Harry Potter and the Physical Adept

Chapter 9: A Game of Shadows

"Can we do something other than hooding?"

The chatter at the table stopped suddenly, leaving with only the sound of the Super Nintendo to fill the air with chiptune music.

"Are you sure?" Romy asked.

"I've seen Harry kill a troll and a professor," Hermione said, nodding. "I also helped him steal the Philosopher's Stone.

"I understand that sometimes, you just have to do what you have to do. And besides, this is just make-believe."

The chemistry post-graduate looked at the Boy-Who-Lived, who half-shrugged.

"Well, then," Romy said. "The Ragdoll is the same as ever with its club kids, expensive drinks and Adona in a booth at the back of the establishment…"

~ooOoo~

There was something reassuring about playing Shadowrun, even if was just an acquisition run in a low-security facility of a sub-A-rated corp; that Hermione had suggested they do more than go hooding was something Harry had not expected so soon, but it was a welcome step forward, even if he recognized she still had a ways to go before she was truly free from her previous black-and-white morality.

It when he was about to leave the shop that Jason pulled him aside, a serious look on his face.

"Word on the street is a couple hoods have been asking around about you and Liv," said the shopkeeper. "Are you in trouble?"

"Nothing I can't handle," said the boy, digging in his pocket for a moment, then taking out the identification card he had taken from the jewel-store robber. "Guess I better pay this gonk a visit."

"You gonna be alright?"

"I'm slottin' grand."

"Look, if you need help..."

"I said I've got this," interjected the Hermetic mage, growling tightly.

~ooOoo~

Kyle Jenkins awoke with a start.

He didn't remember leaving the telly on downstairs.

Groggily, he sat up, rubbing his eyes, then stumbled out of bed, wobbling towards the bedroom door.

Suddenly, he found himself toppling forward, his feet caught out from under him, and he barely managed to get a hand down in time to avoid breaking his face on the floor.

Rolling over, he abruptly froze as he found himself staring up into the barrel of a pistol, adrenaline rushing through his body at the sight of the small boy standing over him with firearm pointed directly at his forehead.

"I told you I knew where you lived," growled the boy.

Instinctively, Kyle reached up to grab the boy but he spun out of reach, dropping to a knee.

The muzzle flashed twice, but Kyle did not hear the report of gunfire; instead, he felt a searing pain rip through both ears, and his hands went to them, which only made them hurt worse.

"Argh! You shot me!"

"You try that again, and the next one goes between your eyes."

"You don't want to do this! I'm with the Grove Firm! If anything happens to me, they'll kill you!"

"Not if they have bigger problems."

The last thing Kyle Jenkins saw was a muzzle flash.

Then, his brains were splattered all over the wall behind him.

~ooOoo~

Creating a cover story was key.

By now, Harry was well-practiced in making evidence disappear, so the organic matter that was the ganger who had been asking around about him, along with the bullets he had fired into the wall by way of his victim's ears, disintegrated into dust, though not before taking polaroid photographs of his fingerprints; with basilisk skin gloves on, the boy packed a suitcase of the dead man's belongings with just the things one might take if they're about to go on the run—a roll of banknotes from the sock drawer, some changes of clothes, some identification, the pistol he found tucked away behind a ventilation grate—before tossing the packed luggage into his haversack.

Then, he tore through the residence in the manner one would ransack a home, something he had been taught in the program, knifing apart upholstery, pulling books off shelves and tossing knick-knacks all over the place. By the time he was done, it looked like a pack of interlopers had searched the house from top to bottom. He even smashed in the front door.

Afterwards, he set up a surveillance post on the roof of the residence across the street and waited. It wasn't as if he had been subtle when he had faux ransacked the house, so he expected company quickly.

It was just after daybreak when car to pull up to the house and two heavy-looking men exit it; when they spotted the broken door, they immediately drew pistols, and Harry immediately knew they were who he was looking for and snuck down to their car, painting a wizard mark in large invisible magic ink on the top of it before casting detect magic so that he could keep an eye on the mark from a distance.

Awaiting their exit, he took the sky, knowing full well he could not keep up with their vehicle on foot and also realizing most people simply would not look up to see him. Even so, he took the precaution of casting invisibility to conceal his presence from the visible spectrum.

