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This was, Harry Potter decided as rational thought trickled back to him, less like emerging from sleep than moving from one bad dream directly into another. For an indeterminate time, he had been floating in a muddled haze, unable to connect one moment to the next, while surreal horrors assaulted his senses. Now, he clearly and definitely had no idea where he was, and for several moments was carried through void on a wave of permeating pain and nausea. Finally, his eyes remembered to open and he registered his surroundings, but they did not offer much comfort.

Abstractly considered, there must be some reason to be in a dilapidated and poorly-lit room, head spinning like a Sneakoscope, digestion in revolt, and with a floating boot kicking his shin, but explanations remained maliciously distant. What little mental faculty Harry had at his disposal was not optimistic about finding a good justification for this predicament, and, disconcertingly, he could not pull up any memories to provide context. Thought was unpleasantly slow, struggling against the same force that kept the world bending before his eyes, making him unsure about which direction gravity should be applied, and enforcing an artificial tranquility when he wanted to be alarmed.

Harry was sure that he hurt a great deal. That remained a steady and persistent counter-argument to the notion that he was actually asleep. Harry could not remember ever truly hurting in his dreams, aside from the occasional vision courtesy of the late Voldemort.

But at present his wrists were aggravatingly chafed and sore, angular bruises encircling them - likely the result of restraints. There was an aching light-headedness that spoke of blood loss (a familiar old friend), along with sharp throbbing where his arm was wrapped in a dirty rag. He had the dim impression of a needle at the end of a tube previously being embedded there. All of his muscles were drawn and stiff, and as Harry tried to stir, he became aware of innumerable bruises covering his body.

An effort of concentration allowed the young wizard to finally recognize that a person was standing before him, meaning the intrusive boot had not moved of its own accord after all. Words which sounded like they were coming alternately from a very small mouse and a very large bear drifted past, at first escaping comprehension, but finally Harry gathered that this person wanted him to wake up. Harry thought that waking up was a very good idea, and wondered when it would start.

Fleeting images, possibly connected to his current state, drifted through his mind like spectral ships. There was an impression of a circular room, another of a shadowy figure with cruel face, a sense of prolonged anguish, waves lit by moonlight – all seemed important, but refused to give any further account of themselves. Harry tried to sort them, and couldn't, tried to remember the last few weeks - and couldn't, tried to find any hint in his indistinct surroundings that would spark the light of comprehension…and couldn't.

Giving up on memory as a futile exercise for the moment, Harry directed his attention to the person opposite him. Despite the continual distortions plaguing his eyes, his examination gathered a significant purple expanse above the grey boots, flesh with unreadable letters on it, more purple, and finally a face that kept shifting like runny omelet. The face was framed by long messy hair accented with streaks of heliotrope – perhaps the result of an experiment with potions, if this person were a magic-user. For the first time, Harry thought to wonder if he was a prisoner of magicals or not. At present, there was no way to be sure.

He blinked, staring wonderingly up into the shadowed eyes, but this apparition did not go away. What was it waiting for?

"Vashee glazza uvir any dovell no ottenock zelennogo," the other murmured as it regarded him, sounding as if it were speaking underwater.

Ah - aliens, part of Harry's brain offered, as if such would be a rational occurance that cleared up all mysteries. Another mental voice stepped in and began enumerating everything wrong with that explanation, while a third took up the case of whether the person's ever-changing features indicated that they were a metamorphmagus. Meanwhile, the remaining majority decided that it was probably worthwhile to risk some questions.

"Wha-" Harry managed, but his parched mouth was not fully cooperating with him.

He licked his lips and tried again, carefully.

"Who?"

It was a start.

"I lead the 3rd Street Saints. They call me boss," the other said, this time in English. Though the voice now seemed female, her words remained oddly distorted.

Harry did not consider that to be a particularly illuminating answer, but the (presumed) woman had spoken as though it meant something. Perhaps, like his current circumstances, the statement would make more sense later.

"I'm Harry," he stated, leaving the 'Potter' to whimper in obscurity along with his other titles. There was a small (very small) chance that this witch (if she was one, whoever she was), didn't recognize him. He was even beginning to hope that she was not intending to keep him prisoner here. So didn't sound like the sort of person who held people against their will, but then again, impressions could be deceiving.

