A/N: I know I am really bad at consistent updates, but please be reassured that this fic is now fully plotted, and there are probably going to be three or four more chapters? No promises on when they'll appear, but it will be completed (eventually).
Over the next week, Harry waited for Phil to slowly begin receiving information back from the bugs they'd dropped on Stark's board members, but the data was disappointing. The bugs yielded nothing relevant to Stark's case. They did reveal evidence of some minor embezzlement by one of the board members, which Phil turned over to Ms. Potts, but not a hint that any of them were complicit in Stark's kidnapping.
It was incredibly frustrating to not have any leads at all.
Harry and her ICW team, which consisted of Ron, an American Auror called Brian Williams, and a Romanian Auror named Yaron Matras, worked well together, and Harry knew she couldn't have asked for a better team unless Hermione was also on it. (And Harry had asked her to join, but she was already too invested in her projects within the Ministry, and becoming the Minister of Magic herself within the next five years.) No, the tricky part was Afghanistan itself. The single Auror that the Afghani Ministry had sent to act as liaison had laughed when Harry had explained where they needed to search. She'd thought he was being rude, at first, but it was clear now that he was simply better aware of the futility of their task.
Finding where Stark had been initially held had been no problem but tracing down where those who had kidnapped him had run off to was near impossible. There were miles and miles of mountains and caves, and although there hadn't been nearly enough evidence to suggest that a wizard had actually been with the kidnappers, the ward-stone meant there was some connection, and the fact that they still hadn't found them yet… well, Harry was sure they had obtained more magical means of hiding themselves.
Harry sighed and dropped her head down on the stack of forms in front of her. She'd finally had to leave the other three on the search while she caught up on paperwork. She did have to keep the ICW up to date, even if there was nothing to report, but she really didn't like doing paperwork herself.
She was wistfully daydreaming of watching Phil do his paperwork, and of the look of totally focused concentration he got, when Auror Williams' jaguar Patronus leapt through the wall. Just the sight of it made her spring to attention; he wouldn't have sent it if there wasn't urgent news.
"It's Stark," came Williams' voice from the jaguar, a little breathlessly. "We finally had something; they're called Ten Rings, but seems like a couple rings broke off, 'cuz we Traced some of them down to this place called Gulmira. We were establishing a perimeter when Stark just flew in, he's wearing some kind of flashy metal armor thing, shooting off bullets and rockets and what have you. Looks amazing, if I'm honest, but he's kinda obliterating all our terrorists here… ah, he's just flown off again – Merlin, he's fast. We'll see if there's anyone left to bring in, I guess."
The Patronus had begun to fade during the last sentence and had completely gone by the last word, but Harry was already up and moving, silently cursing Stark's interference. Ron and the others had Gulmira under control; she needed to see if Phil could get eyes on Stark.
With a quiet pop, she appeared in Phil's office, although the only indication he gave that he was aware of her presence was a twitch of his fingers, as he was completely engrossed by a rapidly moving surveillance feed on his computer.
"Oh, good, you've got him," Harry said in relief, leaning over his desk to get a better look.
"Don't tell me," Phil said. "That's Stark?"
"Who else?" Harry snorted, just as two F-15 aircraft slid into position behind Stark. "Er, should you maybe call the Army off?"
She watched nervously as Stark, enclosed in his… body armor, for lack of a better word, dipped and twirled, putting the pilots to the test.
"I think he'll be fine," Phil said. "Besides, Colonel Rhodes can take care of the Air Force, if need be."
"If you say so," Harry shrugged, willing to take his word on it, and then stuck an elbow out to him. "We should head him off in Malibu. Want a lift?"
Phil smiled and took her arm.
Harry and Phil had barely cleared the apparition point at Stark's Malibu home when Ms. Potts Apparated in behind them. She didn't look surprised to see them at all.
"I'm going to hex him," she said to Harry and Phil fiercely, in greeting.
"I hope you'll let us ask a few questions first?" Harry said a bit weakly in the face of her fury.
"Yes, yes," Ms. Potts said, striding past them towards the house, stilettos clicking rapidly. Harry and Phil exchanged a glance of shared awe and fear of the woman, and then quickly followed after her.
As they were walking down the drive, a noise in the sky caught Harry's attention, and she looked up to see the flashy red-and-gold armor that they had just been watching on Phil's monitor streaking in, fast.
Ms. Potts had stopped to observe it as well, and her eyes flashed angrily as it turned, slowing to make a descent somewhere into the back of the house. She started walking again as it disappeared from sight, but Harry could hear her muttering various hexes and jinxes beneath her breath. She did not envy the greeting Stark was going to get from his PA, and only wished it wouldn't be completely unprofessional of her to hex him, too.
As it was, they let Ms. Potts lead the way down to the workshop, where they found Tony Stark stuck in some strange apparatus which was attempting to remove parts of the metal armor from the lower half of his legs, with the rest of it already off and scattered on the floor around him.
"What," began Ms. Potts, dangerously, and Stark, as well as the machine, froze in place, "were you thinking?"
"Well, y'see Pep, I just –"
Ms. Potts drew her wand and pointed it at the nearest armor piece.
"No, no, no, no, no," Stark said frantically. "Okay, okay, I give, just let me get the rest of this off, yeah?"
Ms. Potts made no objection, and so Harry and Phil waited with her while Stark and his machine removed the boots of his armor.
"Uh, alright, so um," Stark glanced nervously at Ms. Potts' wand, "there was a news story I saw last week after the gala – actually, no, a reporter at the gala showed me the pictures first, but I didn't believe her, probably because I slept with her. Christine something, you remember her Pep?"
Ms. Potts did not look amused, and Harry didn't blame her in the slightest. Stark cleared his throat and continued.
"Right, so I recognized one of the guys in the shots from the newscast, he was – he was one of… and I couldn't just –"
He stopped and turned away, picking up something from his workbench and fiddling with it.
"Tony," Ms. Potts said, sounding much calmer than before. "You can't just run off to a foreign country and start shooting up terrorists!"
Harry had been thinking, trying to make the unspoken connection that Stark had avoided saying aloud, and then it hit her.
"Yinsen." Harry felt Phil straighten a little next to her and knew that he understood where she was going. Stark was looking at her, startled, and Ms. Potts was frowning in apparent confusion.
"He was from Gulmira," Harry continued, and Stark nodded jerkily.
"They killed his family, and then they killed him, and I couldn't just watch as they went back there!"
Harry sighed and rubbed her forehead. Stark just had to be the only kidnap victim with the resources and capabilities to actually retaliate against his own kidnappers.
"And you didn't think to alert SHIELD or the ICW of this information?" Phil's voice was calm, but Harry was sure he wasn't. He was often willing to bend the rules – sometimes surprisingly far – but Harry knew his biggest pet peeve was poor communication. It was the reason that Barton had gotten Phil a customized name plate for his desk last Christmas that said: 'Talk to me'. It had been his favorite gift and Harry couldn't even be mad at Barton for getting a better gift than her because it was so perfect.
Anyway, Stark definitely didn't look like he'd realized just how annoyed he'd just made Phil; in fact, he only looked more defiant.
"Like that would've gotten anything done," he muttered, obviously not trying to keep his voice down.
"My team was already on-site in Gulmira and putting up containment wards when you arrived," Harry told Stark, finally letting some of her frustration at his actions through. "Hopefully, some of them are still alive to interrogate so we can track down the rest of the Ten Rings."
Stark finally did look guilty at that, cutting his eyes away and down to the floor, and Ms. Potts appeared to be pleased that someone was finally driving the point home. Harry made a split-second decision.
"Well, if you're going to help, you'd better show us what your armor can do."
