Chapter 10

Harry dashed down Orrizo Alley – essentially a more modern-looking Italian equivalent of Diagon Alley – weaving between people as someone behind him yelled, "Get him!"

After finding the exchange rate between muggle money and magic money in Italy to be rather ridiculous, Harry had decided to attempt to steal from a wizard instead of a muggle for once – attempt being the key word. In his moment of sloppiness he hadn't taken anti-theft charms into account, and now he was being forced to pay for it.

He had wisely decided not to initiate combat with his pursuer seeing as there had happened to be magical policemen or whatever they were called nearby. The crowds in the street might have also sided against an apparent pickpocket, so Harry wasn't going to take that risk. Ending up in the custody of the Italian Ministry after just over a week in the country was most certainly not his plan.

Turning slightly, he saw that the man he had stolen from was leading the chase with the magical authorities twenty metres or so behind him. As a crowd of people ambling towards him momentarily blocked them from his view, Harry acted with great speed. His already unfastened cloak fell from his shoulders and he ducked into an alleyway, raising his wand and sending his cloak a few further metres down the street with a silent banishing charm.

He had timed it perfectly, and there was a child only slightly shorter than him running down the street a slight distance in front of his cloak's position. As planned, the authorities continued chasing the child who was far slower than Harry, though they didn't seem to notice.

'Aren't I great, Loki? An illusion without an illusion,' Harry said, his tone full of fake arrogance.

The god snorted. 'I would have just used an illusion as soon as they started chasing me, but then again, I wouldn't have been caught in the first place.'

'Yeah, yeah. No one can ever be as great as you.' Harry rolled his eyes as he spoke, his tone mocking.

"Nice trick, kid," a voice behind him suddenly said in Italian, and Harry span, raising his wand as he did so.

He was going to fire a spell at the man, but something about his demeanour made him hesitate. He held himself with a casual arrogance and a grin upon his face, appearing to be in his early twenties with tanned skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes. To Harry's surprise, he was wearing a black muggle suit without a tie. Whilst the dressing habits of Italian wizards weren't as weird as those in England from what he had seen, there was usually something that distinguished them from muggles. If it weren't for the slim stick of black wood hanging lazily from the man's left hand Harry wouldn't have known he was a wizard.

The man looked down to Harry's wand and chuckled. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Whilst Harry usually wouldn't hesitate to blast an icicle through someone, this man had a certain air of danger that made him hesitate. There was also the fact that Loki's enhanced senses had just picked up a noise a few meters from him. Lowering his wand to a height where he could still have it up in a moment, Harry glanced to his right, the tell-tale shimmer of a disillusionment charm confirming the presence of a second person.

"Good eyes too," the first man murmured. "Say kid, how would you like to earn a little money?"

"Sorry, but I think my parents would be disappointed if I became a prostitute, but they're dead, so that depends how much you're paying." While his tone might have been joking, Harry was still figuring out the best path of escape if this situation were to turn sour.

The man laughed. "I'm afraid you're too young for me, kid. One of your talents could earn quite a bit working for us. We could teach you how to not get caught in the first place."

Both Harry's and Loki's curiosity peaked. "And who is exactly is us?"

The man looked confused for a moment, but then his expression smoothed over. "Not from around these parts I take it?" Harry nodded. "Well we" – he pointed to where the previously almost invisible person had formed into a well-muscled man – "are members of an organization commonly known as the magical counterpart of the Mafia – unless anyone asks, of course. You can tell people if you like, but whose gonna believe a kid?"

A jolt of shock shot through Harry, but Loki didn't seem very surprised. 'There is magic, and there are criminals. Is it not inevitable that there would be magical criminals? And I suppose organizations with as many members as the Mafia are bound to have a foot in both worlds. Gaining friends in a group such as them could gain you access to resources we otherwise wouldn't be able to obtain as well as allies.'

Harry gave it a moment of thought before agreeing with him. "So, what would I be doing?"

The apparent Mafia member grinned, happy that he had agreed so rapidly. "Well, nobody ever expects a child. We could just use one of our own kids or something, but they're at school, and frankly not skilled enough-"

"And what makes you think I'm skilled enough?"

The man raised an eyebrow. "You were running faster than fully-grown men, and then managed to take off your cloak and frame another boy in the space of a few seconds. You turned around with a trained wizard's reflexes when I spoke, and from the way you were pointing it at me, I have a feeling you actually know how to use your wand. You then proceeded to somehow detect someone under a disillusionment charm. I'm fairly sure that the average-"

"Eleven year-old," Harry helpfully supplied.

"-is unable to do that."

Harry hummed. "I suppose you do have a point. I come off as rather great even if you haven't seen me in combat."

The man raised a condescending eyebrow, severely doubting the claim. "As I was going to say before you interrupted, you'll be doing a variety of things. Robberies, break-ins, whatever. No one ever expects it was the child, and from what I've seen you're pretty good at getting away unnoticed. You'll be paid a cut of each job." He paused, as though trying to recall if there was anything else he wanted to say. "So, do we have a deal?" he asked, extending his hand.

Harry reached out to shook it, and grinned. "Sure, but if you try to rip me off, you're going to die."

For a moment the man was stunned into silence, but then he blinked out of his shock and his grin grew even wider. "I like you already, kid."

Whatever doubts Harry might have had about joining a criminal organization were greatly outweighed by the potential benefits.

