A/N: When I say trying to write this chapter was like pulling teeth, I mean it, lucky number thirteen fought me the whole way and that way was loooong. This is the longest chapter I've published yet, I had half a mind to cut it in half but you all deserve this. So suffer.
Harry was back in that little room, strapped to that cot, preparing for his second dose of hallucinogens by the end of the week. He knew what to expect when Howard stuck the needle in his arm this time around, was able to brace himself for what was to come, but somehow that made it worse.
The apparitions had changed; it was Ginny this time, emaciated, riddled with the telltale growths of scrofungulus. She'd lost her beautiful hair, the little bit of her skin visible beneath the countless boils was ashen, gray, and she stared at him with eyes full of hatred.
Then there were Fred and George, standing on either side of him, separated by a force through which they couldn't see each other as they cursed him and his name and they day their younger brother looked to him and thought to call him friend. Because it had been that to ruin their lives, to separate them by a barrier in which there was only one way to cross.
Teddy was the worst.
He sat on Harry's chest, weighing more than a child his size had any right to. His little arms stretched out for the near translucent forms of his parents, he wailed for them, did all he could to reach them, and still failed.
When Harry's magic finally burst free to batter at the walls in useless defense, the vents opened wide and rushed the room with poisoned air and he was relieved.
When he roused, Howard asked him what he'd seen. His magic had reacted quicker this time, and it had been so much more violent, but Harry couldn't bring himself to say. He retreated to the corner of the lab cleared away for him specifically, to curl beneath the shock blanket Peggy handed him without a word and tried to recover. And when the allotted observation period passed, he left for home.
If he'd stuck around a while longer they might have seen the spike in his brain activity, the change in his magic that showed it was working so much sooner than they could have anticipated. But Harry's luck was infamous in that he didn't have any, so he left too soon and they missed it, hadn't even bothered to look because the last time they'd tried the procedure, it took two days before his magic saw any change. This time it barely took two hours.
Harry had decided to walk home, for fresh air and all that, already thinking of all the things he wasn't going to do in exchange for a little extra time with his bed. But then a duo of women passed him, and at first glance they were unremarkable, both were pretty with contrasting hair in light and dark and dressed neatly in the latest fashion. They weren't speaking to each other, never once glanced at each other, but he knew they were together because they walked side by side, close enough for the backs of their knuckles to brush. Perfectly innocuous.
Then he looked again, and one woman shimmered.
There were times in London when it got so hot, the sun's beams reflected off of the pavement and distorted the world in shimmering rays of heat. But it was early-January, not the time for weather that produced heatwaves, especially not heatwaves localized around just one woman. So he looked harder and longer with more than just his eyes, and he saw past the front she was hiding behind.
This woman was like Jerome. Like Fred. She was substantial, but just barely, paler than she should be, grayed and fading even in the dress that should have been as pale blue as the first flower in spring and the perfectly twisted rings of blond swept fetchingly over one shoulder.
And then he blinked and the curls were gone, burnt away, the skin across half her face, down her neck and into the neckline of her ruined dress grew spotted with blood and soot and char, her skin cracked open and peeled from the heat of a fire that had kissed too close. How she once was and what she was now twisted and morphed and merged in fluid motion between each breath and blink.
Then she looked over her shoulder to him, one moment beautiful and young, the next fire kissed and grotesque, and she looked afraid. But as if compelled by a force not her own, she shifted her course to match the sudden change in his. Harry turned on his heel and marched quickly across the street and she moved with him, away from her companion without a glance or a word. She fell into step just behind him, too wary to approach but unable to let him leave her sight.
Harry ignored her the best he could while she worked valiantly to keep up. Only once did she draw too close, but one sharp look from him and she fell back without complaint.
He needed to get away, not from her, he knew that now that she'd seen him and what he was there was no shaking her. No, he needed to get away from everyone else, witnesses who might see him interacting with thin air and call the crazy police to come scoop him off the street.
They branched away from the densely populated streets, in the direction of the south east end of London and opposite where he should be heading. The further they went the less people there were, the fewer stores without windows and doors boarded over to be seen, the rarer a building without some evidence of structural damage or fire impair was passed.
Harry had wandered into one of the many parts of the city devastated by the Blitz purely by instinct.
Or perhaps not instinct, but the directions of the shade he didn't even know he'd been listening to the entire time. The thought didn't frighten him as much as it once might have.
Destination finally reached, he stopped to lean against one of the less unsound buildings and waited. It didn't take long for the woman to catch up, no most of his waiting was because she hesitated a good few meters away, still uncertain even though the fear had gone.
"Where do you come from?"
She didn't offer a verbal response to his question, instead she turned and began walking again, this time Harry allowed her to lead. As they picked their way through the detritus more shades peeled themselves from the shadows of burnt out homes and demolished businesses; Harry allowed them each one glance before looking away, purposely unaffected. When they stopped it was at the foot of a tenement building near completely caved in on itself, the stairs leading up its stoop remained mostly intact though, so he sat and she moved to stand just beside him.
"This was your home?"
"Yes."
Harry had to strain to hear her, not because she spoke softly but because her words were spoken without the presence of any real vocal chords. It was something more than hearing, something he didn't fully understand but still could recognize.
"It's not anymore." He gently informed. "Your soul doesn't belong here."
The apple of her cheeks blistered and split with the force of her frown. "Where else is there?"
"Something is after. I've never seen it, but I know it's there."
"How?"
He shrugged, because there was no way to explain how he knew, he hadn't even believed the words until he'd said them just then, but the moment he did he'd known they were true. "Don't you want to find out for yourself? Or would you rather stay here, stuck between reality and death, haunting people who can't even see you."
"You can."
"I'm different."
"But my sister…"
Harry remembered the woman she'd been walking beside, the one she'd abandoned so quickly to follow him. "Loves you. Misses you. But she'll move on, so should you."
He held out his hand, only just enough that she'd have to move closer, bridge the gap to take it. And she did. It wasn't like what happened with Fred; there was no pain, his entire body vibrated with the pure energy of her soul, but he didn't keel over and she didn't disappear.
At his side a man appeared, dressed in simple grays he'd seen once before. The fear had returned to the woman, she could tell this newcomer was not like the other spirits who continued to linger a safe distance in the background, but she allowed Harry to pass her hand into his and even offered a tentative one of her own when Death's reaper offered her a kind smile.
"More will be coming," the reaper said, eyes wide with intrigue and trained on Harry. "In case the others might have changed their minds as well."
Harry nodded his thanks, then the reaper and his soul were gone. He rose from his stoop, headed in the direction of the more populated side of the city and finally home, but not without a warning for any who might be listening.
"When the reapers come, you'd do well not to turn them away a second time."
Harry left that demolished little corner of the city and its undead inhabitants, and the world was different. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he sawit differently, felt it differently.
The people around him were tethered to the earth, to life, by a force in which there were no words to describe. Blink and it was gone, but if he focused Harry could see them, shining strands bright and anchored to the ground beneath them.
His middle aged landlady had a tether that stretched short, she liked her smoke and her brandy, but her small son's was expansive and breathtaking for all that it spoke of life.
His encounter with the shade of that lost woman, his first not spent in confusion or fear, had changed him, allowed the power he and Howard had forced loose to take yet another form.
It was a relief when he reached his rooms, where he could draw tight his blackout curtains and fall onto the floor directly in the center of his room. Silencing charms layered his walls thick so none of the sounds of the other tenants and their evening habits breached his room. It was silent and dark and perfect after the day he'd had.
He wasn't nauseous or sore like he'd been following his first encounter with Fred, and he didn't feel terrified and a bit violated like after Jerome; his skin buzzed and felt as if her were too full of caffeine and sugar, but there was none of the fear or disgust. Never once had he felt so at ease after being an unwilling conduit of the Hallows' magic, he latched onto that, forced himself to remain in that state of calm as he tried to imaging the ripple and flow of time.
It was a river, enormous and violent and churning and he was caught right in the middle. The shore was only a few meters away, but to get to it he would have to to swim adjacent to the current that was so strong his arms felt as if they would snap just trying to bat against it.
The first step was a labor of pure stubbornness, the second a feat that took every ounce of will he had, the third he wavered and that moment of hesitation cost him everything. In an instant he was swept under and the image was gone. He snapped back to the dark of his room with a desperate scramble for air.
He got back to his feet and with a twitch of the curtains, flooded the room with light. He had failed, but his mood remained unsullied. He hadn't expected to succeed, he hadn't expected to see anything at all but he had. He'd seen time, he'd seen the ebb and flow of the stream and it was just like Death had said, once he was there he just knew what he needed to do to conquer it, to bend it to his will and twist it to suit his need. He only needed the power to do it.
And soon enough, he would.
Harry was back at base the next morning, the sun was just shy of risen and he was once again with the SSR, this time to speak with Howard who took the news of his magic's positive reaction with overwhelming optimism. His brain activity from the day before was near doubled from the last time they'd taken a measure, Howard guessed another four procedures over the course of two months and Harry might have all the power he needed.
Two months and he could be heading home. Two months. After waiting this long, having even a tentative countdown was surreal.
Howard kicked him out right after, his magic was still trying to settle and it was throwing all of his equipment off while it was, so he went to the Commandos to try and work off some of the buzzing energy beneath his skin.
He and the combat team had had their last designated training session together almost two weeks ago, but they still came to him between ops for a little extra practice. Harry looked forward to the sessions, the Commandos couldn't cast spells back at him, but it was still good to stretch his magic and perfect the spells he was learning.
But his focus was off. The Commandos were eager to fight as always, but Harry couldn't keep his attention on the magic he was meant to be casting, which resulted in spells with too little or too much power behind and their unlucky recipients being blasted ass over tea kettle more times than they weren't.
"Maybe let's take a break," Steve suggested after Harry threw Dugan clear across the room with only a leg-locking jinx.
The others grumbled their assent and moved to grab a drink, while Harry went to sit against the wall as he caught his breath and tried to reel in his magic.
When Steve came to crouch at his side he grimaced, sheepish and more than a little apologetic. "I'm distracted."
"Maybe just a little. Everything all right?"
"I had a session with Howard yesterday."
Steve looked intrigued, after Claude he understood too well the implications behind the innocent enough words. "You're okay to be casting today?"
"Maybe not so much as I thought." Harry looked down at his wand, betrayed. "Half of my fuck ups are because I'm distracted, yeah, but the other half…my magic feels off. I know it's because of yesterday, I just don't know how to fix it."
