Hello! This is my attempt at a HP/MCU crossover. The story is designed to span several parts (akin to phases in the MCU) and will get gradually more AU as the story progresses (butterfly wings ripple, after all), so much so that all the conflict after part 2, as well as some before that, is entirely of my own creation (assuming I ever write that far). I will also be ignoring or changing large parts of marvel canon because 1) there is simply too much of it to write an effective narrative, 2) I simply haven't seen all of the marvel movies, tv shows, and other expanded material, and reading the Wikis can only get you so far. For example, in my MCU universe, the X-men aren't a thing and won't be appearing, so be warned that certain characters, details, plotlines, and other MCU canon may be entirely overruled for the sake of the story. That being said if you spot something that is inconsequential that I've got wrong (a character has the wrong height, for example) feel free to point it out and I might correct it (if it wasn't a deliberate change)

I was first inspired to attempt this by reading 'Raven' and 'Reborn' by JustBored21, I also took a great chunk of inspiration from 'Post-Apocalyptic Potter from a Parallel Universe' by burnable, although I don't think I've actually stolen any of his ideas, so if you find any similarities they were either unconscious or planned before I read his fic.

Be warned this chapter contains a bit of attempted (but NOT successful) rape/non-con.

00:37, Warwick Square, London, January 13th, 2011

Harry Potter was sitting on a bench in Warwick Square, disillusioned, waiting for something, anything, to happen. The night was crisp, as would be expected in the wee hours of a January morning, and the sky was clear, providing an excellent (considering the light pollution) view of the stars. He wasn't too bothered with the stars though, he'd done enough stargazing over his life that the limited view of the sky offered wasn't the slightest bit interesting.

The garden too, while obviously well maintained, was nothing special, and Harry had seen much grander in the past. The only things that were even slightly holding his interest were the bats that would occasionally zip from tree to tree. Bats, though, just made him think of flying, and how much he'd rather be out for a moonlight fly in his Animagus form, so he soon changed to trying to ignore them.

In short, Harry Potter was bored out of his mind.

Despite this, Harry sat perfectly still, all of his senses strained to the max in anticipation of what was supposed to happen. All he could hear was the faint rustling of the leaves in the wind, broken only by the occasional car driving by, and even with his improved vision he could see little beyond the latticework of spots illuminated by the lampposts outside the garden. Having been waiting here for over two hours, Harry nearly jumped for joy when someone pushed the gate open and hobbled into the seemingly empty garden, it was the only pressing need for secrecy that kept him seated.

The figure limped as fast as he could through the garden, the occasional grunt or hiss of pain reaching Harry's ears, and into a patch of light large enough for him to take in the newcomer. The figure turned out to be a rather striking woman. She had burnt-red hair that hung in loose curls down to her shoulders and pale blue-green eyes. Her soft, angelic face, well-toned figure, and impressive assets put her in the exclusive group that people would almost unanimously agree were extremely attractive.

Harry, though, barely took notice of her beauty. The woman was dressed to impress in a rather flattering red dress that was not only entirely unsuited to the cold night air but also did nothing to hide the multitude of small gashes along the woman's arms, legs, and face or the deep cut in her left calf. Her face was strangely impassive, bar the occasional twitch of pain, but she did keep looking over her shoulder as if she was afraid of some pursuer.

The woman stopped at the first bench she reached and lifted her injured leg onto it in order to get a better look at her injury. It was at that moment another figure entered the garden, making no effort to be stealthy. The huge figure bashed the gate aside without slowing and ran straight at the woman, who barely had time to put her leg down and turn before the man pounced at her.

Harry winced at the crunch when the pair landed on the gravel path. The man had the woman trapped beneath him and judging by the pain on her face she had been injured further by the rough takedown. All that Harry could see of the man from this angle was his large, muscled frame and the back of his bald head, which was marred by a crude tattoo of a barracuda.

Harry stood and began to edge around the pair as the man started talking. "You thought you could get away from me, did you Luv?" The man let out a cold laugh. "Please, you never stood a chance. I could break you in half with one arm, but that would be a waste of such an… enticing… body, don't you think?" The man laughed again as she tried to struggle out of his grip. The man stopped laughing when the woman spit at him and hit his cheek. "That's the way you want to play, is it? Very well then, let me tell you what's going to happen now." They struggled for a moment as the man managed to grasp both of her wrists in his right hand, freeing his left. "I'm going to punish you, little wench." He used his free hand to stroke her cheek softly and the woman tried, and failed, to bite his fingers.