Tailing the car back to the heart of London, he watched as vehicle pulled up to a nightclub on a street empty of pedestrians, the heavies entering through the front entrance, and landed on the flat rooftop of a low-rise residential building two streets away that rose above the building just across the street of the nightclub. Binoculars in hand, the Hermetic mage scanned from window to window until the saw an older man with greying hair shouting at the heavies in one of them, smashing things on his desk and pointing angrily, in a second story window.

Clearly, he was in charge of the Grove Firm.

Reaching into his haversack, the boy retrieved his assault rifle, carefully attaching the four times magnification scope to the weapon before loading a tear gas shell into the underbarrel grenade launcher and dialing the fire selector to single shot. Then, he screwed a sound suppressor onto the threaded barrel.

Sitting down, he braced his feet against the upraised edge of the roof, then took a deep breath before slowly exhaling; halfway through letting the air out of his lungs, the Boy-Who-Lived pulled the trigger, just as the greying man grabbed one of the heavies by the lapel and move to strike him.

Glass shattered, and the man toppled bonelessly sideways as the side of his head blew apart, painting the wall behind him with blood, bone fragments and brain matter.

Readjusting his aim as the two heavies scrambled for cover, the boy fired the contents of his grenade launcher in an arc, sending it through the already broken window and filling the room with thick white smoke. Reloading the grenade launcher, he followed the tear gas shell with an incendiary one, then quickly reloaded again, firing incendiary grenade after incendiary grenade through the windows of the second story.

In only a few minutes, the entire nightclub was smoking, and a dozen or so men where coming out of the front door, coughing and helping each other stay erect.

So, he launched a frag grenade into the crowd, filling the street with blood, viscera and screams of pain and terror.

"Welcome to the London Combat Zone," the Hermetic mage said, smiling to himself. He needed a very public show of force to press the Grove Firm into acting, and he needed their leader out of the picture at the same time to throw the organization into disarray.

Now, all that was left was the sanitize the evidence of his being on the roof.

Besides, there were only two more days before he was going to be back at boarding school, where the Grove Firm wouldn't be able to follow.

~ooOoo~

Harry never liked assuming the identity of other people through alter self.

Shifting into Malfoy's form as he did during the run Fay and Neville had hired him for the previous term had been not too hard because of their similar heights, but the feeling of his own flesh shifting to as it rearranged itself to appear like the peroxide blonde Slytherin had been unsettling, if not painful, like skin and muscle were melting and being sculpted at the same time.

Taking on the appearance of a grown man, though, was something else entirely. Bones had to elongate, meat grow to compensate for the increased body mass, and dermis stretch to cover the enlarged frame. Compared to this, becoming Malfoy was mere child's play.

The boy-in-a-man's-body looked in the dressing room mirror; he looked like Kyle Jenkins, or at least enough like him to pass any cursory inspection, which was all he really needed the disguise for.

Except for the fingerprints; he recreated those from the polaroids he had taken as closely as he possibly could.

He put on some of the clothes he had taken from Jenkins' home, tucked the pistol into the back of his pants, and left the boutique.

He had a long day ahead of him.

~ooOoo~

"Old man, you lost?"

The boy who looked like Kyle Jenkins considered the youths in the underpass near the council housing in Croydon for a moment, then decided they were the ones he was looking for. He remembered reading about the high violent crime rates in this specific area in the news, and he could identify the youths as threats just by looking at them, with their badly hidden bats, clubs and machetes nearby.

He drew Kyle Jenkin's gun and leveled it towards the closest youth.

"Whoa, whoa," the teen said, raising his hands and backing away, along with his friends.

The first bullet went into the teen's stomach, not a fatal injury, just enough to cause a lot of excruciating pain. The next several missed the other fleeing boys, fired with no real intention of doing harm but to send them fleeing and to give him enough time to convey a message.

Crouching over the bleeding boy who clutched at his stomach wound, the Hermetic mage wearing the face and body of Kyle Jenkins whispered, "The Grove Firm sends its regards."

And like that, he was gone, leaving his victim whimpering on the ground, in a pool of his own blood and piss.

~ooOoo~

The gambler parlor in Westminster needed a light touch to get to where he needed to go.

The boy knew how to count cards, so that was what he did, for two hours, until two men grabbed him by the arms, told him the management would like a word with him, then pulled him out of his seat at the table.