"Can't Stark help with that?"
Harry snorted "He knows about as much as I do. Less even, seeing as he's not a wizard. I should give it a few days, let it settle, then go from there."
"Well if you need to take another trip to Diagon Alley for some more of those books, you know me and Buck'll be the first to volunteer as backup."
Harry laughed and smiled wide at the man. "I wouldn't take anyone else, Captain."
Steve nudged him with a massive shoulder in teasing thanks and Harry made a show of acting as if he'd been bowled. Even if he'd been far from knocked of his feet, the simple action had more weight than Steve probably intended behind it, Harry remembered how small he he'd been before, even now, months later, he was probably still constantly correcting himself to adjust for the changes brought on by the serum.
Maybe if Harry had been able to save Erskine from dying Steve wouldn't be having such a tough time of it, the doctor surely could have given him some invaluable insight on what to expect outside of the obvious increase in strength. There had been so many questions left unanswered after his death, ones every state senator, military bigwig, and semi-involved scientists had made a point to ask Harry, the one closest to Erskine before his murder.
Was Rogers truly superhuman or had he simply been elevated to peak human strength? How severe of an injury could he heal from? What toxins could his body fight off? Was his lifespan extended thanks to the serum? Would he age? Could he die?
All questions Harry had no answers to, it had been infuriating and frustrating, especially so soon after his loss. But maybe now, after finally accepting the foreign magic inside of him, he could answer at least one?
He considered the possibility only idly, but that was as good as a command to his magic and suddenly his vision focused and Steve's tether was there. He'd seen dozens on his way home yesterday, some weak, barely clinging to the desperate grasp they had on the earth, and some firm, so deeply locked in Harry knew it would take a tragedy of epic and unexpected proportions to shake them loose before their time. But in all the tethers he'd seen, there'd been nothing like Steve's.
He wasn't so much as locked in as he was rooted; burrowed deeper than he could follow as it twisted and winded and latched and branched into a connection so strong he wondered what, if there even was anything at all, that could pry him free. It was unshakeable, unmovable and made Harry desperately wish he was able to see his own, the only tether invisible to this strange sight, if only so he might compare the two.
"What're you two hiding from the rest of us for?"
Bucky had finally grown tired of teasing Dugan over his unfortunate spill and now he was heading in their direction, and Harry, still caught up in the wonder of Steve's longevity, didn't blink away his focus in time to avoid seeing Bucky's.
Abruptly, he was reminded of the secret the other man had shared with him that day in the toilets, after his meltdown over Adalgar. The secret of the labs in a HYDRA facility he'd been locked in and given a serum of his own. There had been moments where Harry doubted if the serum Bucky had been given was on par with Steve's; there was just no way that squinty little creep Zola had accomplished what brilliant Abraham had needed actual magic to do. Especially working out of a half assed, basement lab. But Bucky's tether and the incredible strength in which it latched to life, strength that was unmistakably equal to Steve's, was proof all by itself.
And then he was just behind Steve and their two lines met. Each wound around the other, unreservedly entangling amongst each other, drawing strength from each other in way he'd yet to see any others do. It was baffling and touching and somehow private, even if he was the only one who could see it, even if they had no idea they were even doing it. Harry blinked and forced the focus to unfocus and the tethers were gone.
Bucky, still entirely oblivious came to stop just at Steve's side where he bumped him with his hip without moving his gaze from Harry.
"Dum Dum says you owe him a drink after knocking him on his ass with that blast."
Harry quirked a smile as he shook away the remnants of his surprise. "Bourbon, right?"
"Jim's is all he'll take."
"Well I like cognac. Remy Martin. Let him know he can buy me a bottle in thanks for preparing him for a fight he would have lost otherwise."
That earned him a belly deep laugh and a playful salute. "Yes, sir. I'll let him know."
The suggestion didn't go over too well with Dugan, as Harry knew it wouldn't. The tirade it set him off on was loud and long. He didn't even notice when Harry slipped out halfway through; he'd be stuck there all day if he didn't take the chance to get out when presented, besides he had something he wanted to do.
Claude had been released a week after his capture, his memory of that day and all the others after had been carefully wiped away by Harry's wand. Then they'd dumped him two streets over, close enough to where they had found him as to not cause suspicion, but still far enough to keep him from finding them once again.
Adalgar hadn't been so lucky. There'd been no improvement as far as the medical staff could tell, when Harry had gone in and touched his soul he'd done so without the caution and modicum of finesse he'd practiced with Claude, he'd damaged something in the man. Perhaps irreparably. The sleep terrors he'd suffered those first few nights had long since passed, now he was just still, always still. Nothing they did got a reaction for him; noise, light, pain, he had retreated so far into himself nothing they did could reach him,
Harry still made it a point to see him when he could. He wasn't sure Adalgar would appreciate it all that much if he was being honest, but no one else came to see the man and since Harry had been the one to put him in that state the least he could do was offer him some kind of stimulation.
"The muggles have done their best, but they say nothing they can do will wake you." Someone in medical had been nice enough to move a chair into the room so Harry wouldn't have to kneel at the bedside every time he came to visit. He moved it flush against the bed and reclined into its hard back, inexplicably weary. "I let them try what they could, it's impressive the medicines they can accomplish without magic. But this is something they say they can't fix, so maybe it's time I intervened? I'm no good at healing, but maybe I can stop at Diagon, see what I can find there that might fix you up."
He pressed down on a wrinkle in the sheets only a few centimeters away from Adalgar's hand, it smoothed under his touch but another popped up just above where it'd been.
"If it doesn't work though…if it doesn't work I'll make sure they continue to care for you, or find someone who can. I won't let them put you down because they've lost interest, I'll continue to hope you'll get better until the day you do or the day you die."
There was no answer of course, there never was, but maybe Adalgar's breath settled in his chest just a little, maybe the frantic pulse Harry could see beating away at his throat calmed just enough. Or maybe it was all just hope.
Steve and his men, left for Liechtenstein the same day in pursuit of the latest lead on Schmidt and his cohort. They returned, broken, bleeding, half-dead, and their first real fight against Grindelwald's men under their belt.
For weeks after learning of their existence they'd been prepared to face Harry's kind, they'd been eager if only to pit their skills against an opponent so different from anything else they'd seen. But when it came to it, the only difference was the weapon utilized, there was still blood and agony and death. No matter how above those without magic these wizards thought they were they still were entirely the same as them when it came to war. And they lost still, despite their magic and their unwarranted arrogance, the Commandos had learned from Harry and they'd learned well. There had been blood shed and limbs broken, it would take time for them to recover physically and even longer mentally, but they'd survived where the wizards hadn't, they'd walked away where the wizards had fled, and in doing so earned information that would quickly prove to be of value.
"Steve was the one to find it," Bucky said during debrief. Only he, Steve, and Morita were present for it, the rest were recovering in medical to be debriefed at a later day. "They had a room hidden behind magic. Like the kind on the alley…wards? We got that same feeling of wrongness, like we'd forgotten something important and should turn back right away, but he recognized what it was and shook the worst of it off. There were enchantments on it still, things that wouldn't let us even open the door," he smiled, a shadow of mischief finding its way past his exhaustion, "but the walls didn't have any kind of magic on them. We broke through and found all of that."
That being documents, newspaper clipping, plans, all vital information regarding the movement and tactics of Grindelwald's men, all spread along the center of the table.
"We didn't understand half of what it said," Steve admitted. "But first glance we could tell it was important."
That was what Harry was there for. He'd already begun sorting through the pile, trying to decipher the near illegible scrawl on the closest sheet of parchment. It was a recipe, untitled but he only needed to pick out a few words to understand what it was; lacewing flies stewed for twenty-one days, powdered bicorn horn, fluxweed, knotgrass, genetic material.
"This is a potion recipe," he explained. "Polyjuice, it lets you take on the appearance of anyone as long as you've got a bit of their DNA- hair, fingernails, blood even."
"How do you tell they're an imposter?" Phillips asked, worry already making itself known in the dark frown on his lips.
"You don't. Not through any physical means at least, back home we had a bit of problem with polyjuiced figures running around so we got into the habit of asking security questions, something only the real person could know. It only worked though if we knew the person."
"What could the wizards be using it for?"
Harry hummed noncommittally as he continued sifting through the pile, grabbing onto anything that made even some kind of sense. "Give me time to look through all of this and I might be able to say? It's a mess and half of it is random junk from home."
"Can we help at all?" Steve asked.
Harry was quick to push half the pile in his direction. "Sort anything you might understand from everything you don't? I'll read through the latter while you tackle everything else, that'll definitely help this go quicker."
"Gimme one of those stacks." Bucky was already standing to reach for his own pile of papers, and Harry was only too happy to oblige.
Phillips and Peggy left to speak with the remaining Commandos, while Harry, Steve, Bucky, and Morita set in on the daunting task of sorting through the documents that easily blanketed the table five times over.
A good amount of it was random junk, just like Harry had said; broom adverts ripped from magazines, correspondence to and from family members, personal notes on everything from the best wand polishes to potions to fight off hair loss. But there were still plenty of documents of interest, and while most of it wasn't dated, enough was to give them a timeline of Grindelwald's movement.
"There's a lot on the tesseract here," Steve said some time into their search. "You were right about this being Grindelwald's play, same as Schmidt's."
"Supervillains are never very unique in their goals," Harry derided, eyes glued to a sheet of parchment he was sure had been enchanted to be as unintelligible as it was. "They want the biggest, shiniest toy and they want to destroy the world with it. They're depressingly easy to predict."
"You've had some experience with supervillains then?"
Harry looked up just long enough to offer Morita a rueful smile. "You'd be surprised."
The parchment wasn't enchanted, he finally decided, its writer just had shit handwriting and an obsession with the kneazles he'd left behind. It joined the quidditch adverts in the pile of waste.
It took hours to work through everything, even with two supersoldiers and a semi-trained wizard the process was slow and tedious. Every potion recipe, coded letter, agent dossier, and sloppily drawn blueprint was looked over, passed around, and commented on until finally they understood the one big plot it all came together to be.
"There's a HYDRA base in Italy," Steve explained to Phillips, Peggy, and the remaining Commandos who'd been dragged from medical earlier than they probably should have been, "somewhere around the Ligurian Alps. It's very well hidden and is where a scientist by the name of Vsevolod Kuznetsov does his work."
