovator, when your world began to fall I offered my aid. The war I cannot do much for at the moment, I do not have an army to command, but this disease that's stealing your people's magic I can help with."
Harry was intrigued despite himself. "You have a cure?"
"Of sorts. I cannot stop the deaths, but those who live and lose their magic, I can fix. Return it to them."
"How?"
"You could call it a transfusion. Like the donation of blood, only it is energy, magic, that's being transferred."
"And what do you gain from this?" Everything about Strucker gave off the vibe of wrong, his words were hint enough and the men posted just outside the door with their rifles and utilitarian jumpsuits were telling enough. "You're not a wizard, you're muggle, you knew nothing of us until our wards began to fall. But now you want to help? And not just help us survive the plague and the war- Robards read me the act- they are planning domination, total domination over muggles. They intend wizards to be the top dogs and you're the one who put the idea in their heads. Why?"
"Because this is what my entire career has been working towards. I don't intend to see the muggles killed or dominated, I intend to see them evolved, but only with your help."
And he didn't like the way that sounded, not a single bit of it, but he burned with curiosity. "What do you want from me?"
"Answers, to start. These objects you united, the Hallows, how much do you know of them? Where do they come from? What can they do? How much have they changed you?"
"That's it?" Skepticism dripped from every word. "I answer a couple of questions, perform a few tricks and then I'm, what, free to go?"
"No." Strucker settled his hands delicately on the table top. "There would need to be tests, some of them would be intrusive. But it's for the betterment of all mankind."
And where had he heard that before? The wrong he'd been feeling around Strucker only increased as he stared down the man and his monocle and his too calm smile.
"And this is all your money and resources you're putting into this? Or do you work for a larger organization?"
"There is more than just me. We are collection, multiple heads, all of whom want to our species thrive."
And that was all he needed to understand. "You're HYDRA."
Strucker didn't respond, but Harry didn't need him to, he knew the answer with a certainty that just was.
"You spin a pretty tale, but whatever outcome you're looking for, it's not the betterment of all mankind. You won't get my help."
The man sighed, a bit beleaguered but not entirely surprised. "Well your cooperation would have made everything much easier, but it's not required."
The door at his back opened and a squad of Strucker's men entered to pull him from his seat.
"How are you still here?" Harry was full to the brim with horror, betrayal, and questions, so many questions. But that was the one he couldn't seem to shake. "Sixty years in the future? Steve would have died before he allowed HYDRA to flourish."
A bland little smile graced Strucker's face, the most emotion he'd shown throughout the entire interaction, and somehow it and the way it lit his uncovered eye was so unspeakably smug. "He did."
There was a burst of light from just outside the door, a rush of heat and the smell of ozone, and Steve's limbs fell loose once again. He shook himself from the pile of straw he'd been lowered so gently into and ran for the door, shield already drawn and ready to bash some heads in, but they were gone. The near dozen wizards in blood red and navy blue robes had gone and they'd taken Harry with them.
He didn't remain to investigate, the runes burned into the unnaturally hard ground meant nothing to him, and there was no sign of a single remaining wizard, so he took off in a sprint, inhumanly fast, as he pushed to get to the town his team had gone to find help in.
They'd been given until the sun was up to return and it was nearly there by now, so it was no surprise to find them all together, already halfway back to their agreed meeting spot. The Commandos, however, were plenty confused to see him.
"What's happened?" Of course Bucky would be the first to see how not right he was. Steve could feel his desperation constricting his lungs the same way asthma once had and could only imagine the sight he must look. "Did Harry get worse?"
He took a moment to collect himself, pull the cloak of in control commanding officer around himself because he needed to be in control. "Harry's been taken. Wizards ambushed us and they took him."
Bucky's face went tight with shock. "Grindelwald?"
"No. His own, he said."
"What does that mean?"
Steve shook his head, he still wasn't even entirely sure himself. " Did we manage to make contact?"
"We got through to base," Gabe said, always calm even in the face of crisis. "Phillips said there was no way he could get men in to pick us up so far out from rendezvous, but Stark offered to bring out his own craft. If we can meet him about four clicks north he'll be able to pick us up without being spotted."