"This establishment does not look kindly upon cheaters," said the manager of the card room, a Chinese woman in her thirties sat behind a heavy desk.

"I think there's been a misunderstanding," said 'Kyle Jenkins'.

One of the toughs struck him in the stomach, and he doubled over, wheezing.

"What misunderstanding would that be?" the manager asked, her tone patronizing.

The disguised boy pulled his pistol as he rolled forward from the bent over position, shooting both heavies who had escorted him to the back office in the knees as he rose back to his feet and spun around, putting one final bullet into the manager's bodyguard's shoulder before he managed a step in his direction.

"This neighborhood is a very dangerous place," the boy who looked like a man said, the threat obvious in his words and actions understood by the manager by the way he could see the absolute terror on her face. "There's accidents, robberies, vandalism, arson… the Grove Firm can insure you against all that for seventy-five pounds a week."

He heard approaching footsteps and pointed the pistol in the general direction of the door, rapidly firing blinding through the wall, aiming low as he swept the muzzle from left to right. There was a scream of agony, followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor and another cry of pain, and the gun was pointed right back at the manager

"Okay, alright!" said the woman. "Just let me get the money out of my desk!"

Fumbling, she managed to count out banknotes to make the seventy-five pounds, then pushed it across the desk to the person with the gun on her, who took and pocketed it.

"I'll be back next week with the next installment," he said, though he had no intention of walking into a sure ambush.

Then, he was out the back door and gone.

~ooOoo~

He figured three would do the trick, and that's why he was in Tottenham. In Little Russia.

If Shadowrun had taught him anything, it was Russians do not fuck around.

It would be the last time he would wear Kyle Jenkins' face, so it was time to go big or go home.

He didn't have street contacts in the area, but he needed a quick in, and that meant one of two things: drugs or sex.

The boy who looked like Kyle Jenkins decided sex was easier and walked into a seedy massage parlour where he could see two hard-looking gentlemen lounging around in the waiting room even from outside the storefront.

"Welcome to the Gentle Touch," said the receptionist, a truly beautiful woman with a light Eastern European accent, her voice soft but her eyes unusually austere.

"I've been a little stressed out from work lately, so I'm wondering if you offer 'happy ending' services here?" he inquired.

"Of course," said the receptionist with a tight smile. "If you'd come this way, I can take you to your room, where one of our masseuses will make all your tension melt away."

He let himself be guided to a room, the last one in a corridor ending in a door secured by a combination lock. Once inside and the door closed behind him, he took up a seat on the massage table, drawing one of his unenchanted Berettas, loaded with subsonic ammunition, from his haversack and screwing a sound suppressor onto it, before resting it on his lap.

It was only a few minute wait, and then the door swung open, revealing a young woman with fading bruises on her plain face who immediately froze at the sight of the pistol.

"Don't scream," said the Hermetic mage, and the woman swallowed, nodding. "Come in and close the door behind you."

Fearfully, the woman did as instructed.

"How many heavies are here?" he asked. The woman answered with a blank expression, so he clarified, "Men from the gang."

"Two," she answered in a thick Russian accent, holding up two fingers.

"Move to the back wall," he said; when she remained frozen where she stood, he gestured with the pistol and she quickly complied. "No matter what happens next, you need to stay in this room."

The woman nodded fearfully.

"Now, I need you to scream like I'm beating the shit out of you."

"What?" she asked.

"You heard me," he said, raising his pistol threateningly.

The woman swallowed fearfully, then inhaled deeply before letting out a high, shrill scream, and the boy in disguise turned back towards the door, backing up into the corner behind the door.

It only took a moment, but the door slammed open as the two heavies came barreling through it, but neither made it more than two steps into the room before collapsing bonelessly to the ground, the wall behind them painted red with brain matter, bone and blood when each caught a bullet that turned their heads into what could only be described as grotesque modern art.

Behind him, the young woman screamed again, this time in legitimate terror.

Carefully, he stepped over the dead bodies, closing the door behind him before turning to the locked door at the end of the all. Looking over his shoulders for a moment, he caught a glimpse of the receptionist peeking around the corner, pulling back when she thought he saw her.

"Muto terram," he whispered, and the lock clicked open.