The man didn't seem to like her continued aggressiveness. "You've got some nerve!" He shouted, before back-handing her across the face, splitting her lower lip. "You tried to tempt me, seduce me, beguile ME; you stole my secrets, broke my trust, and now you try and resist my taking revenge?!" He grasped the left side of her dress and yanked it, digging the strap into one of her wounds, making the woman hiss in pain. "Since I don't know who you work for, I'm going to take my revenge on you. I'm going to use that delectable little body of yours until I'm satisfied, and I have a lot of aggression to let out, so I hope you're a masochist." The man laughed again and the woman's futile attempt to break free. "Oh, you are a feisty one, Luv. Tell you what, I'll make you a deal; if you survive until I'm satisfied, I might just let you live!"

Harry narrowed his eyes and dropped his disillusionment with a flick of the wand that appeared in his hand. He was here to make sure both of these people made it out of the garden alive, which meant he couldn't kill the man… which was a shame. With another flick of his wand, a stone about the size of his fist floated up to waist height. "Oi!"

The man whirled around and was struck on the temple by the flying stone before he could utter a word. He immediately collapsed onto the woman, who yelped in both pain and surprise.

Harry levitated the man up, cast a slightly over-powered incarcerous, and dropped him now gagged and bound onto the gravel path. Then he turned his attention to the woman, who was watching him silently with apprehensive, tearful eyes. He wasted no time in walking over and taking stock of her injuries. The gash on her left leg was still bleeding profusely, staining the gravel of the path, as was the recently agitated wound on her right shoulder. She was very pale, showing just how much blood she had lost, and her right leg was bent unnaturally at the thigh, probably broken when the man tackled her.

The woman used her good arm to push herself into a sitting position. "Who are you?" Her voice contained plenty of wariness, although there was no trace of the fear and shock Harry expected from a woman in her position; he didn't let it phase him.

Harry smiled disarmingly and held his arms to the side in a non-threatening gesture, which, when considering the brown robes he was wearing, made him look like a clergyman. "A friend." He knelt down next to her and waved his wand in her face; the woman scrunched her eyebrows in a rather amusing show of confusion.

"Did Fury send you?" She asked, eyes now flicking between him, his wand, and the bound man on the bench.

"Fury?" Harry replied absently, "No, I dare say I was sent by someone a little bit higher up… Hmm… I can treat these wounds, but if I numb the pain then you won't be able to feel, or use, your arm or leg for at least two hours, maybe more. Is that ok with you?"

The woman shook her head emphatically. "No, I've still got a job to do." She gestured towards the man who had attacked her.

Harry sighed in frustration. "Look, Miss…"

"Roma- Parks, Sarah Parks."

Harry pretended not to notice the slip. "Miss Parks, you're currently bleeding out. Your blood pressure is already dangerously low and if I don't treat you, you could very well pass out, if not straight up die. To top THAT your right femur is broken, so you're not really in a fit state to go for a stroll, yet along whatever you have to do with than man."

"Then treat me, but no anaesthesia."

The determination on her face surprised Harry. "No anaesthesia? Are you sure that's wise? I can tell you from experience having a bone set is not a pleasant feeling." 'Sarah' nodded again without hesitation. "Fine; but try to stay still. This is difficult enough without you squirming like a baby basilisk in a chicken coop."

'Miss Parks' opened her mouth to respond, but her words died in her throat as Harry began chanting in an unknown language and waving his wand again. Soon she felt an incredibly painful itching around all of the cuts on her body and could barely restrain herself from scratching them, so she closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and tried to ignore the sensation.

"Right… that should do it, now for the leg." The itching sensation faded, and 'Sarah' opened her eyes; she couldn't stop the involuntary gasp when she saw all of her wounds were gone. Without thinking she leant forward to trace where the gash on her calf used to be, now replaced with slightly pink but otherwise healthy flesh, the other hand went to her now healed lip.