"ETA?"
"He guessed around an hour, hour and a half."
Steve nodded, short and sharp, and started moving. "Let's go then." But then Bucky's hand was locking around his wrist, and he was looking up at him confused and scared and desperate for answers.
"Stevie," he kept his voice low, as if he were talking to a wild animal, imploring. "I-we need more to go on then what you just gave us. What happened?"
"They came from nowhere." His voice was hoarse with an unspeakable emotion, but he didn't bother clearing his throat, it wouldn't do him any good. "We tried to run, disapparate, but there were wards. I was ready to fight, but he wouldn't. He put a spell over me, kept me from moving, speaking, anything. I was stuck there, and all I could do was watch as they bust in and dragged him. He was so scared." Steve could feel his carefully constructed calm starting to unravel, he wanted to rage and panic, but Bucky was still holding him, his palm a warm, grounding presence. "And then he was gone."
He had to keep moving after that, he couldn't just stand there so close to where Harry had been taken. He needed to get to rendezvous, get back to base, and get to work finding and retrieving Harry.
Howard was there when they arrived, leaning suave as could be against the same plane he'd flown Steve out to Azzano in. He took stock of their group, exhausted and battered as they were, and noticed immediately Harry wasn't there when he knew he should be. His reaction to the bitter news was awful.
Peggy's was worse.
They touched down to camp and she was there immediately, pristine hair being ruffled by the motors of the plane and not seeming to care a lick about it. They disembarked but none of them could look her in the eye, not Steve or Bucky, not even Howard. And when Harry didn't get off the plane with them, her entire expression crumpled.
"Debrief. Now."
They went to Phillips' tent and they recounted all of the nights events blow by painful blow. The Commandos fell quiet when it was his time to recount Harry's capture, and he did so with careful efficiency. When he was done there was silence, the awful kind that stunk of defeat. That just wouldn't do.
"So what's the plan?"
Something pained passed over Phillips' face. "Captain Rogers-"
"Harry was taken because he was too injured to fight after he saved our collective lives in a fight we should have been able to finish ourselves. So what are we going to do to get him back."
"Steve." That was Peggy, low and soothing, as if she could smooth over his reckless rage with just the power of her sweet voice. And maybe any other time she would have been able to, but not today. "I…I'm not sure that's a possibility."
Absolute betrayal washed over him. Steve had expected Phillips to be against mounting any sort of rescue mission, he'd been the one to deny a rescue of the troops in Azzano, he was a realist at the worst of times. But Peggy? She had a relationship closer than maybe anyone in the room with Harry. She said often he was like her sweet, younger brother, and not even she was willing to try and find him?
"No, listen to me, Steve. I, more than anyone here, want to see him back. I would mount my own rescue mission without hesitation if I thought for a moment I would be successful. But he's too far out of our reach."
"What does that even mean?" Bucky snarled.
"You saw the work we were doing," Howard said. "He's been trying to get home for over a year now, we've been manipulating his magic, doing all kinds of experiments on him just to give him a shot. Without him and his magic, we don't have a chance."
"I saw the ritual they used to get him home," Steve said, refusing to believe the inventor. "I can draw out every rune in it and we'll use that."
"Runes require magic."
"We can get you magic." They'd run into plenty of wizards so far, next time around they would detain one instead of killing them all. Getting him to perform the ritual would be a challenge but…
"Steve. It can't be done. It's not just the ritual, it's not just the lack of magic, he's gone. Gone where it will be decades before we could reach him."
And finally he faltered, because there was a quiver, probably unheard by anyone who wasn't a supersoldier, that broke Peggy's voice mid-sentence. The time he'd known her had grown longer than a year by now and- save for his brief stint with the USO- he'd worked with and under her for most of it. They'd seen some awful things together, done some awful things; watched comrades die, reduced to smoke and ash and nothing, witnessed the devastation of hundreds and thousands of families torn apart, displaced, wiped out in the fight. And never had he seen her cry. Not once.