Dropping to a knee, he slowly turned the door handle, then quickly pulled the door open and dropped onto his back, pistol ready to fire. Only when he had ascertained nobody was in the room did he rise back up, entering the room and closing the door behind him.

Inside the room was a bank of CCTV cameras, a number of file cabinets and a safe.

The safe was easy to get into: another casting of knock and he was inside.

Swinging the heavy steel door open, he found a small heap of carefully placed Russian passports, a disorganized pile of banknotes, rolls and stacks all carefully secured with rubber bands, and a few folders of papers.

Even though the sound was slight, he heard the handle on the door squeak was it was turned and immediately stepped away from the open safe, moving behind the door.

As receptionist slipped past the door, he stepped forward, pressing the barrel of the suppressor against the back of her head, and she froze immediately.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Uliana Borisov!" said the woman, her hands going up.

"Try again," he said, pushing the suppressor harder against the back of her head. "Normal people don't run towards the fire. Who are you really?"

"I don't know what you're talking about! My name is Uliana Borisov!" she protested.

He tightened his finger on the trigger until it was audible.

"Wait!" she said, her accent suddenly vanishing without a trace. "I'm Detective Evangeline Price, Scotland Yard!"

It's never a run until something goes to drek. Still…

"I thought you might be feet. What's your collar number?"

"What?"

"I'm not going to ask again."

"One-Six-Zero-Six-Five-Dee!"

"How long have you been under?"

"Six months! I've been undercover six months!"

"What's the Yard's interest in this?"

"We believe Ilari Markov has been bringing young women into the country, then taking away their passports and forcing them to work in the sex trade."

"I've heard that one before, and I'd say the passports confirm your theory."

"Well, thanks to you, my entire case's been blow up! I can't link any of this back to Markov now!"

"I don't care about that," he said. "These women need help now."

"What are you, some kind of vigilante?"

"Something like that, but not even close."

"Even if you give these women their passports back, they'd be going back to situations no better than here!"

"Listen, Detective, this ends one of two ways: you help me do what I'm going to do, or I put a couple bullets in you and do it without your help."

"If you're a vigilante like you say you are, you won't kill a police officer."

He considered the statement for an instant, and found that it wasn't true at all. Then again, he was a shadowrunner, not a vigilante like she thought he was. Still, she could be useful to him.

"Turn around," he said.

"You can't be that stupid," said the detective, her disbelief evident in her voice.

"Try me."

Slowly, the detective turned around until she was face to face with the boy-in-a-man's-body.

"You know I have to include what you look like in my report, right?"

"I'm counting on it," he said, before reaching into his pocket, taking out Kyle Jenkins' identification card and handing it to the detective. "My name is Kyle Jenkins, and I'm with the Grove Firm."

"I'm going to have to write that in my report, and you must know Markov has to have bent cops on his payroll."

"Oh, I'm counting on it."

"Do you have a death wish? Or are you really just that stupid?"

"Do you ever get tired of not being able to do anything? In another six months, most of these women might gone, used up and replaced by the next batch of victims, but right now, we can do something for these victims."

The detective looked torn.

"If you do nothing to help them now, you're just as bad as the passerby who looks away because it's uncomfortable to think about what will happen to them. There might be a bigger picture at play, but if you ignore these poor young women who are stuck here through no fault of their own except for putting their trust in the wrong people, then you're just sacrificing them on the altar the next bigger fish, and you might as well just sign their death warrants yourself."

Seeing she was still torn, he added, "If it makes you feel any better, you can write in your report I forced you to do it at gunpoint, because that'll be true, even if you agree with what I'm doing."

"Fine."

"Now, let's go get the ladies."

Begrudgingly, the undercover detective entered the hall with the disguised boy behind her, shooting him a dirty look as she went from door to door, gathering the fearful young women together until she had seven, including the one he had encountered in the room he had been first taken to.

"Now bring them back into the back room."

Once they were in the room with the cameras and file cabinets, he gestured to the safe.

"Give them their passports and the money."

"How much of the money?"

"All of the money."

"All of the money? What are you, a saint?"

"No, but if you want to take some for yourself, I won't hold it against you."

"I don't want any," the detective growled hotly, though she did not stop passing out the passports and the money.

After the last of the money and passports were passed out, 'Kyle Jenkins' handed the detective the folders of documents from the safe. "You might want these for your investigation."

"Thank you."

