Harry just grinned. "You do realise that means you have to find something else as a Christmas present, don't you?"
The alarm on Tony's face had a few people laughing.
"You mean I can't just give her jewellery?" Tony demanded.
"No." Hermione said firmly. "No jewellery." She knew that anything Tony chose would be astronomically expensive and she would be terrified of loosing whatever it was.
"Bugger." Tony huffed.
It took using a dedicated spell wand, similar to what the Howlies had been given by the DMLE, for Tony to pass his OWLs and NEWTs that November but pass them, he did. As did Bucky, surprising himself with how much he'd picked up, just from listening to Sirius as he studied the Veil and from watching The Unit's training sessions. The examiners were quite impressed, even using a dedicated wand, they still had to cast the spells correctly or the wand just let out a fizzing sound, courtesy of Fred and George.
About the same time, Morita, Falsworth and Dum-dum started to go into the early stages of de-aging breakdown. They'd had over a year from just one dose and a booster, which Andi noted in their medical files. Before they were completely free of the potion, Morita had muttered and grumbled and swore and fronted up to Andi, stating that he wanted to take permanent version, that his arthritis was no better than it had been before the potion. Andi told him that if he did take the permanent version, he could be inoculated against arthritis.
In March 1998 the ICW were informed about The Unit and requested a representative attend their next meeting. Kingsley, Tonks and Bucky attended and laid out the what's, why's and how's of The Unit. The ICW thanked them and they returned to the UK thinking that was the end of the matter.
The summer saw Draco, Harry and Hermione complete their NEWTs at the Ministry, followed by more training with Tony and Coulson's team. With Harry and Draco leaving Hogwarts, Coulson called in a favour and Harry and Draco entered US Army Ranger training. They were cited as junior trainees for a specialist force, formed with international cooperation.
This came as a shock to Draco, as while he'd been training with Harry and the other Unit sponsored students, being thrown into The Ranger School came with little warning and was far more physically demanding than he'd expected. It took him a solid month before he stopped swearing anytime he saw Harry, who only struggled in the demolitions section, quietly stating to Draco that 'of course, he hadn't done any demolition work, they had Seamus, why would he?', which made Draco pause and nod in agreement.
After the nearly nine weeks of Ranger training at Fort Benning, the pair were given a generic Ranger badge, a winged skull wearing the Ranger beret over crossed rifles, to sew onto their uniforms and allowed a week with their friends and girlfriends… Hermione and Daphne's younger sister, Astoria… before being shipped off to the US Navy's Coranado base to undertake SEAL training. They started at the bottom and worked their way up. Other than the occasional three-day pass, it would be a full year before the pair would be return to the UK. If they'd been American and members of the US Navy, there would have been a further eighteen months to two years of training before they would have been deployed to units around the world. As it was, they were able to skip that and head back to the island and their families, with a second badge for their uniforms, an eagle holding a trident and rifle, over an anchor, a generic SEAL insignia.
Upon their return, Peggy gave them a month before she said, 'my turn, boys' and sent them to Devon and the Royal Marines. This was another thirty-plus weeks of what Draco called 'hell in the south'. This earnt them a third badge, a laurel wreath surrounding a globe, not quite the standard Royal Marines' symbol but close to it. They returned from Devon just nicely in time to enter a dilation with a handful of new recruits… and some returning members. When the dilation ended, Peggy grinned at them and sent them to do the Special Forces Selections, if they passed… and they did… they would be given badges bearing the SAS's winged parachute to add to their uniforms.
Clint laughed and showed off a similar collection of badges, telling them that it's not all that uncommon for S.H.I.E.L.D. to send promising agents to complete one or another but that the Director would only send someone with the potential to be a Strike leader, to do more than one type of training. Like them, he had Ranger, SEAL, Royal Marines and SAS badges, even if he rarely displayed the last pair.
While Harry and Draco were away, those based on the island weren't idle.
Neville, Dean and Seamus entered the Auror academy, they weren't going to been joining the corps, but they needed the accreditation of Auror and Auror trainer, before they could legally start training The Unit's members and have the Ministry recognise them. All three emerged with a badge that bore the crossed wands of Academy graduates, this was superimposed over a ball of exploding bluebell flames, designating that they were accredited as Auror and Hit Wizard trainers.
Harry and Draco, in between Ranger training and SEAL training spent the better part of a day being rigorously tested by the Academy's senior trainers before being given a badge that bore two wands crossing, superimposed over a ball of sparks. It wasn't until they returned after completing the Royal Marines training that they were told that this badge recognised them as having completed both Auror and Hit Wizard training.
Hermione, meanwhile, was working her fingers to the bones, compiling training manuals for all the various modules that The Unit's members had access to, from animagi to warding and everything in between. In addition to this, she was working on a thesis for a charms mastery, which would be followed by a transfiguration mastery.
