Harry James Potter took a long swig of his beer, hoping beyond hope that they would chase down his demons.
It was two years since he left the British Ministry of Magic, and he was now in a bar in some seedy town in Ohio, USA. All those years ago, when he was under the thumb of the Dursley's and before he had received his invitation to Hogwarts, Harry couldn't have dreamed that he would one day go to America.
Vernon Dursley had a prejudice against a lot of things, Americans included, so they had never taken a trip to see the United States. Not that they would have taken Harry with them, but it would've been nice to see the photo album.
The door to the pub... er, bar, as the Americans called it, opened, but Potter barely noticed it. Probably some other bum coming to wheedle money out of fellow bums for drinks.
However, he did notice when the person (a female, by the click of her heels) began to approach him from behind. He fingered the holster of his wand, irrationally thinking of Bellatrix Lestrange, and turned his head slowly.
It was a very attractive woman, with scarlet hair. She smiled at Harry, and said, "Can I buy you a drink?"
For a moment, Harry pondered with the idea that this woman found him cute and simply wanted to get to know him better. He squashed that thought, however; this... amazon was way out of his league. That must mean she's from...
"Look, I'm not coming back to the Ministry, no matter how much the salary is.", said Harry, irritably.
"Mr. Potter, I'm not from your Ministry of Magic.", said the woman, calmly. "I'm from Shield."
Harry raised an eyebrow. He knew of Shield, like any good Auror. A global peacekeeping organization, Shield had often worked very closely with the various Ministries of Magic. Dumbledore had even worked with a Nick Fury during both the first and second war against Voldemort.
"I'm Agent Natasha Romanoff.", the woman continued. "And I'm here to debrief..."
"Ah, the Black Widow.", said Potter, turning back to his beer. "Who hasn't heard of the world's most deadly female?"
The woman sat uninvited on the stool next to Harry's, and began pulling out files from a briefcase. At this, Harry noticed a large bruise around her eye. "Who did that?"
Romanoff smiled coyly. "You should see the other Russian."
Harry nodded absentmindedly. Romanoff began laying files in front of Harry on the bar. None of the other patrons so much as glanced in their direction. Only the barman gave a cursory look at the files, before going back to wiping some mugs.
Harry perused the files, half-listening to Natasha's speech about an Asgardian named Loki, a mysterious 'partner' and 'benefactor', and a Tesseract, whatever that was.
Harry went through pictures of a glowing, blue cube, a man in ancient armor wielding a hammer in Nevada, and pictures of an Erik Selvig and Clint Barton.
As Natasha continued her spiel, Harry's thoughts drifted to the past. About his leaving the Ministry after the accident, the sounds of Ginny's screams as she was lost forever, and the action of the second war against the Death Eaters... and how much he shamefully missed the latter.
"We have no photographs of the alien known as Loki, except those in Fury's memory.", said Natasha. "However, once we eventually contact his brother..."
"I'm in.", said Harry, determination in his voice causing Romanoff to pause. Harry ignored her somewhat surprised reaction, and drained the last of his beer, before placing a gold Galleon on the bar to screw with the barman.
As the barman gasped and scooped up the gold coin, biting into it to make sure it was real, Harry turned back to Romanoff. "What's first on the agenda?"
Natasha gave that coy smile again, then pushed one of the pictures towards him. "First, we need to assemble a few people..."
Harry looked down at the picture of a giant, green monster wrecking a university. Oh, bloody hell...