But now the careful line of her eye makeup had begun to run as tears filled her eyes and he finally started to listen. Harry was gone.
"He's stubborn. Always has been from what I know. Too willful for anyone's good."
The team of Aurors had stuck around for the interrogation, for security reasons they claimed, crowding in to the observation room with the ICW representatives and his own men to watch the show. When it ended and Strucker joined them Robards, the Aurors' lead, was the first to offer his opinion.
Strucker only waved his hand dismissively, he sank down in the chair at the head of the long conference table, attention half fixed on the video feed of Potter who sat silent and withdrawn in his chains and collar.
There had been so much talk of the young wizard. The ICW had suggested the possibility of bringing him in and it was as if the floodgates had opened. Potter was all the wizards knew to talk about; his history, the luck he seemed to wield like a strange power, the ruin he'd brought upon them. But meeting with him, sitting across a table from him and holding conversation, and Strucker found himself not at all impressed.
He was just a boy; beaten and bloodied, defeated and terrified and doing so poorly to hide it. There was no sign of the ancient power that had supposedly brought about his world's end of days; the collar went around his throat and suppressed all uses of magic immediately, just as if had all of Strucker's other subjects.
If there was some incredible power Potter had been granted, whatever or whoever had left him beaten down and so close to death had rendered it null. Or he was hiding it. Biding his time and waiting for them to show weakness before he struck. It would be up to Strucker to find out which before the boy was given a chance to strike.
"He won't work with us." Moreau, France's representative, had always been the cynic in their collective. "We've given him no reason to trust us, and that was before he knew we had allied with HYDRA."
These wizards thought so small. It was no wonder they'd been hurtling toward extinction before he'd offered his aid.
"What do we care if he doesn't trust? I had no need for it before, I certainly don't need it now." His magical allies remained still confused, so he elaborated, slowly and with care for the more dimwitted among them. "The interrogation was a gamble, a shot in the dark we didn't need to take but did because we could; we didn't funnel our time and resources into finding your boy hero so we might ask him a few questions. We don't need answers, we need his power, his longevity. Trust and consent are nowhere a requirement."
"Then what now? Where do we go from here?"
Strucker gave a cavalier little shrug. "The same we went with all the others. He'll need to be matched with the pods, acclimated to the crystals to prevent any overwhelm from its power, all standard procedure. Only with who you've sworn to be a more powerful host. If it is as you say, we'll draw the power for our entire army from him. Then our campaign against your enemies will begin."
And finally their hesitation and confusion had been erased, replaced now with anticipation and fervent excitement. "How quickly can we begin?"
They kept Harry in a cell, bare and a white with a sad little cot pushed in one corner and a hole in the floor in the other. He got two trays a day, with a bland mush he could only stomach after four cycles of starving himself and a break for fresh air or human contact never. All there was to do was sit with his back propped against the wall and count; the fraying threads at the hem of his pants, the cracks in the cement floor at the foot of his bed, the flecks of blood that stained his shirt and the bandages they hadn't changed since first treating him.
It was its own brand of torture, the monotony, it was no surprise men went mad in total isolation. But he kept to his counting and kept out of his mind because he already knew if he fell in too deep there would be no coming back.
Steve was dead, or so Strucker had said, and he didn't doubt him because it made sense. They were sixty years in the future, of course Steve had passed on by now. But it was the way he had said it that drew him short, he spoke as if Steve hadn't died from old age or natural causes but in his pursuit against HYDRA. And Harry believed it, he could see Steve dying no other way. He just couldn't process it. Mostly because he wouldn't let himself think about it, not even for a moment. But even if he did, he'd only just been with Steve, he was a bit bruised up, exhausted and on edge, but he was whole and strong and alive. He'd been at his peak, surrounded by men who were the best at what they did, there was no way he'd fallen.
So he counted and eight tray cycles passed, four days by his best guess, before anything happened. He'd eaten his gruel, pushed the tray back through its slot, and was considering a pre-bedtime nap when the door that had bolted shut behind him that first day and not opened since swung open to allow four men, all toting heavy guns and serious scowls, into the cramped space. They didn't speak to him, barely even looked at him, they just yanked him to his feet, locked cuffs around his wrists, and dragged him out into the hall.