Harry put a hand on her shoulder and forced her to sit back. "Stay still, or I'll immobilise you." Instead of looking offended or angry, 'Sarah' looked at Harry with genuine shock and amazement on her face, and it was then she realised his solid emerald eyes were faintly glowing as he continued to chant. Then, with a particularly sharp flick of his wand, Harry snapped her thigh bone into place, making her yelp in pain and her arms twitch towards grabbing her thigh. A few moments later, Harry finally stopped chanting and waving his wand, leaving 'Sarah' with the feeling of pins & needles in her leg. "There, all done," Harry said as he stood and walked over to look at the still bound, but now slowly stirring, man. After some more wand waving, Harry determined that the man was in no danger of anything worse than a mild concussion, and the quick stunning spell he applied would keep him asleep for a couple of hours yet.

Harry had no qualms with holding one of the man's eyes open so he could perform a quick mental scan. The man's name was Eugene 'Cuda' Franks, and he was super-human. He had been a moderately successful drug dealer, known on the streets for being ruthless with those who crossed him, but otherwise unremarkable.

That all changed when, during a routine drug pickup in Morocco, he was approached by a third party who referred to himself as 'The Cashier' and given an opportunity. Smuggle a package of a new, experimental drug to a drop-off in London, and receive not only a sizable sum, but a single dose to try himself and a promise of more business if the drug was successful.

Eugene, being no fool, jumped at the opportunity, and took his own dose that night in his (seedy) hotel. All told it was god-awful. Taking the drug (a rust-coloured liquid that had to be injected into his arm) had given him several hours of full-body cramps and a headache that put all hangovers to shame. It wasn't until three weeks later, while beating up a customer who had tried to short-change him, that Eugene discovered he had gotten significantly stronger when he shattered the woman's jaw. Running from the police later that week had also shown him he was much faster than he used to be, though not quite Olympic levels. It was a month after this discovery that 'Sarah Parks' moved into the flat opposite his own, and only three days after that he overheard her on the phone with her boss and realised that she had been spying on him.

Harry turned back to 'Sarah', who was standing unsteadily; slowly applying and relieving pressure on her leg, making sure it was completely healed. Now, what to do about her? It wasn't wise under the best of circumstances to let the woman go with knowledge of his existence, of his power, and these were hardly ideal circumstances. From what he had seen in Eugene's head, 'Sarah' was clearly working with some larger organisation, or at the very least was an informant for one. After some thought, and despite how wrong it felt to do to someone who had just been through such a tumultuous evening, Harry made up his mind and tentatively extended a legilimency probe towards her, scanning only her surface thoughts.

"Sarah, who do you work for?" Harry saw the answer to his question float to the surface of her mind.

After a brief hesitation, she answered. "Interpol, they sent me to keep an eye on Mr Franks here…" she gestured to the man "…who they suspect of heavy involvement with some unsavoury elements of society."

Harry frowned; Natalia Alianovna Romanoff (or Natasha Romanov to most), as was her real name, had lied to him. He pushed deeper into her mind and skimmed all the information he could about her employers - S.H.E.I.L.D. - which took up a surprising amount of her recent memory; it seemed Miss Romanov had very little of a life outside of her work, which was understandable, given her profession.

What he found concerned Harry greatly. A supernational organisation with very little oversight, near-limitless resources, a mandate to protect the planet at all costs, and a leader who could nearly match Mad-Eye when it came to sheer paranoia. The very idea of such an entity raised multiple red flags in Harry's head, combined with the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. clearly had an interest in all so-called 'enhanced' people, made it the biggest threat he had yet encountered since arriving here. That wasn't a very high bar, he had been here scarce more than three years after all, but still. Letting S.H.I.E.L.D. get even a whiff of his presence and potential was a terrible idea.

Harry refocused his attention on Natasha (after seven seconds of staring blankly in contemplation), who was watching him with a calculating eye, trying to figure out if he believed her story. "I'm sorry about this, Miss Romanoff."

She didn't even have time to fully form a look of shock on her face, or take a single step backwards, before the confundus he shot from his wand hit her. She stood there, a vacant look on her face, as Harry expertly suppressed the memory of what had happened in the garden and created a false memory to replace it. He moved out of her field of view, dispelled the confundus (which could take hours to wear off of muggles) and apparated away without a sound before she could spot him.

Natasha shook her head to clear her momentary dizziness. Her internal question of 'what am I doing here?' was answered when her eyes landed upon the bound form of her target. Immediately she remembered escaping his initial assault without injury and fleeing to this park where she got the drop on Franks using a rock. Then, with some rope she found, presumably left by a maintenance company, she bound and gagged him. Now all she had to do was find a phone (easy enough to do when you can pick door locks in your sleep) and call in some backup.