However, it seemed luck was with him, though his relief vanished as soon as she suggested walking. While not being a captive was a welcome discovery, walking sounded very…ambitious to Harry. Still, it would have to happen sooner or later. At least enough to escape wherever here was…regroup, figure out what had happened…and what to do.

One thing at a time. Standing would have to come first.

Harry braced himself against the wall, and slowly went from sitting listing leftwards to standing straight-backed…then tottered rapidly over to the right as his stomach declared all-out war against him. Once he had finished emptying his guts onto the carpet, Harry felt remarkably better, though still rather weak and inclined to tremble in the extremities.

"Bad trip," the woman commented, and Harry groaned in what could be taken for agreement.

"Do you know why they had you here?" she asked.

The only clear memory he could dredge up in response was a rich and malevolent voice speaking from what seemed to be a long distance away.

'Keep this one alive, his blood is strong with magic.'

"They wanted a wizard's blood," he replied, trying to breathe shallowly through the bitter taste in his mouth. "Not sure why."

"…Riiight" said the woman after a pause. "I don't want to know. Let's just be gone before they're back. Creepy-ass voodoo motherfuckers," she added under her breath.

Harry, who had caught this, giggled despite not fully comprehending. His mind had started latching onto the strangest things as sources of amusement. Like the way a certain carpet stain looked just like a dancing Dobby. He giggled once more, then coughed, and refocused his thoughts. Thinking clearly was taking far more effort than it should have.

On Harry's second attempt to reach a standing position he remained there, though the way the floor persisted in undulating under him was hardly ideal. Still, with caution, and hands outstretched to catch himself, he succeed in walking. Following the woman out into a hallway just as filthy as the room he'd left, Harry waited by a broken window and took several deep breaths of significantly fresher air as his companion turned into a different room.

Looking out the window, Harry could distinguish blurry clusters of what were likely apartment blocks, bordering a river, and a skyline that sadly provoked no recognition. The buildings across the water gleamed like glass and metal under the occasional rays of light piercing the cloudy sky, so Harry hazarded a guess that he was not in any of the older cities of Europe. Beyond that, he could only speculate. This could be Britain, Australia, the States, or even somewhere in South America or Africa for all he knew. Just because the first person he'd met spoke English didn't mean he was in an English-speaking country. But again, that was a problem to be addressed later. For now, Harry just wanted a safe corner where he could lie down in until his head stopped spinning, preferably a long way from wherever he currently was.

Murmuring voices intruded on his thoughts.

"…going to get out of here, alright?" That was the woman he had met earlier talking, Harry was almost certain. His ears seemed to be recovering – she had sounded nearly human this time.

Moments later the speaker reappeared, leading a motley collection of children and young teens, most of them gaunt, shivering, and fearful-eyed. They clustered around a girl of eastern ancestry with gauze across her face who was carrying a handgun. Part of Harry's brain decided to wager on his being in an American city. He'd already seen more firearms in the past five minutes than in his entire life previously, and that was based off of only two people.

"I'll lead," declared the woman. "Harry, you stick by me, but get out of the way if we meet anyone, Se-Bin," she addressed the girl, "cover me if we run into trouble. Don't shoot anyone wearing purple, they're my crew. It's open season on green. Kids, if shooting starts, you get out of sight and keep your heads down until it stops. Clear?"

There was a whimper of affirmation from some of them and Harry nodded quietly.

"Let's move," said their strange rescuer.

Walking took a lot of concentration, and it was not until he had passed the third dead body that Harry's mind registered their presence.

While his gut did clench slightly at the pervasive blood and dismemberment, the emotional horror he usually felt at confronting death was muddied by the floating, disconnected sensation that continued to plague him. All Harry could muster was an odd feeling of bemusement as he slowly connected dots.

He, and the children following him, had been freed. They had needed to be freed because they had been held captive, and captives needed guards. These had been the guards, and had been killed. The only one who could have killed them was the purple woman.