"You all should go and get out of here," he said to the women who had just received their passports and a windfall, and they quickly scarpered away out the front door, until only he and the detective remained.

"What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to burn this place down, to send a message."

"What? I won't let you do that!"

"Then stop me. Creo ignem!"

The detective recoiled in shock as fire exploded out of his extended hands, setting the walls alight as he turned in a half-circle, covering most of the room in a swath of fire.

"Go!" he shouted, pushing the detective out of the back room. "We need to not be here."

Several moments later, they were outside, watching smoke billow out of the building's windows.

"What was that? And how did you do that?"

"It's nothing you could report without being sectioned," he said, as he ejected the magazine from the Beretta and tucked it into the back of his waistband, then pulled back the slide and caught the bullet the weapon ejected from its chamber. "I'm sorry about this."

"Well, Kyle Jenkins, you're under arrest!"

He didn't comply, but instead struck her forcefully on the forehead with the pistol, sending her to the ground, unconscious. Knowing she would only remain unconscious for a few seconds at best, he quickly crossed her arms across her chest and tucked the handgun under them, then walked away at a brisk pace, melting into the crowd, turning into an alleyway a few blocks away before casting invisibility once he had ascertained he was in a camera blindspot, dismissing his magical disguise and returning to his original form before cutting through a business by its back door and dismissing his invisibility just as he came out of the back of the store. Then, he blended back into the crowd of pedestrians, confident he did not have a tail and would be nearly impossible to track by CCTV.

The badge showing up was certainly a complication, but four is even better than three.

First, though, he was going to buy a ferry ticket to France using Jenkins' credit card.

~ooOoo~

"Harry! Where have you been? I was worried when you didn't come home last night or this morning!

"Why do you smell like burnt paper?"

It was an awkward embrace that Karen enfolded him in when he walked into the back room at Bourne's Comics and Games for Patience's night as Storyteller.

"I had a thing I had to do," the Boy-Who-Lived said cryptically. "How was Liv?"

"She spent the day playing the Final Fantasy," said the actress. "When I asked her about you, she said you could take care of yourself."

"There's no 'the', and she's not wrong."

"Well, I'm glad you're safe."

"Thank you. Let's go play World of Darkness."

~ooOoo~

"Do I need to be worried?" Jason asked Harry as the regulars of his shop were getting ready to depart for the night.

"No, I handled it," the boy said.

"Did you now?"

"I put the Triads, the vory, some gangers and the feet onto his firm, plus I made it look like he went on the lam, so I'll be fine. Besides, I disappear for a few months come Monday."

"You mean a Russian crime syndicate?" the shopkeep asked.

"There's a difference?"

"Despite what's written in Shadowrun, the vory v zakone rules the Russian crime syndicates, but they're the elite ruling class, and not just a name for the entire organization."

"Fair enough. Learn something new every day."

"I almost pity whoever it is you set them on. They don't fuck around."

"I know. That's why I did it."

Author's Notes: Hermione's changing as a person; her experiences with Harry have started changing her view of the world.

After a few chapters of world building and character development, Harry is back in action...

It's not that Harry can't tell the difference between a tabletop RPG and reality; it's just that it's much easier for him to process this kind of work in Shadowrun terms, with his summer at Jack Ryan's camp providing him the necessary skills to do it. Ultimately, he's essentially a child soldier with the skill set of a spy.

Loose ends need to be tied up, or they lead to complications, as demonstrated here by the robbers Harry and Liv let live previously. Cleaning up the complications is a lot of hard work.

Harry's demonstrating his proficiency in multiple types of runs here: the hoodies are an enforcement run, the Triads a collection run, and the massage parlor ostensibly looks to be a hooding extraction run to free the victims of human traffickers. All of these, however, are simply false flag operations, meant to set up the Grove Firm.

I found the Harry/Evangeline scene fun to write, because it's once again a play of expectations versus reality; Detective Price expects a criminal to want to get away with their crimes, whereas Harry wants word to get out that Kyle Jenkins has been doing all kinds of shady things on the behalf of the Grove Firm, particularly since Jenkins disappears into the aether shortly his crime spree.

Once again, many, many thanks to my long-suffering editor, Romantically Distant, for all their efforts in reading and proofing my writing. And now you've read this chapter, feel free to leave a review or just PM me.