-HPaDD- -HPaDD- -HPaDD-

Harry apparated with the intention of appearing in his bedroom and sleeping for as long as possible. That plan was scuppered when he appeared instead in the ethereal version of King's Cross Station that he was all too familiar with.

"Hello again, Master."

The sound of the cold, amused voice sent a painful shiver down Harry's spine. He turned around to see none other than death standing behind him. She – for that is how death appeared – was short, no taller than five feet, and clothed in a simple black robe. What little of her body could be seen was pale, deathly pale (no pun intended), and the impossibly black hair that hung like icicles around her face highlighted that fact further. Her lips were only a shade or two darker than her skin, giving the illusion she had no mouth, and the flesh concealed within was beige and framed by pointed, yellowing teeth. Finishing off this frightening façade was her eyes; they were black, like those of a shark. They spoke of a never-ending, primal hunger that would never, could never, be satisfied.

"Death, to what do I owe the… pleasure?" Harry was honestly quite proud that he let so little of his revulsion show.

"You just completed the task I gave you, I'm here to give you your payment." She held out her hand, palm up, and a scroll materialized out of a swirl of black smoke (like the Weasley twin's Instant darkness powder, but more menacing) to rest in her palm. Harry hesitated to take it, unwilling to get any closer to the personification of Voldemort's greatest fear. Death chuckled (a sound not unlike cutlery scraping on plates in how it made the living flinch) when she saw Harry's reaction. "Go on, take it, I won't bite. I couldn't do anything to you anyway, Master."

After a heartbeat of indecision, Harry took a tentative step forward and lifted the scroll daintily out of her hand and placed it into his robe's pocket. Death's smile grew as more smoke swirled around her palm. When it cleared three silvery orbs rested in her hand. Each was roughly the size of a clementine, perfectly round, and completely without blemish. They looked on the outside like balls of polished iron, but when Harry tentatively (and with more prodding from Death) took them into his hand he felt his hair stand on end and his heart nearly short out from the sheer power contained within them.

Harry, despite his unease, managed to raise an eyebrow in question, which just made Death laugh again (much to his displeasure). Eventually, she took pity on him and answered what she assumed he was trying to ask. "Your reward, as you know, was supposed to be decided by me. After all, when you make a deal with Death, it should be Death you're making a deal with. But my mother stepped in and ordered I give you two. So, I, being me, decided she can go rot and gave you three. Not just to screw her over, of course, but because I like you."

Harry couldn't stop the full-body shiver that raced through him when Death said that. He hoped, down to his very soul, that she didn't mean 'like' the way she implied; he was most definitely NOT a necrophiliac.

Death, either oblivious of Harry's reaction or ignoring it, continued. "You are the first master I've had, and it has been rather entertaining, I must say. It gets boring having nobody to talk to but my family; spending time with them is less interesting than watching a corpse rot, and I've done that many times."

Death's comment managed to unnerve Harry even more so he said the first thing that came to mind in a bid to change the topic. "You do realise that your mother probably asked you to give me two of whatever these are," he lifted the hand holding the metal balls, "so that you would actually give me three, right?" Death opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it and pouted. Harry, despite himself, laughed. "Yeh, I'm not the biggest fan of Fate either; Merlin knows she's messed with me enough over the years. If I didn't know there'd be hell to pay, I would've asked you to punch her in the nose for me as soon as I learned she was your mother."

That, surprisingly, made Death cheer right up, so much so that she let out a full belly laugh, which made Harry regret speaking at all. "Punch… nose… great!" Death wheezed out between her laughter, again either unaware or uncaring of the unease she was causing Harry. Many uncomfortable minutes later, Death managed to get herself under control.

"Can I go now?" Harry asked.

"Not yet, I have one more thing to give you." Death frowned as more smoke swirled around her hand. When it cleared, she was holding a golden envelope by the corner in the same manner someone would hold a rotting fish. Just looking at the letter made her grimace. Harry didn't want to see what would happen if he delayed it taking the letter, so he took it quickly.

The letter felt warm in his hand. "It's from my sister." Death supplied without prompting. "And now, Master, you may leave." Before Harry could reply he was surrounded by black smoke, which cleared to reveal his bedroom. Felling completely exhausted, Harry shook off the weirdness of the last hour and began to prepare for bed.

AN:

Well there we have it, the first chapter. No easter egg in this chapter.