Chapter 13
Maria made the wise decision not to attend the rest of the dance. She probably wouldn't have had the choice to anyway with her family interrogating her about why she had left the room and lecturing that it wasn't responsible to go to the bathroom without your bodyguard accompanying you.
Harry simply settled on a couch and watched in amusement. After a while Marco joined him. "Good job," he said. "I expected nothing less from you." Reaching into his pocket he procured a bag of gold and chucked it to Harry who snatched it out of the air and pocketed it, noting it was far heavier than anything else Marco had given him. The expansion charms on it didn't do weight as well, then. "Would you consider-"
"No," Harry interrupted, giving him no room to continue.
"You don't even know what I was going to say."
"Let me guess: would you consider becoming Maria's full-time guard?" Marco shrugged in admittance, not looking guilty in the slightest. "Well, no. I don't care how much it pays, but I like my freedom, which isn't something I'll be able to retain while babysitting a girl."
"It was worth a shot. Will I see you soon?"
Harry glanced at Maria. It wouldn't be wise to show up at Aurelius Manor while she was here unless he wanted to be bombarded with questions about his true identity. "Maybe not – not here at least."
A grin broke upon Marco's face. "Why? Because you have a crush on my sister?"
For a moment, Harry was stunned into silence, but then realised he could have some fun with this."Yes, Marco," he deadpanned, "it is because I have a crush on your sister and I'm obviously not confident enough to confront her about it. That's also a reason why I didn't want to be her bodyguard. From that position it would be too hard to manipulate her into growing dependant on me. I'm also nowhere near manipulative and amoral enough to take advantage of the fact I saved her life."
Marco laughed. "I guess you have a point, but you do admit you have a crush on her?"
"I'm not sure what one counts as a crush, but I am certainly attracted to her. I could describe in explicit detail all of her attractive features if you wanted, but I doubt you would appreciate that." Harry hummed. "I suppose I could do the same for your mother as well if you like."
Loki cackled as Marco grew red in embarrassment. "I would prefer if you didn't, and-"
"Wait, aren't you meant to do the overprotective brother speech?" Now Harry was on a roll, with his goal to make Marco feel as uncomfortable as possible. "Or are you just going to do the one about using protection?" Harry paused and frowned. "I never actually got an official sex talk, I think you might have to do that for me as well. My first question is where do you-"
"Okay, okay! I admit you're better at this whole embarrassing people thing."
Harry smirked. "I was taught by the best, I assure you." He glanced at his wrist, pretending he had a watch. "Well, I best take my leave. I don't want to keep my harem of Mafia heiresses waiting."
Without a final look at Marco, he strolled from the doors.
'Do you think that she'll reveal my identity?'
Loki hummed. 'While I cannot be sure, I do not think so. You saving her makes her indebted to you and there is nothing for her to gain by telling anyone - other than her crush's ire, of course. There is also no proof other than your name being Harry and being a similar age. Any attempt will probably be dismissed as a teenager's silly fantasy to be saved by a wizarding hero, only helped by her possibly being in shock.'
'I suppose.'
Using illusionary money, Harry checked into the muggle hotel. It was inconvenient to stay in the magical world when he needed to do experiments on muggles. Unfortunately muggle slaves were expensive to buy and frowned upon by most of society. Then again, so was practising spells upon muggles, but Harry was going to do it anyway.
He sought to practise illusions, something he hadn't done in a while. Whilst he could disguise himself with relative ease, he fell flat when attempting to create light illusions not centred around himself or when trying to make himself convincingly invisible. Practise was also needed with telepathic illusions, though that would be better done on wizards seeing as he could already do those easily against muggles since they had no natural magic to shield their mind.
After going up to his room to see it in case he felt like apparating up later – he most likely wouldn't as it was too easy to track and horrible to do – he headed back down to the street. Sitting down at a seat outside a restaurant, he asked Loki, 'What shall I do?'
'Start off simple. Do something that people don't usually take notice of - like your old brown-suited form.'
'Okay.'
Harry pulled his wand from his left sleeve and concentrated hard, Loki's will joining him. He began to weave the illusion, imagining every angle and then forcing the light to bend into that shape. Then the brown-suited man stood in the middle of the street, unmoving and looking slightly alien. With a further burst of concentration, Harry made the man move forward in a robotic, repetitive movement.
'That won't convince anyone but an idiot,' Loki commented. 'I told you to do this outside so that you can observe real people and see how they act. You must learn to mimic them.'
With a nod, Harry refocused upon the task at hand. Eventually he was able to craft a figure realistic enough to fool someone distracted by being in the heat battle. Too mentally exhausted from doing that for a while, he decided to move onto the next task.
While doing telepathic illusions on a muggle was already easy, a little practise could never hurt. It also turned out to be a test of his ability to keep a straight face as he kept on forcing illusions upon a rather rude customer within the restaurant so that they kept mistaking their lap for their mouth and pouring their drinks all over themself.
The first time she simply looked incredibly embarrassed, and the second she ran off, much to the amusement of Loki and Harry. Whilst that was fun, it was not the only purpose. Hitting himself with a muggle-repelling charm, Harry followed the woman into the back of the restaurant, whose toilets she was probably heading for. Putting her in emotional distress had made her mind more fragile, and now it would be easier to break in.
Coming across the woman, he murmured, "Hey," prompting her to make eye-contact before he projected himself forward. When creating illusions, Harry simply hovered on the outside, forcing images and sensations from his own brain into theirs, but not going in himself. This time, he would go in. With Loki to aid him and no prior experience, the best way in would most likely be brute force.
Harry smashed forward, and for a brief moment, he was rushing through the woman's mind. Colours rushed around him, too bright and too vibrant – and then pain, too much pain. He found himself hurled backwards and out of the mind. As Loki began to do away with the agony, he gasped for breath and collapsed to the floor. Looking up, he saw the woman had also slumped and blood was flowing from her nose.