Harry had been too preoccupied with his misery to take in all of where he was being detained when he'd first been brought to his cells, but he was aware now and mapped out the route they took as carefully and inconspicuously as he could manage. His cell wasn't the only one, there were two rows of at least a dozen facing inward with a neat little corridor bisecting them at the end of which stood a door, heavy and metal with four different locks and two scanners to disengage. Outside of the cell block were the rooms he remembered being held in for those first few hours and just around the corner from those was the lab. He'd spent enough time working alongside Erskine and Howard to recognize one on sight, even if it was bigger and so much more technologically advanced than any either man had worked in before.
Strucker was at the center of the hive of activity occurring among the machines and pieces of equipment, conducting the flow of activity with a nod in the right direction and a short command in the other. He tracked Harry's arrival with a little smile, but didn't bother approaching until he'd been wrestled into a chair like one found in a dentist's office only scarier and held down with a restraint for every limb and a few more for his torso, just to be safe.
"You've healed well."
"Must be the gruel you've all been feeding me."
Strucker's smile stretched a little wider, he'd missed the sarcasm or else consciously chose to ignore it. "A special nutrition blend, everything a growing boy like you needs."
Harry let a mocking little smile thin his lips. "Your hospitality is unmatched."
"And it only gets better."
He wasn't lying. Aides with as much personality as nameless HYDRA goons were allowed buzzed around him like good little worker bees, adjusting blank monitors and arranging devices with ominous dials and numbers sketched across their faces. A sticky electrode was adhered to each of his temples and a little monitor attached to his pointer finger, while Strucker drew a rolling stool to his side, perching on its edge like a particularly inelegant crane.
"We'll be getting to know each other well these next few months you and I," he said, gentle and coaxing in a way that may have fooled anyone but Harry, who had spent much of his youth dealing with Albus Dumbledore. "I see no need for there to be hostility between us."
Harry only snorted which tapered into a furious hiss when an aide stuck him right in the crook of his elbow with a syringe full of clear fluid. "I might agree if you weren't, you know, HYDRA."
"Our reputation precedes us then." Strucker sounded almost pleased, the sociopath.
"I met a few of your predecessors. We didn't get on very well."
"First impressions aren't everything."
"The second hasn't proved to be much better."
Strucker hummed noncommittally, he pushed himself along his wheeled stool to get a better view of the monitor closest to Harry and the information it was reading out. "Well unfortunately not everyone can be pleased. I'll warn you only once, you shouldn't be so swift in declining my offer of clemency. It's the only one you will receive." He spun a half turn on his stool, moving to face an aide lurking just out of reach. "How does he read?"
She responded immediately. "His ECG is irregularly irregular and the frequency of his EEG are slighter higher than normal, around fifteen hertz."
"He's anxious," Strucker concluded from that babble of nonsense, he settled a hand on Harry's knee, sweeping his thumb in a circular patter where it had landed. He was trying to comfort but Harry could only feel his tension spike at the unwanted touch. "You'll need to settle, sedation only muddies the readings."
"I must not have a thing for being trussed up and tested on. Who would've thought, right?"
"Give us a few moments." The aides all scurried away in an instant, moving just far enough away to no longer be within hearing distance but still close enough to be immediately at his side again when called. "Harry."
"HYDRA guy."
"Do you know what we're preparing to do?"
"Something incredibly unpleasant I suppose."
"Momentarily, perhaps," Strucker conceded. "But no, past the temporary discomfort and fleeting pain is something revolutionary. Right here, in this room and this moment is where our new world begins." Strucker leaned forward, closer to Harry, his face was open and curious as he spoke. "Why do you fight it? We want the same thing, we should be working together to reach it."
"Is that why you have this collar on my neck? Why you kept me locked in that cell? Strapped to this chair? Because you want us to work together?"
"You don't trust us. You've built this image of us in your mind, one where we're the villains to be fought and defeated. Until something can be done to rectify that we keep you contained, it is for the safety of my men and myself."