"I met him a few times in Azzano," Bucky said, "he and Zola were best pals even though Kuznetsov worked primarily on the weapons."
"The tesseract powered weapons," Steve stressed. "The wizards believe he's seen the cube, they think he could tell them where to find it."
"They're going to hit his base then, and get its location out of him?" Peggy guessed.
"And once they do, they're going to use his DNA and their polyjuice potion to get to it."
"Do you think we should let them?"
There was a beat of confused silence, then Peggy shook her head, leveling Dugan, the speaker of that controversial question, with a look slack with disbelief. "What if we did what?"
He shrugged, unmoved by the reception his question had received. "There were three wizards today. Only three wizards, who were half asleep and caught by surprise and they still put up a hell of a fight. We have a supersoldier on our side and we barely came out of that fight alive. Imagine an army of them, marching against Schmidt's stronghold, surprise on their side this time. They might very well do what we haven't yet."
"Except when they win they get the cube and now we're fighting an enemy that could be worse than Red Skull and his guys," Bucky pointed out.
"Not if we get it first."
Steve nodded, of course the first to understand where Dugan was trying to lead them. "Use the wizards as a distraction and grab the cube while HYDRA is occupied fighting them."
Dugan nodded, satisfied. "Maybe the wizards win, maybe HYDRA, or maybe we'll get lucky and they wipe each other out. But no matter how the fight ends, we'll be the ones to have won."
Peggy hummed contemplatively "It's a risk…" she looked to Harry, the one who knew the wizards and what they were capable of the best. "Could it work?"
He sat and considered for a moment, remembering his own war and the way Voldemort had fought, then the little he'd learned of Grindelwald.
"It could," he finally said, "if it weren't for one thing. Magic has made wizards cowards. They don't do frontal assault, not if it can be avoided; they'll only send a few and they'll go in quietly, they'll snatch the Tesseract from Schmidt without him even being aware they were there."
"We'll sabotage their plan then." Dugan countered, not willing to see his idea fall to ruin so quickly. "Find some way to get them caught in the act and force them to fight."
"You could," Harry allowed, "but then their element of surprise would be gone. Once the first of them dies they'll flee, same as they did with you."
"Take the wizards out of the equation then," Steve decided. "They've got us this far, but we don't need them any longer."
Phillips grunted, intrigued despite himself. "Explain."
"We get to the base before them and we grab Kuznetsov. He'll tell us where to find the tesseract before the wizards and we'll get it ourselves."
Stated as simply as that, none of them could think of a reason why it wouldn't work. Sure none of them were particularly thrilled with the idea of hitting Schmidt at home, they preferred Dugan's plan where they allowed the wizards to lay down their lives fighting HYDRA while they slipped in quiet and grabbed what they needed. But a full out assault on Schmidt's base had always been the end game no need to try and change it up now.
"When was the attack on Kuznetsov meant to take place?" Peggy inquired.
"We were able to narrow it down to three or four days from now, around twenty-one hundred hours, Italy's time. They've been tracking Kuznetsov's schedule, he spends a few hours around then in his lab, alone."
"The perfect time to hit." Phillips scrubbed a hand over his eyes, taking a moment to think. "We've got a camp in France, about a day's hike away from where your guy is holing up. We'll set up there, figure out how to get you in and out once we've got boots on the ground."
Steve nodded in understanding. "How soon will we be heading out?"
"The very minute I can get transport arranged. Bunk here tonight and be prepared to leave on a moment's notice, we're working with no time at all."
Phillips didn't give Harry an option on whether or not he wanted to join them in their expedition to France. These were his people the Commandos were preparing to go up against, the colonel needed to have him close at hand in the event anything went wrong.
Harry didn't appreciate being given no choice at all, but when the charter plane Phillips had managed to secure on such short notice took off only a few minutes past three in the morning, he was still aboard. Exhausted and grumpy, but there.
But then they touched down and his disgruntlement for being forced to come along shifted to full out resentment.
The camp was a hive of death. Shades stalked everywhere, dressed in the combat gear they'd died in, entire limbs missing and holes blown through their heads. And there were reapers. Death's chosen ignored the already departed, they'd made their efforts when they'd first arrived, but these men were too damaged by the trauma of their deaths to even desire the promise of peace on the other side that they were offered. So the reapers focused on the living; dogging their steps, lingering just outside the entrance to the infirmary, hoisting themselves into the back of the vehicles that carted men by the dozens back out into the trenches. It was overwhelming the desolation that clung to the place. Whoever said there was peace and beauty in death had never seen a place like this.
But then Steve arrived and a palpable shift in the air occurred. The last time Harry had been in a camp with him he'd been dressed in his garish USO outfit, singing along with a choir of perfectly coifed women. The men had hated him, Harry had heard a tale or two of rotten tomatoes and bared arse cheeks during his one and only performance. But the men here looked to the supersoldier with awe, veneration, hope.
Steve wasn't used to, it was evident in the uneasy slope of his shoulders that the eyes that locked on him from the moment he stepped from the plane to the moment he ducked into his tent weren't something he'd ever be comfortable with.
Harry was just glad that for once he wasn't the focus of that unnerving adoration.
He was assigned a tent with Falsworth, who was an easy enough companion and one Harry had built rapport with through virtue of sharing a home country. Neither of them wasted much time before choosing a side of the tent to roll out their cots and collapsing on the flimsy things instantly, desperate to regain some of the sleep lost thanks to the late-night flight. And they remained there until Dugan came tearing in hours later, admonishing them for missing lunch but committed to making sure they didn't skip out on their evening meal.
"You've been rubbing elbows with moneybags Stark too long," the ginger said, directing a devious grin Harry's way, "I've been waiting to see you try to live off our rations."
Harry snorted. The joke was on him, he'd lived in a cupboard and survived off of stale bread and moldy cheese for the first half of his life, he would eat anything.
"Looks like corned beef and veg hash today."
Harry accepted his metal tray of rations without much fuss, even if the lot of it looked like something a hippogriff had spat up. The beef and veg hash had an interesting texture to it and of course he'd been handed a mug of coffee, he could barely stand the taste of it but the US troops seemed to live off the stuff. When he settled in at the table the Commandos had commandeered, he slid the cup over to Bucky who'd already finished his own and was trying to cajole a bit from an unwavering Steve.
He hid a smile at the sergeant's pleased murmurs behind a mouthful of his hash, and maybe he should have gone slower on his first bite because the concoction was thick. There wasn't much flavor to it, even with the corned beef mixed in, but he could survive that, it was the texture that got him. Whatever filler the kitchen had added to round the dish out made each bite feel like a dense, cakey mess.
Dugan was watching him over his own plate with something close to delight. "How's it treating you?"
"I've had beans flavored to taste like actual vomit and earwax," Harry took a pointed bite of his admittedly disgusting dinner, "this is nothing in comparison."
"Spoilsport."
Harry laughed and bent over his tray to focus on shoveling down the rest of the hash before it got cold, how it might taste then made him shudder just to consider. It was a tough job, one he almost lost when he nearly choked on an undercooked carrot, but even Aunt Petunia would be impressed with his tenacity and soon enough he was down to the hard little biscuits dipped in some off brand chocolate to give them a bit of sweet. A reward he supposed, for his suffering.
It was while he was breaking a tooth on the biscuits, recovering from the ordeal that was his dinner, that a group of men approached the canteen. They looked the same as the rest of the weary soldiers coming and going for their evening meals, but then the one at the center with his pale hair caught Harry's eye and he sat straight in his seat. He frowned and forced himself to look again, but what he thought he saw hadn't changed, he knew him. He was out of his seat in an instant.
"Harry? Where are you going?"
Harry waved absently at Steve, eyes still trained on…yes, it was him. "Ives!"
The man turned, startled, confused, then he saw Harry and only looked shocked. "Flash, is that you?"
Harry stumbled to his side and didn't even think before sweeping him into a hug. The gesture was returned almost immediately and a bit of tension he didn't even know he'd been carrying all this time finally loosened.
"How are you here? Why are you here." Ives released him and looked down with eyes wide in confusion. "You said you weren't going into the fight. You were supposed to be in London."
Harry took a moment to answer, too busy cataloguing all of the changes in his friend's face. That bit of red tint in his hair was nearly gone, making it near as pale as Malfoy's had been-would be, he'd always kept his face neat and smooth, but now something that could almost be a beard covered his chin and crawled up his cheeks and there was a bit of dirt on his forehead.
"I wasn't," he said, eventually shaking himself from his scrutiny. "I mean I'm not. I'm here consulting on an op my team's headed on tomorrow. They're going a bit further out but our CO thought it be best to camp here."
That didn't seem to clear anything up for Ives. "The only team that's here and not going straight to the front is…." He glanced over Harry's shoulder, confusion finally shifting to baffled understanding as he took in the men Harry had just left and who he didn't have to look over at to know were making no attempts at hiding their curious and blatant staring. "Flash, are you with Captain America?"
"Well, I mean I travelled with them. I'm not exactly with them, we're hardly even colleagues, or anything really. I'm just dragged along to wherever they need me in case they need someone to consult-"
"Hush."
"Sorry."
Ives nodded to his men who'd moved on to join the line for food, then steered Harry to the nearest empty table. "Now explain it to me."
"We work for the same organization," Harry began.
"Yeah, I remember. The SSR?"
"Right. I mostly do development, assisting in things like building the defenses against HYDRA's weapons and such. But there are…certain areas of study I'm well read in that not many else at the SSR are, so sometimes I'm brought in on jobs to offer insight where they might need it."
"And that includes being brought to the fight?"
"Well, like I said, the fight's a bit further out, but they want me as close as possible in case of…complications."
Ives didn't seem at all impressed by that. "Complications?"
Harry shrugged.
"Let me guess, it's classified?"
"Sorry."
He laughed but there was no displeasure behind the sound. "Don't be kid, I'm just glad you're safe. Sounds like you're doing good work."
"Hardly. Most of the time we spend blowing things up."
"Then our jobs are a lot more alike than I thought."
Harry grinned, he didn't realize how much he'd missed Ives until he was reminded what it was like being with him. "And you? On the way to finishing this fight like we talked about?"
"Getting there maybe." Ives shrugged bashfully. "I'm sergeant now."
"Sergeant!" Harry beamed. "That's fantastic. Bucky's sergeant too, you're just like him."
"Oh, yeah. I'll bet we're just alike."
