In our world.

Behind a veil of a blue sparkling force field, stared the tired and angry eyes of Harry's best friend, Ronald Weasley back at him from the other side of this cold grey room.

No one else was in the room, it was just a big veil separating them.

Harry hadn't brought his suit, he needed to see his friend clearly and without hiding behind a mask.

Ron had returned to his home after last term, though some very mysterious people within the American government didn't want a potential threat running around.

Near the end of summer break, Ron had been deemed too unstable to live with his family and been taken away to a maximum-security prison equipped with Tony Stark's technology.

Had it not been for Tony's influence, Ron might've been sent straight to Azkaban so this was almost the best outcome.

It had been equipped specifically to contain superpowered threats, and that was as much as Harry knew about the place but he suspected something much worse was going on in there.

So far, his only evidence was how much worse Ron looked every day.

"I don't know if I can hold out in this place anymore, mate", mumbled Ron. "Everytime, I sleep all I have are nightmares. Horrible, cruel nightmares."

Harry put his face in his hand out of pure exhaustion. Aside from school homework, crimefighting and missions with Avengers, he had to constantly try removing Ron from this depressing place.

He barely had time to sleep let alone get free time. Everytime, he got here, he wanted to break his friend out of here. His spider-powers would certainly get him out… right?

But there were obvious reasons why he didn't.

"I don't have a cure of nightmares, but at least I have something to cheer you up. Aunt Petunia say hello."

Out of his bag, he took out a box of Aunt Petunia's famous pudding and pushed it through the veil.

"Thanks mate."

Harry half-expected someone to rush in through the door and arrest him over a box of what could possibly be a weapon.

"Just make sure you hide it", said Harry.

"Yeah, I will…", mumbled Ron sleepily. His energy seemed to be draining for every minute that went. "I can't believe I'm about to say this but: I miss detention."

His eyes suddenly lit up, he seemed slightly less exhausted. "Harry, that's it! Going for my last year at Hogwarts must be the key to getting out of here! I would trade this for a year worth of detention."

"I'll check with Hermione; she knows more about that stuff than me."

Harry got out of the building as fast as he could, and for once he decided to travel like a normal human being on the ground.

Sure, it was crowded, loud and hot especially in London in the middle of summer but that's what made being amongst the skyscrapers so much more refreshing.

That was until he got off the train when he realized he didn't have enough money for a bus ride home. He was standing in front of a long queue, desperately checking his pockets for something, anything.

The bus driver was sweating up a storm and had this look on his face that told Harry he needed to get a move on. Sweat was dripping down his own face, slightly blurring his vision. Behind him people were getting restless; one very tiny lady even pushed him to the side; a big bearded man started yelling in the very back… Harry threw up his hands and squeezed himself out of the bus.

"This is what I get for leaving in such a hurry", Harry thought angrily as he watched more and more people get into the bus.

He quickly checked his webshooters and calmly walked into an alley, not trying to draw any suspicion to himself.

As soon as he was out of view, he ran and leapt into the air, landing on a wall and hastily climbed up it.

He quickly scrambled up on his feet at the same time as he threw off his clothes he wore over his newly updated costume; it wasn't drastically different from his last one but it certainly looked sleeker and had a few new upgrades.

"Let's get home Harry", he mumbled to himself. "Easy. Right?"

Finally in costume he took a leap up into the air, quickly shot out a web line and swung away.

Letting himself get high enough, he let go off his web line and curled into a ball, spinning a few times before stretching himself out and attaching another line.

Before he knew it, he was outside aunt Petunia's apartment. He landed with a thud on his own window, checked no one was there and hurried inside.

Without any issue he got his suit off and threw it in the attic above, shut the hatch and fell down in his bed.

Then he realized he still had his mask on and threw himself out of bed towards the door. Doing so he almost fell over his trunk that just lied there in the middle of his messy room but caught himself in time.