"And this?" Harry jerked the straps restraining him to the table, as a reminder of their presence more than an attempt at escape. "You haven't brought me here to be tied down and tested on in some act of self defense. You said before you needed my magic as transfusion and now you're going to try and take it, steal it."
Strucker waved away his accusations without a sign of remorse. "We're stealing nothing, only drawing from a source to create a new power. If you survive, and you were chosen specifically because you can, you will have lost nothing."
"That doesn't make what you're doing any less a violation of every basic human right I should be afforded. I didn't agree to being held here and I didn't agree to any of your tests and I won't ever."
"Why would I care if you agreed to this? You're here, that is what matters."
"You must want it for something." Harry was no Hermione, he wasn't scarily brilliant or any good at deductive reasoning, but he knew how to read a room and how to read a person's intentions even better. "Otherwise you wouldn't have stopped your cronies in their preparations to have this heart to heart where you insist we can change the world together. You need me and my consent for something more."
Strucker smiled and he almost looked impressed. "Well, isn't it nice to see that not all wizards are entirely oblivious? Your guesswork isn't exactly correct, but it's somewhere in the same vicinity as correct. I need your consent for nothing, but if we could find some common ground, some way for us to put aside our animosity so we might work together, we could achieve great things. You will be useful to us as our conduit for only a short time, once it's run its course something must be done with you. I'm only offering an alternative that doesn't involve continued imprisonment or death."
Harry laughed and it was filled with bitter incredulity. "It sounds pretty, what you say. But that's what your sort do isn't it? Dress the shit up in sweet perfumes and pretty disguises so we forget if only for a second what you're selling. You want me to join HYDRA, commit to torture and oppression and genocide. You should have talked more with those wizards you've allied yourself with before you though to come to me, they could have told you that's the sort of thing I'm very emphatically not into."
Strucker sighed, but he didn't look disappointed only a little exasperated. "Well, we will have more than enough time together to see about changing that, won't we?" He waved his hand and the aides were back. "But first we must make it through what is debatably the most rigorous part of our procedure." A cap of a hundred electrodes was pulled over his head and his jaw was forced open to accommodate the sudden intrusion of something thick and rubbery. A mouthguard. "Before we can allow for any transferal of power you must be keyed into the unique energy of the pods in which it will take place and for that we'll need an idea of just how much magic you'll be providing. Casting a few spells in demonstration will work at times, but we find the raw, untamed sort to work best."
Harry jerked uselessly on the table, cursing low and vicious when a second syringe went into the juncture where his neck and shoulder met.
"It's unfortunate a certain level of distress is required to give us access to such magic."
Cold crept along the fiber of his muscles, slow and radiating from the point the needle had stuck. Where it touched his nerves went numb causing his limbs to fall slack and unresponsive until he was unable to move at all, completely paralyzed.
"These next few days will certainly do nothing to aide your goodwill toward me," Strucker was still speaking, but his voice and his words were warped by Harry's sudden and violent panic. "But it is a necessary evil I am afraid."
The man stood and paced across the room, he came to a stop behind one of his many nameless aides, one who was manning a large console bolted to the ground several meters away. He looked over the man's shoulders to whatever controls were on the console, and said, "Start him at four-fifty."
Harry realized too late what was coming; the electrodes at his temple, the guard in his mouth, Strucker's ominous words should all have been warning enough, but it wasn't until the aide was flipping a switch and the lights above flickering ominously at the sudden buzz of electricity in the air that he realized. But then there was fire and he stopped thinking altogether.
He'd been under the Cruciatus before, more than a few times as a matter of fact, but something about this was different, worse. The pain was terrible, cold in a way he couldn't comprehend and localized to the space in his head, but not anything he hadn't experienced before. No it was the energy behind the pain and its cause that made it worse than anything he'd suffered.