Harry's impaired mind wasn't up to untangling the emotions besides relief present at that conclusion, so he shelved his thoughts for later. None of dead people on the floor were familiar to him, and none of them looked like wizards – or at least not the European style of spellcasters he was familiar with. He wondered if she'd killed all of them, since there was-

The memory of a man, dressed in the same chromatic green with a yellow and red-accented matching cap, looking down at him with cold interest, then turning and speaking – in the terrible purr from his previous recollection – to a figure in grey. Money changed hands. And then the green man held something up to Harry's face and consciousness faded.

Despite himself, Harry hoped the central figure of that recollection was deceased. Something within him felt a remarkable abhorrence at the notion of meeting the other again.

The group reached a flight of stairs, and Harry began the careful process of descending them, one step behind the purple-clad woman. He could not recall ever being more grateful to the existence of handrails. Once it became clear that he could manage the decent, he resumed his musings.

He had been bought.

That was why he had been held prisoner. But for what-

'This will do nicely.'

Harry forcefully pushed away a new recollection before it could cohere. Something had happened, something involving the green man with the panther's voice and malevolent eyes, and it had been far more terrible than the mere sight of death. Instinct screamed to Harry the he should not want to remember, and he heeded that impulse. Discovery could wait until he had a chance to rest and regain his equilibrium. For now, the young wizard was grateful at just how easy it was to lose a thought amid the vapors clouding his consciousness.

Arriving at a landing, they turned and proceeded down the next staircase. While there were no more dead bodies lying around now, the quality of the interior did not otherwise improve. Even with his compromised sight, Harry could tell his surroundings were universally dirty, peeling, or stained. He must not be in a very good part of whatever city he had ended up in.

Harry had been thinking about…his captor, and the dead they had just passed. Both wore green, but there was no coherent uniform, only a shared color palette. He wondered what kind of organization that signified. His companion's purple attire probably indicated that she was part of a different group. A competing one? Was that why she had freed them?

Regardless of her reasons, Harry was grateful, even though the ability to single-handedly dispense such a swath of death as he had seen in order to accomplish it was unsettling. While he was nearly certain that she wasn't an Auror, and it seemed unlikely that she was a normal police officer (unless she was undercover! part of his mind jumped in eagerly), he was finding it difficult to condemn her murdering people who kidnapped children. In an ideal world, there really should have been a trial and proper justice…but what was done was done, and she very well might not have had a choice.

An odd feeling, like some memory wanted to manifest but was unable, tickled at his mind for several seconds before fading.

A third flight of steps after another grimy landing found Harry still pondering the nature of his rescuer.

The woman was a veritable walking arsenal of muggle weaponry. She was carrying a military-looking rifle, a shotgun hung off her shoulder by its strap, and a pistol was stuffed in her waistband. Her pockets rattled and bulged with what could only be ammunition, and she had what looked like a knife strapped to her left forearm. Harry wished his vision was more reliable - he really would've liked to get a better sense of her features. For now, all he could be sure of was that she was tall, dark-haired, and tattooed. In addition to the letters showing where her midriff was exposed, Harry had also caught glimpses of swirling designs on her upper arms, but his unaugmented eyesight was too compromised to discern further detail.

Still, what he had at his disposal painted an unusual portrait. The woman was highly individual, accustomed to violence, and very competent, reminding him of some kind of odd cross between Mad-Eye Moody and Nymphadora Tonks. Her motivations were not entirely clear, but at least somewhat altruistic. The tattoos made Harry think that it likely she was a hitwizard, or some kind of mundane mercenary, as he had never encountered such decorations on the more reputable enforcers of law. Given that she had introduced herself as 'boss' she must be a leader of some kind, though that wasn't the most formal of titles. Harry knew he didn't have the complete picture yet.

Wait, she had told him what she was boss of, hadn't she? Harry struggled to remember, but the name did not return to him.

At the next landing, his musings were disrupted in a rather spectacular manner. Just as their motley procession turned a corner of the stairs, they were suddenly face-to-face with a green-clad group coming up the other way. A second's stunned pause stretched on both sides before all hell broke loose.