"Would you like to meet them?" Harry glanced over, most of the Commandos were wrapping up their meals, it was only Steve and Bucky who were still looking over every now and then. Harry wondered if they could hear the conversation over the din of the mess hall. "They're great, I think you'd get along just fine."
"I mean…"
Harry tried to hide how much he wanted him to say yes. There was no telling what the next few days would look like for either of them, he wanted to spend as much time catching up with him as possible.
"Geez, kid, tone down the eyes, will you? Of course I'll meet your famous friends."
"They're no more famous than I am."
Which, okay, that wasn't saying much.
Harry slid back into his seat at the Commandos' table without much pomp then nudged Bucky over until there was room for Ives to sit on the end of the bench. "This is Ives," he said plainly. "We're friends, from home."
Steve perked up right away. "Home? You from New York too?"
Ives dipped his head in a nervous nod. "Yessir. Born in Chelsea, raised there too, didn't leave 'till I got my draft."
"Manhattan's nice. We were right over in Brooklyn Heights." A mischievous shine Harry was finding more and more easy to spot lit up in Steve's eyes. "Great neighborhood."
Ives' brow dropped just a hair, he looked to Harry who shrugged, then backed to Steve who looked entirely too innocent. "It was…colorful."
Bucky rolled his eyes even while he laughed. "Ignore him," he said, moving to block Steve, who made a noise like a squawk in protest, with his head. "His humor's shit. I'm Bucky."
"The sergeant, yeah, apparently we're just alike."
"Shut up," Harry muttered and reached for his tray, he still had two biscuits left and they'd almost been edible, they might be the closest thing he'd get to good food while here so he may as well enjoy them. But when he dragged it closer it was empty and Dugan was pointedly not looking in his direction.
He tried not to let his displeasure at the missing biscuits show, but he'd choked through that awful hash and he didn't even get dessert. It was ridiculous how disappointed he actually found himself.
"Oh, look what you've done," Dernier said, his words thick with his accent. "He looks so sad."
"Shut your hole, Frenchie," Dugan muttered at the same time Harry protested that, "This is just my face!"
But then Jones reached over and dropped a few of his own biscuits onto Harry's plate, and maybe what was "just his face" perked up a little.
"What does that mean?" Bucky pressed once the minor crisis had been averted. "We're just alike?"
"We share a rank and that's all," Ives shrugged. "That was enough for Flash though."
"Flash?" It didn't take much to guess who Ives was referring to, but Bucky was sure the story behind that nickname was a great source of amusement, one Harry might never share if the look on his face was anything to go by. He couldn't pass up the chance to hear it now.
"He hasn't said?" A slow smile was beginning to spread across Ives' face and Harry groaned. "He got the name thanks to how we met. He swept in and saved me from the sort of no good fellas who'd take a guy on three to one, like my own Flash Gordon."
Bucky looked delighted. "You two met in a fight?"
Ives nodded. "Wasn't much of a fight once he showed up. He broke one guy's ankle and knocked the other over the head with a trash lid, they were down before they even noticed he was there."
Dugan shook his head, refusing to believe Ives' tale. "I can't see that happening, not with him."
Harry frowned in mock offense. "Why's that? Because I'm not built like the sort of man whose diet consists only of protein and Schlitz? I've told you before, I'm scrappy."
"Well how come we ain't ever seen it then?"
"You have." Harry leveled him with a challenging glare. "Or has that bruise on your backside faded already? You need another to remind you?"
The others hooted at Dugan who scowled into his by then congealed hash. There wasn't anything he could say to that.
Harry sat back with a smile, satisfied that he'd settled that. "But I really only got those two guys because they were surprised. Ives put up the real fight, he kept them all back before I showed up and once I did he got the biggest one in a chokehold. He was out in seconds."
Bucky knocked his shoulder into Steve's. "Don't that sound familiar?"
"Yeah," Steve snorted, "only I never won."
Ives looked surprised. "You got into a lot of fights?"
The Commandos all groaned, already worn out by the turn the conversation had taken and it had barely even started. "Not a single one of their stories from before joining does not include a fight," Gabe confided to Ives.
"That's not true," Steve protested. "The one with the baseball games we used to start up with the kids on our block instead of going to Sunday mass-"
"Always ended with you scrapping with the team captain who refused to pick you," Morita said.
"Okay then remember the one with the dog?"
Falsworth nodded. "The one you adopted for the day after fighting the group of kids who were throwing rocks at it?"
"I've told you about the pies Mrs. Eskenazi used to make me."
"Stevie," Bucky cut in, a gentle reminder in his voice, "she only made you those 'cuz she felt sorry you were getting beat up all the time for yelling at the kids who harassed her on her trips back from the grocer."
"Well I didn't tell them that part."
"So you did fight a lot," Ives concluded.
"No," Bucky corrected. "He got beat up a lot, it was me doing the fighting."
Steve rolled his eyes and responded with sarcasm heavy on his tongue. "Thanks, Buck."
"Well, you don't look like you'd lose too many fights now, Captain."
"The army did me some good."
"I'll say it did." Ives turned to Harry before Steve or any of the others could respond. "Did you say for how long you'd be camping with us?"
Harry shook his head. "Maybe a week? Maybe more. Depends on how quickly these men can do their jobs."
Ives nodded his understanding. "I have to meet with some of my men tonight, soon as a matter of fact, but we're not meant to go back out to the fight for another few days. Find me before then?"
Once Harry promised to do exactly that, Ives stood to leave. "It was good meeting you all," he told the Commandos. "Good luck on whatever you came here to do. I'll see you soon, Flash."
"He was nice," Steve said, a happy little smile on his face.
"I didn't think you knew anyone outside of us," Bucky teased.
Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm not a complete shut in. Or at least I wasn't, before I joined in with you lot." Harry pushed his tray away, finally empty of the debatably edible rations. "You're meant to head out tomorrow? Did Phillips want one last debrief tonight?"
"No, our books are open for this evening," Falsworth said.
"So keeping with tradition," Dugan beamed. "I brought an old friend."
The men groaned when, a half full bottle of clear liquor was produced from a bag at his feet.
"What have we got this time?" Morita asked. "More of your own brew?"
"No, our livers are safe boys," Bucky said, squinting at the bottle and its pale label. "It's only Seagram's."
"Gin," Dernier spat, disgusted by his American comrades' poor taste in drink. "I'd rather the home brew."
"It'll get you sloshed same as any of the other fancy shit you and yours drink, Frenchie," Dugan teased. "But for our guest," here he looked to Harry who offered him a look of deep wariness in return, "I got something special."
Harry accepted the second bottle to come from the bag cautiously; it was heavy, a deep sea-glass green, and already half empty, but when he read the label he couldn't help the wide grin that rose almost immediately. "Remy Martin. How'd you get this? Where did you get this, it's terribly expensive isn't it?"
"When you've got a face as charming as mine, there's not much you can't get."
"You'll share, yes?" Dernier near pleaded. "I cannot think of the last time I'd had a drink so smooth."
"I don't think I could handle this all by myself."
And they all knew that to be the truth, there was no way Harry would manage to make even a dent in the bottle without sharing at least some.
"We won't be able to get away with setting up around a fire tonight," Bucky said once that was settled. "But I know for a fact Steve's got a tent near as big as our place back home and that's just as good in my books."
"You can't just offer up my quarters, Buck," Steve tried to protest but it was evident he was only putting up a fight for the fun of it.
"It's in the spirit of tradition. Don't be a square."
Harry claimed half of an army issued mug of Remy for himself then let the rest of the bottle go to the wolves. It was done in under an hour and the Commandos were gone, but they hardly even slurred and Harry didn't see a single one of them fall over. They were drunk, obviously so, but still almost…neat about it.
He'd never met a group of men so capable of getting so completely wasted and retain some sense of normalcy. The one night he'd spent with Ives and his crew had been entertaining but messy, he remembered the dancing too similar to upright sex and raunchy songs that echoed far in the empty streets.
Even Howard, who was never far from a finger or two of whiskey, showed effects after a cup too many. But the Commandos destroyed his entire bottle and the gin Dernier had been so quick to scorn and all they had to show for it were redder cheeks than normal and a sudden eagerness to share every personal anecdote in their arsenals.
"They've been doing this since we formed," Bucky confided, careful not to disrupt Falsworth's recollections of his more exciting schooldays. "Probably even earlier. The night before any fight you'll find us in a circle at least one bottle being passed around."
"It doesn't affect them in a fight?" Harry wondered.
"Thought it might be a problem the first few times," Steve said. "But these guys are old hats at shaking off the worst of the drink in a few hours. You won't even be able to tell they put away near two bottles in the morning."
"I wonder between your guys and Howard who has the better tolerance."
"Let's make it through this fight and maybe we'll find out."
The reminder of what was coming once morning came around filled Harry with trepidation. Because this was big. They were going after the man who could bring them straight to Schmidt's door. Steve and his team were good, he never doubted that, but the Red Skull would be holed up in nothing short of a fortress. To get to him might cost some of them their lives.
"Phillips is hoping to find reason for you to fight."
Harry frowned, not angry at Steve for bringing the matter up, only frustrated in general at the predicaments he always landed himself into.
"I know."
Of course he knew. Phillips and even Peggy had been wanting to get him on the field since they'd seen the destruction his magic was capable of.
When he was with Erskine, researching potions and mediating purchases of magical flora, they hadn't seen the use of it; magic was exciting and new and useful in terms of the serum, but nothing they could utilize themselves. It was only after Adalgar was a drooling mess and the Commandos were learning how to duck eviscerating hexes that they understood the power they were associated with and realized the devastation it would cause their enemies.
Harry didn't blame them for wanting it, they were here to win a war, by any means necessary, not coddle his shaky morals. And maybe if he'd been someone else, someone free from his own brand of issues he might have said to hell with the Statute and lent his wand and his magic to their cause. But he wasn't, he couldn't, because he had problems of his own that needed sorting, and as unmotivated as he'd been in both mundane and magical school, he still knew the outcome of this war. They didn't need him, they never did; the body count might be different, the timeline a few days or weeks or months off, the number of Commandos to make it through alive might vary, but they would win. Without him.
"You're set in your decision not to fight and we'll at least respect that."
It wasn't lost on Harry, how incredible it was hearing something like that from Steve Rogers, the man who couldn't back down from a fight even when he was a head shorter than just about every man and plagued with innumerable health defects.