The Cruciatus was a curse of passion, there had to be emotion poured into, anger, hatred, feeling. But there was none of that with Strucker and his men. Harry writhed on the table and they watched dispassionately, as if his agony were just another thing to be studied. There was something in the clinical coldness of it all that left him feeling devalued, less than human. And while some may argue it made no difference the emotion behind his torture, pain was pain, he couldn't agree; the difference was there for him and it was noticed.
When it stopped the aides were there again, shining concentrated beams of light into his dilated pupils and checking the strength of his restraints. Somewhere Strucker was speaking, collected as usual, but Harry could only make one of every few words out over the rush of blood in his ears.
He understood the order to resume though, and this time at least could brace himself before the pain was there again.
He bit down on the rubber of the mouthguard until he was sure his teeth would cut right through, but he was intent on not screaming, not showing them any more weakness than he could manage. Even when his lungs constricted to the point where he could no longer draw in breath, he flailed and he gasped but he didn't even try asking for help. Maybe if he died or whatever it was he did these days he'd be spared going through whatever torture they had planned for him.
But then of course an aide was there, hands everywhere he didn't want to be touched, yanking at the fabric chafing at his throat, ripping loose the straps holding him down so they could flip him over, knock loose whatever was restricting his airways. But Harry's hand was freed and then he was reaching for the man at his side, because as he gasped for air something else was gaining strength in its place.
Around the oppressive weight of his collar was the slow tingle of a power kept repressed for too long. His magic. Something was seeing his magic negating the collar's work until he could feel it rebuilding his drained reserves. He didn't hesitate, it could be gone any moment, so he reached out, grabbed the aide and he pulled.
The pain had stopped, his lungs were loosening just enough for the spots that had been trying to blot out his vision to disperse, and the cold sweep of the paralysis drug had disappeared abruptly, but it wasn't enough, he was in distress and his magic reacted in the only way it knew how.
Howard had used mescaline to draw a reaction from his magic, intravenous drugs and severe hallucinations to stress him out just enough to see it react in his defense. They had never used pain, never even considered it, but of course it worked just as well as the drugs. Better even. His magic lashed out in his defense and it latched on to the first being it could find.
The aide screamed when the invisible force reached out for her and dug its claws in deep in a way his still partially bound limbs couldn't. It searched for the brightest spot in her being, even tarnished with the horrors she'd been complicit in in HYDRA's name her soul promised to be a good source of restorative energy. So he tugged at it and he pulled, still too lost in the pain and disorientation of four hundred and fifty volts to the head to realize what he was doing until it tore loose in a way that wasn't meant to be, and flooded his aching body with a cooling energy that swept all the way down to his toes.
He fell back on the cot, little bit of magic expended, and the aide fell back onto the sterile linoleum. Her eyes were gaping wide but there was a blankness behind them Harry already recognized, he'd seen it before in a man he'd never been able to cure.
"Sedate him."
Harry didn't fight, the energy he'd put into that one act of defiance had left him totally drained, so when a second approached, needle of sedative held aloft he didn't even word a protest. He let it dig into the muscle in his bicep and within seconds the world was gone.
The procedure went like this; the collar Potter wore emitted low frequency shocks to disrupt the electrical pulses that allowed his ability to cast magic. To test the strength of his power, stressors were introduced and the shocks emitting from the collar lowered just enough to earn a reaction from his magic while still not allowing enough control to cast anything that might do them harm. They'd done it enough to know what results to expect, anything that might go wrong they'd encountered already and learned to deal with.
When they started with Potter all went as normal, the reaction from his magic was impressive, more powerful than most others they worked with but nothing too out of the ordinary. They gave him a short break to note down the first round of results and give the boy a quick reprieve, but when they began again it was immediately apparent that something was wrong.
The readouts on the machines spiked, higher than anything they'd ever seen, too high for the machines to get a proper measure of. Then he began hyperventilating, drawing in breaths too quick and too short for him to properly recover and when his aide went to help the boy whose lips were quickly turning blue, he attacked.