After arranging to meet the next day, by which time Marco, whose name Harry had learned after introducing himself as Harry Rossi, would hopefully have a mission, they had split up. Harry knew that there were far easier ways to get money, but he was doing this mainly for contacts and resources. Whatever his future plans were, he would likely need both at some point.

He had slightly regretted telling Marco that he was named Harry, but there was next to no way that the man would make the connection between the apparently blond-haired "Harry Rossi" and the black-haired Harry Potter who had a distinctive scar upon his forehead. Well, Harry hoped that he wouldn't.

As he normally did, Harry had spent the night practising magic after leaving the alley. He didn't want to reveal his wandless and worldess magic until it was absolutely necessary, so he would have to use his wand the whole time. That might not prove to be too much of a problem. There were, after all, plenty of ice-based spells that he could enhance with his Jotun magic.

Whilst he didn't want to display all his power, he still wanted to impress them, just not with anything that even the best wizards were incapable of.

When mid-day came around on the day of the meeting, Harry arrived at the café to find Marco already there, the brutish bodyguard from yesterday next to him. Upon further inspection, three other tables had a man on, all of them attempting to be discreet as they looked at Harry and Marco.

"Just my bodyguards," Marco assured him. "My father insists upon me bringing unnecessary amounts of force for any mission."

Harry raised an eyebrow. He was beginning to get the sense that Marco was further up in the organization than he had previously guessed. "So what do you want me to do?" he asked.

Marco smiled. "Well there was a reason why I was looking for a child specifically yesterday." He produced a manilla folder from his suit jacket and placed it upon the table, opening it to reveal a moving picture of a fat man with quite the resemblance to Vernon Dursley. "Quite simply, we need to apprehend this man, and public warfare is not our way. Fortunately for us, he has a, ahem, fondness for children and you are going to lure him and his guards into a pre-determined location where we will have already set up silencing wards."

Harry simply nodded, taking the fact that he was being used as bait for a paedophile in his stride with ease. It wasn't exactly as though he hadn't been in worse situations before, it was just that he didn't get in them on purpose.

"Okay." He needed no more information, to do the job, other than knowledge of how much he would get paid. "The money?" he asked.

Marco raised a bag of golden coins from his pocket and it jingled when he shook it. Harry reached for it, but it was moved out of his range. "Afterwards," Marco assured him. "What you said about killing me if I betrayed you goes both ways."

Harry frowned but nodded. If he was Marco, he certainly wouldn't trust a child he had met yesterday enough to have him carry out a mission, let alone give him the money beforehand. He wasn't in the business of underestimating people, and he didn't doubt that the Mafia didn't actually trust him, they just thought that they could kill him with ease – they were wrong.

Marco stood, offering his arm. Harry grabbed it and they disappeared with a crack to the, the others following moments later. Blackness closed in around Harry and for a moment he was squeezed, but it was nowhere near as bad as apparation normally was for him. Well then, either Marco was very good at it, or he was absolutely terrible. He glanced around the location at which he had arrived.

From the directions he had been previously supplied, they were in an Italian equivalent of Knockturn alley, suspicious looking stores all around. With nods and muttered incantations, all the men became shimmers in the air, and Harry walked forward, the others disappearing from sight completely a moment later.

Turning his eyes downwards, he twisted his expression to one of timid fear as he walked past the building outside of which his target currently was, eating at a table with about six other men.

"Hey, kid!" one called, but Harry kept moving with only a glance backwards. "I'm talking to you!"

As someone began an incantation of what sounded to be a stunning spell, Harry dodged to the left and broke out into a sprint, the noise of swearing and chairs clattering to the floor sounding behind him, making him conceal a smirk. It hadn't been guaranteed that they would follow someone who ran, but he supposed that they almost never got lone children around these parts and that it was too great an opportunity to miss.

Rounding the corner, he slowed down a bit, gasping as though he was out of breath. At his full speed, he would probably leave them behind after a short time, and that would be inconvenient. As the men came around the same corner he just had, they seemed to hesitate, but Harry's boss barked out an order that too much spellfire would gain attention and to keep on pursuing the child on foot.

So Harry kept on running, going around one bend and then another, finally reaching a dilapidated courtyard with no path of escape.

Fear in his eyes, Harry backed up to the wall as the men jogged around the corner, his target leading with the others behind him, wands in hand.

"Well, well, well," began the target. "I-"

He got no further as spells began to rain down upon him and his men from the first floor windows of a house on one side of the courtyard. Instantly they had put up shield charms, but those, unfortunately for them, didn't stop the barrage of curses that began to explode from the other buildings, wizards bursting out from behind cover and into the courtyard.

In an instant the group's ranks were reduced to two people, and those fell a moment later, slammed against a wall by an overpowered banishing charm. Marco dropped from one of the windows, cushioning his fall before walking over to Harry and tossing him the bag of money.

"Good job, kid. I hope to-"

He was interrupted as Harry knocked him aside with a flick of his wand, sending him flying out of the path of a green spell as a wizard on the floor hissed, "Avada Kedavra!"

The man didn't have time to utter another incantation as a cutting curse from Harry met his throat.

Marco looked slightly stunned for a moment, but then turned to Harry with a grin. "As I was saying, I hope to work together again, and I think you've earned yourself another bag of gold."

A/N: Tell me what you thought! This storyline might be a bit random, but I know where it's going.