"But if we needed it, if things got out of hand…"
"I'd be there."
Perhaps that was the only way he'd break his no-intervention decree, if these men he'd grown so fond of so quickly were facing men from his own world and knew they had no chance of getting out alive. There was no saying how that would end, his array of offensive spells had broadened since he'd started his self-study. He could mutilate a dummy like no one's business, but it was different in a real fight against real men who fought back. But if anything he'd make a big enough distraction to give the real strategic geniuses a chance to figure themselves out of the hole they'd wound up in.
Steve smiled, pleased with the sincerity behind his promise, but there was something he still wondered. "You haven't had any more trouble with your spells? The effects of what you did with Howard have passed?"
Harry shrugged. As far as he could tell, they had. He hadn't had much reason to cast in the days between his last (disastrous) spar with the Commandos and winding up here, but there'd been no other reactions from his magic. He was seeing plenty of shades still and the tethers were always there if he looked hard enough, but that was tame in comparison to what had happened the first time they'd attempted the procedure.
"It'll work with me in a pinch. We just needed time to settle."
"Did you ever talk to Howard about it?"
"I never got the chance." Harry waved away his concern easily. "I know what he would have said though and it's exactly what I just did. We're pushing my magic further and quicker than it would be able to on my own, but it and I just need time to adjust to the changes."
"And you've adjusted?"
"As well as I can. But this is only temporary." Right after Claude, Harry had explained to both Steve and Bucky the issue of his dual magics in the simplest terms he could manage. He'd been just vague enough where they understood that he was struggling with a foreign magic trying to alter what he'd been born with, without tipping them off on the exact nature of said foreign magic. "We're getting closer, once I'm home I'll be rid of it and all of the side effects will be gone."
His words had the exact opposite effect he'd been hoping for, neither Steve nor Bucky relaxed at his attempt at reassurance.
"I still don't get what that means," Bucky said. "You're stretching your magic but for what? How will it get you home?"
Harry took his bottom lip between his teeth as he tried to puzzle out the easiest explanation. "It's more than just distance I have to cross to get home. I need power, a lot of it, to get there. So we're growing what I have."
"And you're close now?"
"Closer. A few more months maybe."
"Then you'll be home."
Harry was struck by how unhappy Steve sounded. Both he and Bucky were doing well to keep their expressions clear, but he could still sense the undercurrent of glumness they both carried.
"I suppose since it's taking so much power just to get back, it won't be so easy to pay Brooklyn a visit or two."
"No. Probably not." He had to look down at the mostly untouched mug in his hand for a moment, because wow that hurt worse than it should have. "You know, when I got here I swore not to get attached? To just keep to myself and find a way home alone. But then Erskine happened, then Peggy, then Howard, and you all. I fucked that one right up. I miss my friends and my home, but I'll miss you all now, once I'm back."
"We didn't want to make it harder…"
"No, I'm not upset. I'm glad I couldn't keep to my promise."
Bucky held up his own full mug. "Toast then, to broken promises."
And Harry laughed and knocked his mug into Bucky's and held it there until Steve joined them with his own. "To broken promises."
The Commandos left early the next morning, they had nearly a full day's hike to Kuznetsov's base camp ahead of them, and just as Steve had said, not a single one of them showed sign of too much to drink from the night before. It was impressive and really made him wonder how a faceoff against Howard and his liver of steel might end up.
Harry took advantage of not being an actual part of the combat unit to sleep in a little later, though he was still up much earlier than he'd ever been during his Hogwarts' days. The stir of camp was just too much to sleep through.
He met Ives for lunch, who introduced him to his unit, all of whom wanted to know every detail about what it was like to work with Captain America. It was a relief to break away from the questions and the curiosities to walk through camp alone with Ives.
"Elton shipped out a week after I did. Last I heard he's somewhere in Honduras, acting as a translator, lucky bastard."
"He speaks…Hondurian?"
"Spanish, Flash," Ives snorted. "And yeah, he was always real good with languages. I'm glad he's found a use for that here, especially one that keeps him further from the fighting."
"But you wish it was you, right?"
"Of course, but the only skill I've got is putting on face and last I checked the US army wasn't looking for queers."
"Their loss. I've seen you in a dress, flash them those legs and the Nazi's would be all but useless."
Ives' cackle of laughter did a good job masking the distant rumble of mortar shells for a few seconds. "Wow, I can't believe how much I missed you."
"Yeah, well you're keeping busy. Probably hard to miss anything when you're out there." Harry's head tilted in the direction of the crackling gunfire of the fight.
"That's actually when it's easiest."
"Harry."
Both men slid to a stop and turned to Peggy, lovely as ever even with mud up to her shins and her usual burst of bright lip color nowhere in sight. She crossed the distance between them in a quick few steps and, after sparing Ives a curious look, turned her attention to Harry. "They'll be there by sunset. Would you like to sit in with us while we wait for any updates?"
Harry glanced up at the sky, the day had gone fast, it was probably another hour before the sun was down. "Sure. Phillips won't mind?"
"He was the one to suggest it actually."
Harry rolled his eyes, of course he was, as manipulative as Dumbledore that man was. But it didn't take away from the fact that he did want to be there whenever the Commandos checked in, so he'd put his stubborn pride aside for the moment.
He looked over to Ives who'd been tracking the conversation in silent curiosity. "Will you be free later this evening?"
"Always for you, Flash."
"I'll come looking for you then. I want to hear more about Elton and Honduras."
"I won't go far."
Peggy waited until they were well across camp before speaking again. "Friend of yours?"
"He is, actually. I've known him longer than I've known you, even. He's from New York."
"He's handsome."
"Yeah?" Harry grinned at the woman. "I could put in a good word if you'd like."
"Oh, no need."
She ducked into Phillip's tent and he was quick to follow. The colonel was seated behind his desk as usual, a long range radio already set up and transmitting static.
"All right, colonel," Peggy made herself comfortable in the seat closest to the radio. "Sitrep?"
Their usual sort of mission was loud, bright, chaotic with gunfire that cast burning light across their faces and across the red and blue paint of Rogers' shield as it ricocheted through corridors and into skulls. Their directive was rarely to go in silently, their team was after all led by a walking American flag who tossed about a painted disk and included a hulking ginger whose standard uniform was a bowler hat and a shotgun and a Frenchman with a penchant for explosives. Covert ops weren't where they excelled.
But they needed to get to Kuznetsov and they needed to get their quietly, so Barnes took point and led them through the poorly lit halls to where intel said Kuznetsov would be.
Should be.
He wasn't.
He took dinner at this time, alone in his labs where he could carry on working while he ate. But none of his machines were running, their screens were dark, and the lab and each of its antechambers were deserted.
"We early or something?" Gabe asked, voice purposely hushed in the near silence of the lab.
Steve checked the little watch he kept tucked in the pouch of his utility belt. "Right on time actually. Kuznetsov's usually halfway through his meal by now."
"Maybe he's running behind schedule," Bucky reasoned. "Something's holding him up in mess. It would be just our luck that today is the one day his routine doesn't go like clockwork, but it doesn't have to be anything wrong."
"So we wait for him?"
Steve shook his head, already recalculating, adjusting to this shift in plans. "Intel says if he's not taking his meal here, he'll be in his rooms. That's two floors up. Dernier, Morita, you'll stay here, just in case he shows up, we'll go look for him there."
It was Falsworth who asked the question they were all wondering. "And if he's not in his rooms?"
"Then we search the whole building, top to bottom. This is our one shot at getting Kuznetsov, if the wizards get that location out of him the tesseract is as good as theirs."
To get to the upper levels, they had to go deeper into the building first, and the further they went, the more populated it got. They couldn't draw their guns, they couldn't risk the noise, so they broke necks where they could, dug knives between ribs and spinal cords where they couldn't. When they made it two floors up their hands were sticky with blood but the alarm had yet to sound.
"He's corridor 9D," Falsworth murmured, consulting the layout of the building, marked with every important location. "Only door on the left wall."
They made it as far as 9C before Steve was struck with the unshakeable certainty that the men he'd left in the lab were in danger. That wing of the building had been nearly deserted when they'd left, most HYDRA agents knew well enough to steer clear of Kuznetsov's labs, but what if the man himself had shown up and discovered Morita and Dernier waiting for him? Or what if they'd gotten into something they weren't supposed to? Dernier loved his explosives, was it too much to hope he wasn't already elbow deep in whatever experimental weapons Kuznetsov was known for manufacturing? For the good of the job, he should go check on them, turn back and-
Bucky's hand curled into a vice around Steve's wrist, stopping him from turning and heading back to the lab.
"Feel familiar?" He whispered, his face was pale and his lips drawn, but his gaze was locked steady on Steve. "Wards. There are wizards here."
And once he said it, Steve realized he recognized the feeling, same as when he'd gone to the alley with Harry and same as when they'd found the intel that landed them here, on this mission, from another HYDRA base similarly infested with wizards.
"They weren't supposed to be here until tomorrow," he hissed, as he herded the remaining Commandos further from the corridor. Now that he knew where the feeling of foreboding urgency was coming from, it was easier for him to ignore, and Bucky had shaken off the wards' effects before even him, but the others were taking a second longer to come back to themselves. Whether it was because they'd never experienced it the way he and Bucky had or for some other reason he didn't have the time to consider he wasn't sure, but he needed to get them a safe distance from the magical barriers before they gave away their presence.
"Maybe what we read was wrong, or maybe they decided to move their plan up a few days after our last hit. Dugan stay still." Bucky wrestled the ginger to a halt before he could make a break for the staircase. "What you're feeling is not real. It's magic, trying to keep you away because down that hall is our target. Shake it off."
"You say that like it's easy," Dugan grunted, teeth gritted in concentration.
Bucky huffed a sigh. "We don't have time to try and walk them through the wards," he said, "there's no telling how long they've been in there, if they get that information from Kuznetsov this'll all have been for nothing."
Steve offered him an incredulous frown in response. "So we go in alone? We don't even know how many are in there."
"Doesn't matter. We'll slip in quick, take them out all at once." He reached for Falsworth and the smoke cannisters he kept on his belt.
"Kuznetsov could get killed with the rest of them."
"I'd rather him dead than squealing to the enemy."
Steve could already hear the cursing out Phillips was going to lay on him once they made it back, but he could recognize the logic in Bucky's suggestion even when he didn't want to, and they didn't have time at all to consider another course of action.