Loki sighed. 'Well, I suppose that was to be expected.'
'What?' Harry demanded. 'Then why did you tell me to do it?!'
'Asgardian magic cannot be used to enter minds, whilst mortal magic can. I wanted to test if a combination of both could.'
'And you couldn't have warned me?!'
'You might not have done it if I did,' Loki pointed out.
Harry glanced back to the woman. 'So why did that fail?'
'Asgardians cannot do mind magic like this because we automatically perceive all of their mind at once, including the pain they feel from intrusion, resulting in being unfocused, and thus thrown out. The issue was similar with you.'
'So, is she dead?'
Loki snorted. 'Dead? Definitely not. Perhaps if one as powerful as I had been doing it she would be dead, but she is only unconscious...and maybe a bit brain-damaged….'
With a groan, Harry got to his feet, wiping away the blood from the nosebleed he had only just noticed. "I won't be trying that again," he muttered.
Suddenly someone screamed, and Harry was immediately spinning around. In his disorientated state, he hadn't heard the approaching footsteps of...a chef? He sighed and cast a stunning spell at them before turning on his heel and apparating, ignoring Loki's orders not to do it; he couldn't be bothered to walk back to his hotel at the moment.
The world warped and twisted around him, a crushing blackness squeezing in upon him. As clarity slammed against him, he decided it had been a terrible idea - probably induced by intruding into the mind of a stupid person. He hated apparating normally, but he had done it - and whilst already confused, no less.
That was why he missed his location, finding himself appearing a few meters above the ground and promptly falling at far faster speeds than he should have been, too confused to react. With a resounding thump he smashed against the concrete of what appeared to be an alleyway, his head rebounding of the floor. Normally it wouldn't have been too harmful, but combined with the stress of apparation and attempted mental infiltration, he promptly found blackness closing in on him, Loki's annoyed sigh and grumble of him being a complete imbecile the only noise in his ears.
Harry awoke with a groan and immediately noticed he wasn't where he had lost consciousness. 'Where am I?'
'Believe it or not, I don't know,' Loki deadpanned. 'As powerful, handsome, charismatic, intelligent, and modest I am, I'm not exactly in a state where I can go off and take a stroll.'
Harry rolled his eyes and looked around, seeing nothing but darkness. He felt that he was laying upon a metal surface and when he reached forward it was made obvious he was in a cage. After a moment his eyes had adjusted to the light, and after pouring a bit of magic into them, he could see the world in more detail.
Two other cages were in the room, but both were empty but for a few blood stains. At the other side of the room was a table with a pistol and a few magazines sitting on it. Harry checked his ankle and under his t-shirt. Sure enough, he still had both daggers, but he had to have dropped his wand when he apparated.
'Just my bloody luck,' he muttered. 'I get kidnapped by some bloody amateur muggles. Why did I pick a hotel in an area with a high crime rate?!'
'Some do-gooder taking you to a hospital might have been worse. That would put your face and fingerprints in the system, and seeing as you had a wand with you, they might have handed you to a magic hospital, which is even worse than a muggle hospital. They might've taken your diguise and-'
'Yeah, I get it.' Harry moved over to the cage's lock. 'You can rant about whatever you feel like ranting about later, but for now I want to get out.'
His daggers were un-enchanted so he wouldn't be able to slash through metal, but he moved one into his right hand nonetheless. He pressed the other hand to the lock and channelled Asgardian magic through it. Orange light flashed through the room and the lock exploded with a tremendous bang.
'Your stealth abilities know no bounds, Harry,' Loki drawled.
He snorted and moved forwards, gathering blue energy in his palm. Suddenly the door burst open and a man came through the door, toting a pistol. Harry projected himself forward, forcing illusions upon the muggle's mind with ease. The man collapsed to the floor as pain racked through his body, Harry making him feel as though he was on fire.
With a glance at the door to make sure no one was following, Harry kicked the man in the head and picked up his pistol.
'Are you sure that's a good idea?' asked Loki. 'You've never fired a gun before.'
'I've seen movies, how hard can it-'
He was interrupted as a man burst through the door holding another gun. Harry screamed and the man screamed, and they both began to fire. A brief flash of pain travelled through Harry, but he ignored it as Loki numbed it. On what must've been his sixth shot, he finally hit the man, shooting him through his cheekbone and instantly killing him.
Harry swore and chucked the gun to the floor, muttering, "Useless piece of crap. Inaccurate and-"
He was interrupted by Loki. 'Yes, Harry. I'm sure it was the gun's fault, now shut up and let me concentrate on healing then bullet hole in your leg. It has travelled all the way through, so don't worry about getting it out.'
'Oh.' Harry frowned. 'I suppose that was what the pain was?'
'Yes, now let's leave.'
Without a glance at the two bodies on the floor, Harry departed from the room. As he rounded another corner, looking for a window to depart through, a sprinting man bumped into him, impaling himself upon the dagger in Harry's hand. He gasped in pain, dropping his gun as the blade was then swiped across his throat.
An icicle was already flying from Harry's left hand as another man entered his field of view, this one armed with a crowbar which promptly clattered to the floor as its owner was killed. Harry moved forward and dived out of the window in front of him, falling to the concrete in a cascade of glass and rolling to his feet.
'Why didn't you just open the window?' Loki asked.
'Hey! I just found out I can't fire a gun very well. I need to know that I'm good at some action movie things, otherwise I'll be struck down by crippling insecurity!'
'You do realize that you left your wand in there?'
Harry groaned.
A/N: That might have seemed a bit random, but I assure you that I have my reasons for introducing muggle gangs. Anyway, tell me what you thought.