He took off his mask, carefully peeked his head outside his room to check that aunt Petunia wasn't at home.

Exhausted and overheating Harry let himself fall down on his bed, clutching the mask in his hand hard.

The sun was practically boiling him alive but he found that he felt so tired that he didn't care, he just wanted to sleep. His eyelids closed shut and he just laid there while the rest of the world felt like it was starting to spin around him.

It actually felt kind of nice… drifting away into forgetfulness. The world kept spinning and he started feeling slightly numb, like his body was still there but everything felt so heavy he might as well sink through his bed and the floor.

At some point he started dozing off and waking up again, and constantly found himself somewhere between asleep and awake.

The world was spinning, he fell asleep and woke up very briefly. It kept going like that until he had the strangest dream about that mean old editor-in-chief Vernon Dursley taking his ice cream cone, it was stinking hot outside and Harry needed a refreshment. But Dursley just kept laughing at him and took every ice cream cone in sight.

"Hey, those are mine", Harry said. "Give them back."

Dursley stuffed his face with ice cream, laughing and telling him how he looked like a particularly ugly spider he stomped on this morning while everything kept spinning faster and faster… and then he somehow tripped and fell into a lake.

The shock from a cold stream of water ripped him from both his dreams and senses. He had never heard himself scream like that before, it was piercing his ears and he wished for it to stop.

The water didn't stop and he didn't know how to make it stop. He couldn't see who or what was causing this sudden flood. He didn't know why or how he did it, but some sort of reflex made him shoot a web line that hit the wall behind his attacker.

The stream of water finally let up and he stared up at Hermione. He was sitting on the floor in the shower completely soaked.

Hermione looked more pleased with herself than anything. She was dressed as if she was expecting the winter to start roll in, but looked very sunburned.

"What was that for?" Harry yelled.

"You're finally awake. I've called you at least twenty times, your aunt called you, I yelled at you and none of that woke you up?"

"I could've walked in here myself", Harry spluttered as he scrambled himself up standing against the wall.

He felt a quick sting in his scar, but these days it happened on a regular basis so he was used to it. Recently his dreams involving Voldemort had occurred more and more, and he had a nasty feeling something wasn't quite right.

"Not in the state you were in. You honestly need to take care of yourself", she handed him a bottle of water which he downed almost immediately.

"So, do you mind telling me how you broke in? Did you climb the fire-escape? When did you even get here?" Harry had at least ten more questions but got interrupted by Hermione kissing him.

"We can catch up after you get out of those clothes."

After a shower, a change of clothes and a meal scraped together from various left overs in the freezer, Harry finally got caught up.

From what Hermione told him, things were uneasy where she lived; people had gone missing, strange things have been sighted, things of that nature.

And the way she got into Petunia's apartment? Since Hermione was of legal age in the wizarding world, she had simply apparated as close as possible and let herself in.

Aunt Petunia would go mad if she knew someone breaking into her apartment so easily.

In the middle of their conversation, Harry noticed the rain hammering on the windows outside.

The weather outside had turned very strange indeed, hard winds, rain was pouring down and the strangest of all: hail. Tiny tiny ice balls drumming against the window. In the middle of July.

"It was getting cold before I went here, and only got worse after it", Hermione said.

While Harry felt slightly concerned, she didn't look worried at all. What was Voldemort planning? As if she had read his thoughts she said, "But maybe there's nothing to worry about? Rain isn't rare during the summer."

"Maybe", but Harry couldn't resist the worry in his chest grow ever larger.

Author's end of chapter notes: I've taken some criticism from Broken Web, attempting to make Hermione less of a pain in the butt. Did I succeed or maybe it's too early to tell?

I also attempted to dial back Harry's aggressiveness – I chalked it up to the connection to Voldemort but maybe I went too far with Broken Web.

On top of that I want to mix in more of the core Harry Potter story and wizarding world.

Originally, I also was going to jump right into the action and have Harry and the Avengers fight Loki but I think this is better.