"All right. Dugan, Jones, Falsworth, post up here, keep watch and make sure no one gets out. I'm giving us five minutes, if we're not out by then you better dig deep and break past those wards or find us some backup."
None of the men looked happy, but they murmured their understanding of their Captain's orders and took up position on either end of the hall. They had a job to do, they could get on him and Barnes for their recklessness when it was through.
They first step through the wards was nauseating, the struggle to differentiate with what they knew and what the magic was trying to tell them was one hard fought, but each step after was easier, and soon enough they were through.
Once they were on the other side, the screaming started.
"They must have had some kind of silencing spell up with the wards," Bucky guessed. "Wouldn't want the whole compound coming down on them once they got started on him."
Steve winced. "Geez, I feel for the guy, but it's still a good sign for us. He hasn't given anything up just yet."
The hall just outside Kuznetsov's rooms was empty, the wizards had been so certain of the infallibility of their wards they hadn't even set up guards outside.
That had been their first mistake.
Their second was neglecting to even shut the door behind them.
"Arrogant," Steve murmured to Bucky, nearly inaudible over the sound of Kuznetsov's agony.
"Sloppy," was the equally silent response.
Inside the room, the man they'd come for was writhing on the plush carpeted floor, three wizards were standing over him and another was honest to god lounging in an armchair to the far left of the room as if this were just another Tuesday evening. There were no visible wounds, no blood or broken bones for them to see, but the way Kuznetsov screamed was fervently agonized, the product of a Cruciatus if they had to guess. And all the while, the wizards barked at him in his mother tongue. Only one word was recognizable in the garble of Russian, but it was the only word that mattered: tesseract.
It was too bad Kuznetsov was too busy wailing to offer a coherent answer.
He shouldn't have sympathy for the man, Kuznetsov was HYDRA, but the way Harry had described the Cruciatus, its all-encompassing nature, how there was no sense other than pain, and the way the man screamed…Steve wasn't sure he could wish that kind of torture on even Schmidt.
And Bucky seemed to be of the same mind, he was rolling the cannister across his palm, an impatient tick in his jaw. "Tell me when."
Steve didn't see any reason to keep him waiting. "Whenever."
Kuznetsov's screams were too loud and the wizards too distracted for the gentle scrape of a pin being released to register. It was only when the grenade rolled to a stop against the closest wizard's foot did any of them take notice to the fact that they were no longer alone.
But then it went off with a fwoosh and smoke was flooding the room.
"Zasada." The wizard taking a rest in the armchair was on his feet in a moment. "Ambush. At the door."
Four wands turned on them and then the thick gray smoke still flooding from the cannister was suddenly lit with the multi-colored hues of spells intent on killing them. Luckily Steve's shield was great for deflecting most curses, so while he provided cover Bucky took aim and shot a clean hole through the head of one of Kuznetsov's interrogators. The others dove for cover immediately after, but one was too slow and caught a disc of red and blue vibranium to the throat for his trouble while another earned a bullet to the chest.
Kuznetsov himself was left in the center of the floor, forgotten in the face of a new foe, but still so obviously out of it from the curse there wouldn't be any fear of him going anywhere for a while.
"I'll lay down cover fire to keep the asshole behind the armchair busy if you want to get the one hiding under the desk," Bucky suggested, already aiming his rifle in the direction of the overturned armchair.
"Once I take his spot under the desk I should have an angle on the one behind the chair," Steve agreed. "If he tries to move it'll be right into your line of fire so be ready."
"You forget who you're talking to."
At the first burst of gunfire, Steve was leaping into the doorway, over Kuznetsov, and around the wide set, mahogany desk that wizard number three was hiding. He slid behind the man's cover with little finesse, but before he could even raise his wand Steve was cracking his head against one of the desk's unyielding panels. The body hit the ground and he was already drawing his sidearm and craning around the desk to where he could just see the fourth and final wizard.
The first shot went wide, the angle he was aiming from was awkward and uncomfortable and the wizard was doing his best to flatten himself against the chair.
"Come on Steve, don't play with your food!" Bucky chastised from the doorway.
The second shot was aimed true, it would get his mark in the center of his forehead, minimal mess, he felt that with a quiet confidence only achieved in the middle of a fight. But a fraction of a second before it hit, the wizard shouted out; one word muffled by distance and uttered in Russian and then there was a vortex of light, blue and bright and blinding, and he was gone.
The bullet lodged in the upholstery right behind where his head had only just been and Steve cursed.
"He gone?" Bucky asked, though he was wise enough not to leave cover just yet.
Steve kept low to the ground as he crept over to where the wizard had just been, checking behind and around the toppled armchair just to be sure he was really gone and not using magic to trick their eyes.
"He's gone, ran just like Harry said he would. Room's clear."
"Hall's clear. Our guy still alive?"
Steve kicked at Kuznetsov's side, rolling him onto his back. He'd fallen out of consciousness sometime during the last few minutes of the fight, finally too exhausted and flat out terrified to cling to awareness any longer.
"Still alive," he concluded when he caught the rise and fall of his breath.
"Grab him and let's go then. It's been five minutes, the guys'll be gearing up to grab backup by now."
Kuznetsov went over Steve's shoulder and then they were back out in the hall, heading back from where they came. And when they rounded the corner and found 9C occupied by their entire team, the two they'd left down in the labs included, Bucky scoffed.
"Frenchie and Morita aren't backup." He derided. "How were they supposed to get past those wards if you guys couldn't?"
Falsworth spared him one of those looks full of Englishmen arrogance that he hated. "Who said anything about getting through the wards? We were going to blow through the walls and storm them from behind."
"Great plan." Steve hefted Kuznetsov on his shoulders, more for show than anything else, the man was overweight sure but they'd all seen the captain run drills with three times the weight on his back without once breaking into a sweat. "Lucky we didn't need it or else getting out of here would be a lot harder. Run into any trouble on the way up?"
Morita shook his head. "Not much. A few workers and only one armed guard. I guess Kuznetsov and his work weren't important enough to warrant the whole armada."
"Let's take advantage and get out of here with no more bloodshed then. We've still got a long hike ahead of us before we can pitch camp."
The chorus of groans only made him smile as he hefted Kuznetsov once more for good measure, then started for the nearest flight of stairs down.
It wasn't like he could blame his men for the displeasure though, this op defined everything the Commandos hated, everything they weren't. Over hostile lines in the middle of fucking nowhere, it had taken them literally all day to hike up to the base. Covert, Dugan hadn't even been allowed to bring his shotgun. And they didn't even get the satisfaction of fighting their way out or blowing the place to high heavens, no they had to be in and out without setting off any alarms. And now they had another day long hike ahead of them, the SSR couldn't send a plane or even a car until they were back on friendly soil.
He'd be pissed off if too if he were anyone else. But he was captain and at least had to appear unbothered. And when they ran into a half dozen agents, all of duty and headed for their evening meals, he stepped back and let his men take care of them, if only to see their moods boosted just that little bit.
It wasn't long before they were back outside, the air was fresh and crisp after the stale, recycled stuff they'd been sucking in inside the base, but it was cold, the promise of a harsh winter something none of them wanted reminder of.
"Let's try and make it a few clicks out then we can take a moment to regroup," Steve instructed, not breaking the steady jog he and the others had broken into once they'd stepped outside. "I want to get Kuznetsov properly secured and we can take the time to confirm where we're going from here."
Bucky, who was keeping pace without any sign of struggle, a far cry from the already cursing Dugan, offered him a quick smile and a slick. "Yes sir."
It was because Steve was looking at him, head turned just a little to the side that he saw the red glow light the back of his friend's head just before it was too late. He collided with Bucky, knocking both of them and Kuznetsov to the ground in a tangle of cursing limbs, he cracked his nose on someone's shoulder but the spell missed and disappeared into the treeline instead.
"We've got a dozen on our tail," Gabe was the one to report, "Hard to see but they look like wizards, all of them."
"Only one got away," Steve grunted, back on his feet in a second and throwing Kuznetsov back over his shoulder.
"And he brought the rest," Bucky scowled.
So much for them being cowards.
"Keep low and get to the trees. We'll engage when we get some cover between us."
It wasn't that long of a run to the treeline, a few meters maybe, but when spells were tearing bright, burning trails around their heads it felt like an impossible distance to cover. Steve was the first to break through of course, with Bucky right behind him, then Jones, Morita, and Dernier. Dugan was behind everyone, still a few feet out when a whip of gold crossed the distance between him and the wizards and caught him around the ankle. He fell with a curse and scrabbled for purchase in the dirt even while it began reeling him back toward base, Falsworth who had been just one step from making it to cover turned on a dime and dove for him. Both of his hands latched onto just one of Dugan's and his feet dug divots into the earth as he tried to provide a counterweight to the pull of the lasso but he barely served to slow Dugan's relentless drag backwards.
Bucky was the first to poke his head around the tree he'd been taking cover behind, rifle already on his shoulder and aimed at the first wand wielding man he could spot. He fell with one shot, but it wasn't the wizard with the spell on his friend, so he adjusted his aim and fired again and again and again. Soon the others were with him, their bullets wreaking havoc to the neat line the wizards had conveniently arranged themselves in until a bullet through the head or against one of the hastily erected shields they'd conjured in defense caused the spell on Dugan to drop.
"Nice of you to join us, boys," Morita drawled, sarcastic over the crack of his gun, when the last two members of their team finally reached the trees.
"Got tied up for a moment there," Dugan joked and earned disapproving groans from everyone for his efforts.
"How many more are left?" Gabe asked, momentarily taking cover to avoid an arc of yellow light.
"I count nine," Steve said. "Let's keep them busy with a steady line of fire, shouldn't be long before the noise draws HYDRA from their nest. They'll attack from behind and we'll fall back."
It was a good plan, it would have worked too, but then the woods were alight with the sharp crack of apparation and more wizards joined the fight. A lot more. And suddenly they were surrounded.
"Shields up," Steve ordered, his own shield was already braced on his arm and blocking the sudden spellfire at their back.
The Commandos scrambled for their own, but Morita was too slow and was thrown off his feet by a spell that tore claw marks into his shoulders, then Jones fell, taking a curse aimed at Bucky's back.
"Form up around Jones and Morita." Steve had one hand on his shield and the other wrapped in Kuznetsov's collar, dragging him back along with him, leaving him with no free hand to fire. "Dugan, Dernier, get those shields facing our guys at base. Falsworth, with me on these ambushers in the woods. Bucky, give us some fire."