Explosions of sound tore at Harry's eardrums as multiple firearms rose and discharged in rapid succession, but he was too busy diving for cover to see who was getting hit. However, in an unfortunate misjudgment, he missed the floor and found himself tumbling down the next flight of steps, along with several surprised persons not quick enough to avoid his flailing limbs. Four bodies arrived at the fourth landing in a jumbled heap, and two of them failed to rise. The first had broken his neck, while the other had died prior to descending, a small round hole in his temple.

That left a single Son of Samedi and Harry Potter dazedly facing off as a full-blown firefight thundered one level above them. The Son began to line up his pistol, but Harry stuck out desperately, slugging his attacker in the shoulder and causing him to prematurely fire into the wall. He was unable to dodge the man's fist however, and keeled over as it crashed into his gut, winding him.

More by luck than anything else, the wizard's foot instinctively swung upwards, catching his opponent in the crotch, which dropped the man to the floor beside him, groaning. The gun spun away over the concrete, and Harry felt a brief thrill of victory - which vanished as swiftly as he was grappled. Thrashing about, he tried to do as much damage as possible, but received a solid knee to the mouth, then felt his head slammed into the railing, which put an end to effective resistance.

As his wits returned, Harry saw his green-clad assailant retrieving the lost weapon.. Too dazed to rise himself, Harry laughed weakly through the blood in his mouth. The other trained the gun on him and their eyes locked.

Harry weakly raised a hand and pointed a finger back in morbid parody.

"Bang bang, tosser," he coughed, and waited to die.

The subsequent gunshot was deafening.

The thug's weapon, and the forearm holding it, separated from their owner in a spray of gore. Then a second higher-pitched report sounded, and the amputated gang member staggered before sliding down the wall into a heap, a red crater above his ear.

Harry looked up to see the woman who'd rescued him and the foreign girl both holding smoking weapons. Motionless green figures were sprawled around them, inarguably dead. Harry blinked through the haze of head trauma, poor vision, and still-persistent drugs, and finally realized he hadn't been shot.

The young girl turned back to gather the children, and the woman descended and helped Harry to his feet.

"You're my kind of stupid, kid," she said in a tone of approval.

Harry was spared figuring out whether he considered that a compliment by the renewed contortion of his intestines.

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Their mixed group made it to ground level without further incident, though Harry had to rely on the boss's arm to stay upright, since most of his strength seemed to have vanished with his adrenaline. Then they waited in tense silence in the building's doorway for almost five minutes while the woman directed pointed glares at the pedestrians who slowed to look at them. Recipients invariably found they had pressing business elsewhere, and often sped up their pace significantly. One middle-class man carrying a briefcase actually pulled an abrupt about-face and took off at a brisk jog.

Finally, Harry heard the roar of a very large motor, and moments later a massive and violently yellow bus turned a corner and skidded to a halt outside of the building.

Rectangular, snub-nosed, and with many dark windows, the lengthy conveyance bore significant evidence of rough handling, long scrapes marring the paint of its flanks. Even with this damage, Harry could still read the giant lettering on its side, which ran to the effect of: 'We can get you anywhere! -Stilwater Transit Department' in looping blue letters.

He felt the woman's arm hook under his again, and allowed himself to be assisted toward the garish vehicle waiting in the street. Meanwhile, several purple-clad figures were disembarking from a low-sitting car that had pulled up behind the bus, and taking up guard positions around it. They were all dressed in as motley a fashion as the woman supporting him though none of them were as heavily armed.

The driver of the bus, a dark-skinned man clad in mulberry & white sporting attire, with sunlight flashing off the giant silver chain around his neck, was hailed by Harry's companion as he jumped out.

"Damn Pierce, think you coulda got anything more eye-catching than this psychedelic tourist-toter?" she asked.

"Man, fuck you," the other replied in a good-humored voice undercut with defensive vehemence. "You said 'hurry,' and this was the best I could jack on short notice! We don't exactly have armored personnel carriers on standby."

"Hmm, there's a thought," remarked the woman, momentarily checking her progress toward the bus. "But it can wait 'till later. Help me get this one on board, he's heavier than he looks."