It happened too quick, Potter had her around the throat, not tight enough to even restrict her airways, but she went pale so quickly Strucker knew something else must be happening. The girl was looking down at Potter, her pupils were blown with what might be pain and an undeniable, primal terror. She wailed an awful, chilling sound and men were rushing from all over to subdue their wayward subject, but Potter let go on his own and as he slumped back onto his gurney relief spread across his young face. While the aide he'd trapped fell like a marionette without her strings and her face was blank.
"Sedate him."
Potter was unconscious within seconds, and the unresponsive aide carted away to be looked over while Strucker turned on all those who remained.
"Who can tell me what we just saw."
"That wasn't a malfunction." Unimpressed eyebrows drew down over his monocled eyes, but the aide who dared speak up didn't even falter. "We've performed this test enough to have it down to an art, and the inhibitor was lowered exactly as it should have been. But it's not foolproof, we always knew it wasn't. If a greater energy were to run through it, the technology would fail. And it did, that wizard was powerful, more so than any we've dealt with yet, the readings prove it."
And they did, they steady incline of magic was recorded perfectly on the monitors until there EEG's had no longer been able to track the level of activity. It was impressive just as it was baffling.
Strucker had considered the possibility that Potter was downplaying what he was capable of; allowing the wizards to catch him, bring him back to this time, and HYDRA to hold him for so long for some motive the Baron would have uncovered eventually. But this was something else entirely, they had proof now that Potter was more than he seemed, much more, but it seemed as if not even he could control it.
"Doctor List." Strucker's right hand stepped closer to his side, attention intent on him. "This is, I believe, a development to be discussed with our allies in the ICW."
List nodded and left quickly from the lab while Strucker took another moment to survey the scene before him. "Put him away for now," he nodded to Potter, still deeply unconscious. "Keep him sedated until we can be sure he won't override the inhibitor the moment he regains consciousness. I expect an update on our Lorna's condition once you have it in hand."
He left with those simple instructions and went in search for List, who'd retreated to the corridor adjacent where a space to contact their wizard allies had been specifically set up. He was speaking to a head floating sans body in green flames, explaining the mishap. Within the hour the room was at capacity with representatives from each faction of the ICW, there to hear the story from them directly.
"Where is the girl?" The representative for the US' community was the first to speak up once the entire tale had been recounted. "The one he attacked?"
"Seeing our medical team, I believe, I hadn't yet got the chance to check."
"We'd like to know her condition."
It was a strange request, but not one he couldn't fulfill easily enough. A quick comm call down to medical and one of their team was on his way to give a report on how the girl was.
She wasn't well.
"Complete brain death," Malakai, one of the leads in the medical team, was succinct and to the point with his explanation. "We're recording no neural activity, no responses to light, sound, pain. Whatever he did sucked the life from her and we have no way to tell if it's permanent."
"The soul." Malakai, and all the others, turned to Britain's ICW representative, the one who had spoken up. "Not the life, he sucked the soul from her, and it is permanent."
"How do you know?"
"Because that's what he is, what the Hallows made him. A creature who deals in souls and death." Britain turned to Strucker. "We told you he was dangerous, we told you the misery he brought on us and you didn't believe. You were amused. But now you see, he is capable of atrocities."
The wizard expected Strucker to be horrified, to balk from the creature he held in his home and finally concede that he didn't understand half of what he believed he did.
But he didn't. No, Strucker smiled. Because this is where they were different, the wizards looked at Potter and saw and aberration, something to be feared and locked away. But he saw something more.
"No, not atrocities." The wizards took on a look of bemusement, he'd done nothing to hide the excitement in his voice, the awe. He didn't want to. They had stumbled upon something incredible in Potter, and if they could not see or realize then it was their own loss. "He is capable of miracles."
A/N: So I've been playing it kind of fast and loose with the timeline, just throwing shit down and hoping it all worked out in the end. Of course it didn't. So to fix my fuck ups I built a timeline following the order of past, present, and future events, I'll work on formatting it properly so I can put it on my tumblr for everyone else to see. But in the meantime the important thing to know is Harry went to the past at the very end of 2008 and was brought back January of 2012. It's been nearly three years since the Hallows were united and everything that's happened, specifically in the wizarding world, will start to become more and more apparent now that we're back in his time.