They circled around their fallen, shields blocking the worst of the curses while Bucky stood in their center, firing in all directions until every round had been expended. Then he was pulling Steve's sidearm from his hip, taking down wizard after wizard with each release of a bullet, but there was only so long even he could go. His gun clicked empty and a curse caught his chest just off center, Steve couldn't here the incantation, hadn't even seen the color of it, but the way he crumpled and the awful sound that tore from his throat immediately after left him with no doubt what he'd been hit with.
The wizard who had cast the Cruciatus died when the edge of Steve's shield made terrifyingly accurate contact with his throat, crushing his windpipe and severing his spine in one throw. It didn't ricochet back to him, it had fallen with the wizard, so he grabbed for Bucky's shield, lifting it just in time to avoid a flurry of ominous purple curses. They were just barely covered on all sides again, but it was a temporary solution.
"What've you got, Cap?" Falsworth grunted as he slid back several inches from the force behind the last curse to come in contact with his shield.
"Dernier?" he shouted. "Got anything on your belt for us?"
"Smoke," the Frenchman responded. "That is all I was allowed to bring. Nothing to go boom. We were supposed to go in quiet, yes?"
Seriously, fuck covert ops.
"Lemme see what I can do with those."
There were only two grenades, but they would work as enough of a distraction to get them moving.
"Buck, can you walk?"
The sniper groaned low as he pushed himself into a sitting position. "I'm going to have to."
"Morita?"
"It's only a bit of blood loss, Cap. I can keep up."
"All right. Once the smoke gives us some cover we'll keep low, head back for base. Bucky and I'll grab Gabe and Kuznetsov while you three lay down some fire. There's only nine of them between us and the door."
"And once we're through?"
"HYDRA is easier to take down than wizards. Break through their front line and let them have at each other while we find our way out the back door. Yeah?"
"Let's go."
He waited, a breath in, a breath out, for a lull in the spells ricocheting against their shields. When it came, he pulled both pins at once and tossed them in the direction of the shadowy figures he could only just make out.
The moment the air was thick and clouded with smoke the Commandos were moving, perfectly in formation and carrying out Steve's directives to the letter.
They made it two meters.
"Ventus."
The incantation came from behind them, from somewhere in the dense wall of smoke, and sent up a gust of wind that threatened to bowl Steve right from his feet and cleared the smoke in seconds leaving their backs exposed to the suddenly too close wizards.
Kuznetsov hit the ground hard and Gabe followed with only a bit more care as Steve and Bucky knelt, shields once again at the ready. Dugan, Dernier, and Morita crowded against their backs, guns drawn and the wizards somewhere behind them momentarily forgotten in the face of this larger, nearer threat.
There had to be thirty of them, most likely more, even after all the ones Bucky had taken down. They were armed, with wands directed at them, but no one fired and so neither did the Commandos, unwilling to break this strange standoff.
But then a man stepped forward, and he was unlike anyone Steve had ever seen. He was handsome, in a cold sort of way, but he was stripped down, washed out, bleached of all color; his hair was like the spools of thread he'd used before the serum and before the war to patch his shirts up, pale and thin with just a hunt of luster when the light hit it right. Even his skin reminded him of the parchments Harry's kind preferred, as pale and nearly see through as it was. His eyes were the only spot of color, two pinpricks of blue, still pale though, like entire lakes frosted over in the dead of winter. The ice over which was deceptively thin, just enough to present an illusion of stillnessm\, but just a little weight and you'd freeze and drown in the depths.
"Just you few?" He spoke with the unassuming lilt of just about anyone from the London area, but there was the undercurrent of something else there, something foreign, from parts farther north in Europe. "Seven men, seven muggles, have been giving us all this trouble?"
The wizards shifted, shamed and uncomfortable under a quick sweep of disapproval from those pale eyes.
"I would be angry, but it is almost impressive. And yet tonight you didn't last so long. What happened?"
Steve kept his voice flat, void of the tension drawing his spine taut. "It's been a long day."
The man nodded and something like sympathy tried to paint itself across his face. "I will do you a favor then and keep it from going on much longer."
"You plan on killing us?"
"Yes." There was no inflection, no remorse behind the confirmation. This man would kill them and feel nothing. "I admire your fight, but you've been causing much trouble. Your repeated attacks against my men has had an effect on morale. It can't go on, you understand."
He wouldn't go down easy, none of them would. Jones was still out and both he and Bucky had nothing left as far as ammo, but he still had his shield and the Commandos were suitably armed. There'd be no winning, they all knew it, they were outnumbered and outmatched, but they weren't going to make it easy. The first wizard to cast a spell would be taken down by a hail of bullets.
And maybe they realized that, maybe they could see the resolve in their stances, the conviction in their straight gaze, and they stalled, hesitant to start the fight. Because none of them wanted to be that first.
But then a third party made the choice for them.
That strange, pale man had been on the cusp of breaking the stillness, his wand, as strange and pale as him, was aimed still at Steve's chest and a green glow he'd heard a good few warnings about was taking form at its end. But then HYDRA finally made their move and the wizards' almost certain win was destroyed.
They'd been biding their time, waiting until Steve's team and the battalion of wizards they were facing were caught up fighting each other, then they circled around and attacked from all sides.
The Commandos were surrounded twice over now, with the wizards on either side of them and HYDRA on either side of them. But it worked in their favor. All focus had been on Steve and his men, so when the HYDRA men jumped from the woodwork and set to work with their assorted rifles and tesseract-fueled weapons, the wizards toppled like a row of dominoes leaving a neat little gap for the combat team to slip through. Once they'd passed the wizards they were face to face with revenge seeking Nazis with guns that could literally vaporize them, but Steve had said it before, HYDRA was easier to fight than wizards. Even with Kuznetsov and Jones acting as deadweights on their shoulders they tore through the agents easy as they did any other day and were on the other side while the two forces were still trying to figure out who to fight.
"Keep with what we planned, through the base and out the back," Steve instructed, calm as any other time they were in the field, even with a half dead man over his shoulders and magic users and Nazis brawling only a few meters behind them. "We make it out and find somewhere to rest up, far enough away from here to keep them from finding us. We'll figure out our next move after."
"How far do you really think we'll make it?" Dugan was propped against a tree, clutching a stitch in his side, or maybe a bullet wound he'd acquired somewhere in the mess, it was too dark to tell. "We're all half dead, Gabe and Kuznetsov are both still out, and Fresno hasn't stopped bleeding yet."
Morita was looking a little pale, he had his jacket balled up against his injured shoulder but it was nearly bled through already.
"What else can we do?" Bucky answered for Steve. "We can't fight, not like we are now. And we don't got a cavalry anywhere close enough to swing in and save our asses. So we either get moving or we die, those are the only choices we've got."
"There's one more," Falsworth said. "There's Harry."
"He doesn't fight," Steve was quick to refute. "Especially not against this many."
But Dugan had caught onto what Falsworth was suggesting and he'd taken to the idea already. "But he can do that teleporting thing, and he can take someone with him. He could take Fresno, maybe even Jones and the rest of us could carry on on foot, or hell, maybe he can take us all."
Steve didn't like the idea, bringing Harry out to the fight, but there wasn't looking to be much other choice and he'd said before they'd even left camp, before everything had gone to hell, that he would come if they needed. And they needed.
He was the only one with a radio tuned and capable of reaching all the way back to camp, he unclipped it from his belt and tossed it to Falsworth.
"Make the call."
Somewhere in the trees behind them there was a roar of unnatural fire and screams he'd never heard the likes of.
"But make it while we run. Something's telling me the fight'll be winding down soon, and I don't think HYDRA's coming out of this one alive."
Steve had sworn to keep radio silence until the job was done. They couldn't risk the feedback of his radio drawing the wrong kind of attention at the worst time so he turned it off and assured it wouldn't come back on until they had Kuznetsov in custody and were away from base, the only other reason he might turn it on was if things went wrong.
So when he made the call, they didn't worry. Hours had passed since their estimated arrival at base, he and his team should have had their man secured by then and been halfway to rendezvous. But then Falsworth spoke when it should have been Steve and the whole clusterfuck of what should have been an easy job came out.
"We're calling for a quick extract." Falsworth was panting, great heaving gasps right into the radio as if he was running and had been for longer than even he was used to. "We've got one down, and wizards and HYDRA both out on the field making a mess of things."
"How the hell did that happen?" Peggy snapped. They'd worked this sort of op a dozen times over, she found it hard to believe they'd be so careless as to cock this one up all alone.
"We got to Kuznetsov and wizards were already there, interrogating just like we knew they'd be. Cap and Barnes were the only ones who could get through the wards so they went in, took them out, and grabbed Kuznetsov, but one got away and he brought the cavalry."
"How many?" Peggy asked.
"Thirty, thirty-five would be my guess. They were organized this time, split into two groups to trap and surround us, and there was a man leading them all. The creepy sort, pale all over and ready to kill us all, no fuss, no mess, for troubling his men."
His men? Harry held his hand out and Peggy handed over the radio without question. "He had blond hair? Almost white?" He asked, no preamble. "And blue eyes? Really pale blue?"
"Pale all over," Falsworth confirmed.
Harry had seen the man only twice, both times in visions; the first when he'd been young, handsome and mischievous as he robbed an old wandmaker, the second at the end of his life after decades spent rotting in a prison he'd created. But those two memories were all he needed to recognize him with just that description.
"That's Grindelwald. You all just faced Grindelwald. Do your best not to do so again, nothing I've taught you could defend against an attack by him."
"It's why we called. For you specifically. Gabe is out and Kuznetsov is slowing us down, we need you to pop in, do your teleporting thing and get us out of here. If not all of us just those two."
Harry didn't hesitate. "I can only take two at a time but nothing is stopping me from taking multiple trips. I need coordinates."
"I have them," Peggy said, "in the mission briefing."
"Peggy will give them to me, but it won't put me on your exact position."
"We'll go to Kuznetsov's lab, it's defensible."
"Then I'll find you there."
They ended the connection and Harry immediately turned to Peggy for the coordinates, but Phillips spoke up first.
"You'll have to fight your way through to them."
He didn't sound smug or excited, but Harry knew that this was always what he'd wanted.