Luna had stayed at Hogwarts for another year, she wanted to take NEWTs in potions and astronomy, as well as CoMC and it was difficult for her to fast-track the latter, as the WEA based it on actual time with various creatures. Once she finished NEWTs, she took over the quibbler and while she continued to release the quarterly magazine, she also printed off monthly newsletters so that The Unit's members could catch up on who was doing what. She seemed to be the only one that knew exactly what everyone else was doing, even Kingsley was reputed to call her and ask who was where and when they would return.
Colin had joined Luna at Hogwarts, along with his brother and the younger members. He ran the extracurricular training and kept an eye out for prospective recruits, be they muggleborn, halfblood or pureblood. It wasn't quite the D.A. but it was close. When he finished at Hogwarts, he would sign on as a healer's apprentice with Andi and Dennis would take the senior position at Hogwarts.
Peggy had sat down and completed the GCSE exams to get a General Education certificate and was studying business management at Oxford University. It was the closest they could find to what was needed. No university offered a management program for Counter Terrorism Organisations and no-one wanted to involve Fury.
Falsworth, Morita and Dum-dum all took Andi's permanent de-aging potion, not all at the same time, though. Morita took it the first day that Andi permitted, one month after the temporary potion wore off and he never looked back. He had contacted his son in the US and the man was amenable to claiming… on paper… that Morita was his grandson via his long dead son. Falsworth lasted until the middle of the following winter before he sighed and asked Andi for the potion, although he didn't go quite as young as Morita, who elected to be in his early twenties, settling for mid-thirties and having Coulson alter his identification papers to have him documented as the grandson of his older sister, Georgina.
Dum-dum held out until the chilly depths of January 2000 when he thumped on Peggy's oxford apartment, two years after returning to the US as Dum-dum, the WWII veteran. Peggy just shook her head, let him in and handed him the potion and his 'alternate identity' papers. How she knew he was coming was anyone's guess, but Harry thought a blonde archer may have dropped her a message.
"No." Harry said when Coulson and Peggy entered the little office that he'd claimed as his.
"Excuse me?" Peggy said.
"No." Harry repeated. "No, I won't go on another training jaunt. No, I'm not going through selections for some exclusive military force. No, just… No."
"Fair enough." Coulson said. "That's not why we're here."
"I don't want to know." Harry glared at them. "I still have bruises from your last 'idea'. Take them somewhere else."
Peggy laughed. "No, dear, nothing like that. We'd like you to have a little more administration skills but they can learnt over time."
"Why we're here is… outside The Unit's usual duties." Coulson said. "Barton and Romanov are in Budapest and they're a little over their heads."
"How little?" Harry was paying attention, now.
"The man we sent them to terminate turns out to be not a man but a wizard, a werewolf actually, and he's been turning children and experimenting on them. We need someone to be a go between, between S.H.I.E.L.D, the ICW representatives, the World Health Organisation and the World Security Council. Some want to kill everyone, some want 'samples' to study, some want to free the children and some want to 'cure' them. We need someone that can talk to all of the representatives and keep them in the loop without surrendering what's best for the children."
"And you think that's me?" Harry snorted. "I'm twenty, no-one's going to listen to me."
"You walk in, showing off all six badges, armed with guns and wands and they're going to listen." Peggy said.
"Five badges." Harry corrected.
"Six." Peggy dropped a badge on the desk. It was a pair of circular wings with a wand and a knife crossed in front of them. "These are the aerial troops' badges, the ground troops have a paw print."
"And the non-animagi?" Harry looked at the badge but didn't reach for it.
"A boot print." Coulson answered.
"Do we have a uniform yet?" Harry asked.
"We do, it's based on muggle tactical wear, but we modified it." Peggy said. "Traditional style tac pants and boots. The tops are double layered. The underlayer is embroidered with incoming magic-cancelling runes. The outer layer is modelled after duelling robes, is sleeveless and formfitting to the hip. They're long bulletproof vests, basically."
"Colour?"
"Steel grey for the pants and underlayer." Peggy answered. "Black for the vest, boots, webbing and harnesses for weapons. The pants, underlayer and webbing are all acromantula silk, woven with Tony's steel thread. Not quite bulletproof but certainly magic proof to all bar the unforgivables. We haven't managed to make a portable version of Bill's ward, yet. Boots are Hungarian Horntail, we can't find anything more impervious."
"Weapons?"
"Your choice." Coulson said. "But I'd recommend at least one pistol, preferably two, two wands and a handful of knives. Make them think twice before they dismiss you."
"No." Harry said to the representative from the World Security Council, the World Health Organisation, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the ICW. "Magical infections don't require physical contact to infect a muggle with an illness. Plastic gloves are useless."
"This is why you burnt the bodies immediately?" The WHO rep asked.
"Yes." Harry nodded. "Our Healer and arithmancy Master predicted a potential global pandemic if even one body was removed." He looked to Alexander Pierce. "Which is why the body that your agent took was returned and your agent as dosed with a purifying potion before being restrained and handed over to security."
"Secretary Pierce?" The Healer from the ICW looked at Pierce.
"I wasn't aware of the severity of the condition." Pierce replied. "We figured that it was relegated to magical beings only. Our scientists thought it might be useful to know how to counter such an illness, in the future."
"Fire." Harry said. "Kill and burn. That's the only counter."