"We're here for him?" asked Pierce incredulously, nevertheless stepping forward to lend a shoulder to the stumbling Harry. Then he caught sight of Se-Bin leading the posse of children out of the apartment block after them, and promptly did a double take.

"Wait, we're here for KIDS!?" he exclaimed.

"Kids the Sons of Samedi were planning on cutting up for their organs, Pierce, yes we are," replied his boss in a flat tone. "You got a problem with that?"

Pierce spluttered for a moment before finding his speech again.

"I- it- Hell no, I don't have a problem! You're doing what you gotta do! It's just...shit, I thought you wanted us to help some hos to a party or something, not...fucking black market kids! This world's messed up."

"'Prostitutes' please Pierce - 'escorts' if you want to be classy. And yes, yes it is," She hooked her arms around Harry's torso and lifted him bodily through the bus's doors as her companion maneuvered the young man's feet. Harry was feeling rather dizzy, both from the motion, and the effort of trying to follow the conversation. He gratefully collapsed into the bench behind the driver's seat.

Children filed past him, various expressions of relief and fear on their indistinct faces as they followed Se-Bin's directions, and situated themselves in the rows behind him.

"Watch your language, I've already capped one guy front of them, maybe we can limit their trauma a bit," the woman was advising Pierce in a low voice.

Pierce stared at her in skepticism, then shrugged. "Sheesh, alright…though if they've seen you shoot a guy, it probably won't do much good at this point."

The woman favored him with a look.

"Okay, okay, okay!" he appended hastily. "I'm watching my mouth. It's watched. I'm good."

"Alright then," she said, her eyes flickering back to count up their passengers. "We've got 'em all, let's get this clown cart back to the hideout. And then I'm driving it off a bridge so I don't end up with a vendetta against the color yellow."

"Whatever you want." Pierce dropped into the driver's seat. "You drive here?"

"Took a cab," she replied, sitting down across from Harry next to a box of curved metal paperweights.

"Okay, cool," the man said. He closed the doors, situated himself, and pressed the gas pedal, the bus lurching into motion with a growl. The purple car pulled in behind them, forming a miniature convoy which picked up speed as they turned onto a wider road.

"So, boss, what are you planning to do with these peeps? We ain't exactly a charity."

She ran a hand over her face.

"Honestly? I don't know. I hadn't expected anything this bad when I decided to bust in there. Maybe some goats or mail-order brides, but…they're kids. Just kids."

"Hey, I'm with your decision to rescue them, one-hundred percent," replied Pierce. "It's just now we've got a problem on our hands. We're not equipped to take care of children, and it wouldn't be safe, even if we were."

"I'm open to ideas. Half of them don't even understand English – I want you to track down some of our people to translate once we get back the crib. And arrange some food for them. I'll give you cash for sleeping bags-"

"Hell boss, I'll buy them myself-"

"-Thanks, Pierce. We'll have to put them up for a few days while I find something more long-term. I want a triple guard on purgatory until this is worked out. Samedi and ronin are pressing too close for comfort lately."

The thread of conversation, already tenuous, slipped away from Harry completely. He tuned out the hum of unfamiliar words and looked out at the city passing by, desperately wishing for some glasses. It would have been comforting to even attach an architectural style to the passing blurs.

What was he even going to do when he figured out where he was? What had happened that led to his being a captive in the first place? And what sort of-

"Boss."

The word cut across his thoughts, sudden, apprehensive, urgent.

Pierce was looking up at the giant mirror while his leader was bent on re-tying a stubborn bootlace.

"Boss!" he repeated, almost shouting.

"What?" she looked up.

"Trouble," he answered in a strained voice, jerking his head towards the rear.

The woman looked back to see three green vehicles accelerating through traffic towards them. Even as her eyes widened, a plume of smoke detached itself from the leading pickup truck and spiraled towards the bus's escorting vehicle.

"RPG!" she yelled.

The purple car's driver must have seen it coming, since they swerved hard to the right, but the rocket had been aimed low, and hit the street just left of the rear bumper. A resounding BOOM split the air as the lowrider was thrown spinning by the blast, almost overturning before coming to rest on the sidewalk. The pursuing green cars ignored it and sped on, closing on the yellow bus.

The lady across the aisle from Harry grabbed a handful of objects from the box beside her - which Harry belatedly realized were ammunition magazines - and unslung her fearsome-looking rifle. She had just stood when another trail of smoke burst from the green pickup and came rushing for the bus.

"EVERYBODY DOWN!" she bellowed, diving to the floor.

Unlike its predecessor, this second projectile went high, barely clipping the top of the tour vehicle above the back window. But barely was still enough. The explosion tore open the entire rear of the transport, shattering windows and pulverizing metal and plastic indiscriminately. One child, too slow to duck, screamed as a flying shard of something opened a gash along his neck. Se-bin pulled the boy down and began applying pressure to the wound. The rear of the bus was now on fire, vomiting streamers of black smoke into the rushing air and turning their vehicle into a hellish Halloween float.

Remarkably, the engine seemed to have been unaffected, for their transport surged forward as Pierce stomped the gas pedal, sending them hurtling down the parkway. Traffic was scattering all around them, pedestrians diving down alleys and into side shops as smaller caliber guns began discharging from the pursuing green cars' windows.

The boss had not even waited for the debris to settle.

Hefting her own weapon, she changed down the aisle to the bus's posterior, and standing tall, unleashed a salvo of full-auto weapon fire toward their green-liveried assailants. Her first target, a sporty-looking coupe, almost immediately caught bullets in both front tires, wobbling into a spin and coming to rest facing backwards with its pastel bodywork otherwise untouched. Answering shots lashed back at her, but the woman remained unruffled by the exchange, calmly crouching to swap magazines as a second pursuer fell back, a red blotch marring the driver's side glass. The unfortunate vehicle's door swung open, a body bounced out, and the sedan leapt back into motion, eager to make up lost ground.

That momentarily left only the green pickup truck an effective danger. It had closed to within fifteen yards, and as the burning bus's defender unleashed a fresh torrent of bullets, a figure rose from the flatbed and steadied a long metal tube in his arms. The rifle's line of fire marched up the windscreen and found his head just as he sighted on his smoking yellow target once more. Hit just below the chin, the man slumped down, fingers reflexively pulling the trigger as the unsupported weapon dipped under its own weight.

CRUMPH!

Its initial armor penetrating charge propelled the rocket almost clear through to the street, where the main payload went off right under the cab. The truck actually leap off the tarmac while expanding into its component parts, doors flying off sideways, hood hurtling upward, panels buckling, engine splintering, and drivetrain shattered by the deadly force erupting within. A skeletal frame hit the street, skidded to a stop, and burned.

Everyone in the bus was pulled sideways as Pierce avoided a garbage truck, while the third car now drew back into firing range, peppering the fleeing conveyance with bullets. The boss returned fire on them, but her target had begun weaving unpredictably, and most of the shots went wide. Kneeling to reload, she found only one magazine remaining in her pocket. Two new green vehicles were pulling up alongside the old one and would soon encircle the fugitive bus.

"Pierce, I need some fucking ammo right now, goddammit!" Harry heard the woman yelling as bullets whickered overhead.

"I'm kinda driving here!" Pierce yelled back, and bit off a curse as they narrowly missed a minivan changing lanes."Don't swear in front of the kids, my ass," he muttered as the bus made a squealing course correction into the oncoming lane to avoid cars stopped at an intersection. Horns blared as cross-traffic swerved to avoid them.

Harry, his thoughts flowing like an untroubled steam oddly distant from the chaos surrounding him, appraised the situation. His rescuer was barely keeping the enemy at bay and they would close the moment her ammunition ran out. The scary girl who might have helped was trying to keep a child from bleeding to death, while the rest of the children were cowering under seats and screaming at the top of their lungs. Pierce had to keep driving. It was up to Harry, and he wasn't even sure if he could walk.

He staggered upright. Harry's heartbeat was pounding so loudly in his ears he barely registered the confusion of gunfire and vehicle noise, but it was irrelevant anyway. All his attention was directed towards his objective. With an ungraceful lunge, the young man caught up the box from the other seat, and turned to face down the bus. He took a step forward, lost his balance, and began to fall.