"There's no cure?" The WHO rep asked.
"Our documented medical history goes back to Ancient Mesopotamia." Harry said. "And it's been the number one most dangerous condition known to us. Once infection is proven… and that can be done at a distance… Kill and burn are the only options. Everything else we've tried has failed. Immunisations, vaccinations, isolation, de-aging, kill and bury. If the bodies aren't burnt, it spreads like wildfire, worse even." He slumped in his seat. "We just killed seventy-three children between the ages of three and fourteen. Do you really think we'd do that, if we had any other option? Not just kill but kill, decapitate and burn. I'm going to be adding that to my list of nightmares, for the rest of my life."
"Was it really that bad?" Pierce started to look alarmed for the first time.
"You want to watch?" Harry huffed in disgust. "Fine, you can watch." He flicked his wand out and tapped it against the wall at his back. The wall shimmered and images began to form. "But you watch to the end, no running away like cowards." He cast a silencing ward around himself, he didn't want to hear the screams, again.
Thirty-five minutes later, the images faded. The reps all looked ill, some of them had been ill.
"Now." Harry let the silencing ward fall. "Anyone think we did that for fun?"
All the reps shook their heads.
"No." Harry sighed. "There are just over six billion people on the planet. How many do you think would be left if that got out?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Zero. There might be a very unlucky few, who are immune or unsusceptible but that's unlikely."
"Why do you say unlucky few?" Pierce asked. "Wouldn't you consider yourself lucky to survive that?"
"At first maybe but not in the long run." Harry denied. "If that got out, the world population would be in the tens, maybe hundreds, not even a thousand. Certainly not enough to provide enough biodiversity for the human race to survive. Inbreeding would become rampant, resulting in birth defects and early deaths. And that's assuming that those left were even able to find other people, given distances likely to be involved."
"Ah…" Pierce nodded.
"Exactly." Harry nodded back. "Your agent was an idiot and nearly wiped out the entire world. Good job, give him a promotion." The last was said in an angry and sarcastic tone. "We're done. I'm going home to surround myself in happy young people that I don't have to kill." He stomped from the room, glaring at anyone that got in his way.
He continued to stomp until he got to the facility's medical area.
"Agents Barton and Romanov?" He asked a white-coat-wearing junior agent.
The young agent went pale and pointed at a door. Harry nodded and rapped his knuckles on the door.
"Enter." Romanov's voice was tired but Harry still opened the door.
"Romanov." Harry said. "Good to see you awake."
"Potter." The redhead nodded. "How bad was it?"
"Bad." Was his answer. "How's he?" He nodded his head in the direction of a sedated Clint Barton.
"Whatever you two did, it's going to take a while for him to put it behind him." She answered.
"A long while." Harry said. "A very long while."
"That bad?"
"Yes." He dropped a copy of his report on the foot of her bed. "I'm going home to the island for the summer and I hope that I never have to do something like that again. Ever."
"May I?" Natasha touched the report's cover.
"Sure, just give it to Fury when you're done." Harry said. "I never want to see that again."
His portkey dropped him on the island and he walked slowly into the manor, ignoring the worried looks thrown his way. Down halls and steps until he reached the tub/pool that they used whenever anyone went into shock. He turned the taps on and began the grisly process of removing his uniform, dropping it and his weapons in the large basket put there for dirty clothes. Once naked he slid into the water and sighed.
A flicker of movement at his side told him that Hermione had joined him.
"Bad?" She asked.
"Beyond bad." Harry answered. "Seventy-three children between three and fourteen had been deliberately infected with Wheldon's Contagion." She gasped in shock. "We had to kill and burn them before vanishing the ashes."
"Oh, Harry…" Hermione settled herself on his lap and he clung to her, finally letting his emotions go and crying.
An hour later, there was a tapping on Harry's bedroom door. Hermione flicked her wand to unlock it but didn't move from her position of little spoon.
"Hey…" Sirius stuck his head in the door. "How's he doing?"
"Rough."
"One to ten?"
"Fifty."
"Ouch." Sirius grimaced. "We read the report. He was fighting for his life. For all our lives. Wheldon's Contagion would have wiped out the world population within a week, if he and Clint hadn't done what they did."
"I know." Hermione said. "He told me.
"Coulson's sending Clint home to Laura." Sirius said. "She's pregnant."
"It's going to take a while for them to get over this." Hermione said.
"You reckon he'll pull out of The Unit?"
"No, not Harry. He's more likely to immerse himself even more." Hermione shrugged. "He has a 'saving people' thing. He just can't help himself."
Thousands of miles away, Clint Barton wrapped his arms around his wife and laid his hands on her swollen belly.
"Can we call him Cooper?" He asked, remembering the children that Harry had levitated into the bubble of fiendfyre. Documents said that six of them came from one family and their surname had been Cooper, they were the only ones to be identified.
"Cooper?" Laura repeated, she had listened when Clint told her about what had happened and cried with him afterward. "Cooper… I like it."
"Same here." Natasha sat a few feet away, like them she was watching the sunset over the trees.