Denial and Gryffindor stubbornness turned the fall into a stumbling run, which carried him almost the bus's length before an irretrievably misplaced foot sent Harry plummeting downwards. Desperate, he thrust his burden outward, sacrificing all chance of gentle landing to get the vital package to its destination. Moments later, he slammed into the deck, bloodying his nose and almost knocking himself out, even as the box slid two meters and hit the woman's boot.

Blinking, Harry looked up to see their defender reload in one smooth motion and continue her fusillade.

Smoke and fire whipped around her figure, hair dancing in the turbulent air, as she fired prolonged bursts from the shoulder, swaying instinctively to counter the unsteady motion of the bus with a grace that would have made her the envy of any broom rider or seasoned sailor. Shell casings clattered to the floor about her, glimmering golden motes in the uncertain light. Out of Harry's sightline, something exploded violently, its metallic keen abruptly giving way to prolonged crunching. The woman fired, shifted, fired again, an epitome of poise amid destruction and violence.

In that moment Harry would easily have believed this woman of angelic or infernal provenance, a heroine out of myth and legend, even the goddess of war herself on earth in mortal form.

Finally, she stopped firing and lowered her weapon, staring back at the carnage in the roadway behind them. Harry glimpsed the last car on their tail coming to a shuddering halt, black smoke pouring from its perforated hood. Its destroyer was smiling - exultantly vibrant, demonically delighted...carefree and joyful. A strange excitement stirred in Harry's chest; a mixture of horror, awe, and something almost approaching jealousy at the unbridled self-assurance in the woman's demeanor…

Painful heat intruded on his back, and the young wizard rolled away towards a seat that wasn't on fire. Awareness of the aches in his body, the wetness on his face, and the skull-pounding headache between his temples began to surge back in. Blinking away tears from pain and smoke, Harry coughed and winced, letting his head tilt to rest against the blessedly cool leather behind him.

Gentle hands cupped his face, and he refocused to see the supernatural valkyrie examining him critically. At this close range, Harry finally registered the copious scars crisscrossing her broad, pockmarked features, and the dark orchid of her eyes – a hue he had not believed it possible for humans to exhibit.

"You haven't broken your nose," the woman said with the reassuring air of an experienced medic, "though how, I've no idea. It'll be tender for a while."

Harry shrugged, fighting the mad impulse to laugh, at what he didn't know.

"Guess that makes me the Luckiest-Boy-Who-Ever-Lived" he said, and descended into helpless giggling.

The woman snorted, and her mouth twitched into an amused smirk as she regarded him.

"Right, you're still not off the happy juice yet. We're almost home, you can rest soon."

"Thank Merlin for that," said Harry amiably as his laughter morphed into hiccups. He accepted the boss's hand up and promptly collapsed into the seat he'd been leaning against. This had been one of the strangest days of his existence, but, despite everything, he was still alive. Weary but victorious, Harry Potter smiled, and his rescuer smiled back.

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Cohesive perception of time began to falter for him soon afterwards.

Harry retained a dim impression of the woman getting a fire extinguisher to douse the back of the bus, as well as pulling out a phone and making several calls from the seat beside him, but it was taking an increasing amount of effort to simply remain upright, and gravity was misbehaving again.

Then she disappeared, and might have come back with her hands covered in blood. He wasn't sure, since she subsequently morphed into Hermione and offered him an assortment of cotton candy and supercilious life advice. The sick feeling he'd been combating returned with a vengeance, and Harry spent the remainder of the trip focused on his breathing.

After an unknown number of minutes, the bus came to a stop, and Harry fell over into someone's waiting arms. There was motion and talking, and his surroundings changed from a cloudy, slate-grey out-of-doors to a subdued, mauve inside-doors. He had the barest idea of floating down steps and through hallways, and of voices speaking distantly, but the world continued retreating, and as he was set down on something soft and comfortable, every sensation melted away into soothing nothingness.

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Next time: the Boss finds a girl at a party, it rains, and feelings are expressed.