Harry took a moment to find his words, ones that were free of insult and vitriol. Phillips was only doing his job, he had to remind himself, he was only trying to end this war, he couldn't be upset if he came off a bit pushy while doing so. "Maybe. But I've seen these sort of fights, they're loud, chaotic, everything, everyone is in a mess. And I have a few spells that'll make me harder to spot, I might just be able to slip right through." Point made, he turned to Peggy. "Where am I going?"
She listed the coordinates off for him three times before he felt as if he had a decent enough grasp on them. He'd never tried apparating by coordinate alone, it was possible he knew, but not practiced often because there were risks. But Harry figured if he lost an arm splinching he'd just have Howard build him a new one, the inventor would love the challenge.
"All right, so you know where the lab is?" Peggy looked like she wanted to fuss over him, but she did a valiant job holding herself in control.
"I do." Of course he did, he'd sat with Rogers as he poured over the map of the base, plotted out their way to the lab and a backup route just to be safe. Finding his way to the team wasn't among his numerous concerns.
"Bring Kuznetsov back first and any of their wounded, then, only if your able, Captain Rogers and the others. Keep your head down the best you can, engage only if you have to" She broke character just long enough to take his hand and lean forward to dash a quick kiss on his cheek. "Be quick, be safe."
Harry smiled to reassure himself just as much as her, because what he was doing was so incredibly stupid. He'd made rules, he'd left London, endured an awful, near unbearably long sea voyage to a country where he had and knew nothing to avoid this. He was preparing to step into a fight led by Grindelwald, one wrong action, a spell cast in the wrong direction or the wrong wizard injured and the world he eventually returned to could be completely, horribly altered.
But he was going to go anyway, risk everything despite the danger, because his friends were in danger, his friends could die, and he had the ability to help.
"I'll be quick," he promised, and he forced himself to believe it. "I'll be safe. See you soon."
There was a worrying moment immediately after Harry disapparated from the tent where he doubted. He used imagery to navigate, a familiarity with where he was going and what it looked like to get him there safely, not a string of numbers and letters he was supposed to silently chant like some strange mantra.
But it was only for a moment, a half a second in the seconds long trip, then he doubled down and focused and when he landed it was with all of his limbs attached. He'd been deposited at the edge of a copse of trees, there were mountains all around him and an imposing structure that had to be Kuznetsov's facility, but there was no fight.
There were bodies, plenty of them; a few were riddled with bullet holes and dressed in dark, unmarked robes, but most were dressed as muggles and had died much more gruesome deaths. Some had been removed from their limbs, some relieved of their organs, and some had been charred to unrecognizable husks, all deaths wrought by dark spells.
The wizards had won this fight, there was no doubting that, and now they were nowhere out on the grounds and that was worrying. Because either they were inside, sweeping the facility for Steve, the Commandos, and their initial target Kuznetsov, or they'd already found them.
This was the sort of time Harry wished for his cloak, wished it hadn't been reabsorbed and rendered obsolete once the Hallows had united. Because it had been infallible, and he'd feel much better sneaking into a facility most likely crawling with wizards under an infallible invisibility cloak. But he didn't have it, not now, not yet, so the disillusionment charm would have to work.
In the encompassing dark that surrounded the facility the charm did its job well enough, Harry came upon his first two wizards standing at the entrance, guarding it from any who might try to leave, but he had them stunned and silenced and bound in rope before they even realized someone else might be lurking about. From their backs he stole a cloak, tugging it low over his face just in case the charm failed, then he went in.
Under the bright, harsh lights inside the building, the distortion of light that hid him was just a little more apparent, any who knew to look would find him. But Harry realized he was working with an advantage, the wizards thought they were fighting muggles. They weren't keeping an eye out for a wizard opponent, weren't thinking to defend themselves against magic. So he passed through crowds of them, because there were many, more wizards he'd seen in one place in more than a year, unseen.
They had already reached the floor on which Kuznetsov's lab was occupying by the time he arrived, they were still several corridors away and working slowly and methodically but it wouldn't be much time at all before they were right on top of them.
The entrance to the lab was only locked, a first year spell was all it took to get him into the room and at the business end of several high caliber weapons. He only cocked an unimpressed brow at the Commandos as he silently latched the door and its useless lock back in place.
"Do you plan to kill the one who's getting you sorry lot out of here?"
"We're just a bit on edge," Bucky snarked, lowering his gun.
"I would be too if I managed to so thoroughly fuck up such an easy job." Harry put a second locking spell on the door, then the few wards he knew and muffliato to cloak the room. "They're a few corridors away, we have maybe two minutes, three at best before they're here. I won't have time to apparate everyone out, Kuznetsov maybe but they'll be on you before I can get anyone else."
A portkey could get them all out at once. Harry knew the incantation, had seen it done a few times before, but he'd never done it himself, didn't understand the theory behind it and now wasn't the time to be experimenting, the last thing he wanted was to muck it up somehow and leave them all incapacitated and at the wizards' mercy.
"So it'll be a fight." Steve looked weary, bloodied and beaten, but he wasn't yet resigned to lose.
Harry could only nod, there was no way around it. "It'll have to be. But there's only about ten men on this floor, it'll be tough but you can take them."
"And the rest?"
Harry huffed an anxious breath. "I'll keep them occupied."
"You're going to take on the other twenty wizards? Alone. You're going to die." That was Barnes and his every word was dripping with disapproval.
"I won't die. I'm going to keep them occupied," Harry reiterated. "I'll distract them for as long as I can to give you all time to make it away from here. Head for the closest occupied town, hide there, Grindelwald wants the tesseract but he's not so desperate he'll out the wizarding world to get it."
At least Harry hoped he wouldn't. Even Voldemort had been hesitant to outright attack the muggle world, and from what he knew of this decade's dark wizard, Grindelwald was meant to be smarter, more attuned to sanity than Harry's own dark lord had been.
"I don't-"
"Tell me how awful an idea this is after we've made it back to base. They'll be here soon you have wounded who need to fight."
The episkey Harry cast over it wasn't strong enough to fully heal the wounds on Morita's shoulder, but it stopped the worst of the bleeding and allowed some mobility of the arm. Jones was even easier to fix, a rennervate reversed whatever had brought him and he was upright if a little groggy in seconds.
"Once they're all dead give it a few minutes," Harry said as he pulled Kuznetsov's dead weight against himself with two arms around the man's chest. "Let the building clear then go. I'll keep them busy."
He disapparated before any of them could protest further, Peggy startled when he arrived in the tent, but he only dropped Kuznetsov in a sad little heap then left again, he would have time for explanations later.
The second time he apparated onto the facility's grounds was much easier than his first attempt, now that he'd seen the basic lay of the land he could direct where he wanted to wind up with a little more accuracy. He chose the west end of the building, there were no trees at his back, only open land and the base of a mountain, the wizards would come for him in the opposite direction the Commandos needed to go in order to get away. But first he had to draw their attention.
Harry had discovered all manner of explosive spells from his books, none that he'd had the chance to practice because of their sheer destructive power, but in theory he knew they would be a sight to see. But in a moment like this, a good old fashioned blasting charm to the west wall of the facility would always be his first choice. And if he put a little extra power behind it? Well, he needed to get their attention.
It took another wall coming down and the creative use of a few wind summoning charms for him to get it. It was only a few, eight or so of the near thirty wizards he knew to be in the building, but once they got started more would come.
Harry had hidden himself under another disillusionment by the time they arrived and had retreated away a few meters. When they came to investigate their backs were facing him and he took the chance to stun two of the men closest to him. The dual flashes of red didn't go unnoticed, the remaining six turned on his position in an instant, curses already flying his way. But the moment the second stunner had left his lips, Harry was already apparating to a new position, back to the wall he'd just blown up to take a few more explosive chunks from it. Then he set off a caterwauling charm deafening and obnoxious, and shot a few more stunners their way just to keep them on their toes.
His goal wasn't to fight, he wasn't trying to finally test the spells he'd been massacring dummies with on Grindelwald's men. He was only trying to make as enormous of a spectacle as he could, draw enough men out onto the lawn and away from the fight taking place in the labs. So he channeled the spirits of Fred and George and he apparated and he cast and he blew things up, creating noise and confusion and pure havoc until wizards were coming from all entrances, shouting over the noise, casting curses into the dark trying to blindly strike him down. Until Grindelwald arrived.
The disillusionment had been holding up much better than Harry had ever thought it capable. By then the men knew they were fighting another wizard, they could even track his general location by the sound of his apparation and the light of his spells, but where to aim their own curses had to be guessed and was often guessed wrong. There were too many of them for a homenum revelio to be effective and casting wildly missed every time because while they aimed high he kept crouched low to the ground. But when Grindelwald arrived they fell back, let their curses halt for a moment while they waited for their leader to make the next move. He swept his wand once in a great arching motion over the field and Harry's charm melted away.
Now would be the time to run. Apparate far away while he still had the chance. But it had barely been ten minutes, the Commandos needed more time if they wanted any chance at getting a safe distance away. So he stayed, he pulled his stolen cloak tighter against his frame and hoped the sticking charm on his hood held tight.
"Where did you come from?" Grindelwald's wand, the elder wand, fell back to his side. He was comfortable and confident in the belief that Harry wasn't going anywhere. "And who are you fighting for?"
"I fight for myself."
The dark wizard saw through him immediately. "I don't believe that." He looked over Harry, at the trousers and plane shirt under his open cloak, not the usual wardrobe of a wizard, and came to a conclusion. "You're with the muggles. You're the reason they survived my men for so long. But why? How did they persuade you to fight for them?"
Harry didn't answer, Grindelwald wasn't interested in the answer, he just wanted to make Harry squirm, realize the hopelessness of his situation before he killed him. But he wasn't going to play the game. He'd already resigned himself to fight, all attention was on him and he needed to keep it that way a while longer. He was going to lose, he was going to die, but he wasn't worried about it. He would die and come back, or maybe his body would ignore whatever grievous injuries it suffered and just keep powering through. The details of the whole immortality thing had never been made clear, but Death assured him there would be no reaping of his soul and now was as good a time as any to figure it all out.
He struck first and he didn't hold back, the killing curse shot from his wand and hit the man directly next to Grindelwald. He fell and the others reacted instinctively. Harry rolled beneath the barrage, threw up a shield to block the ones he couldn't, then he leapt forward and got to work.
He wasn't looking to cause mayhem now, he wasn't trying to lure and distract, finally, finally, he was using those spells he'd only seen on inanimate targets. It was awful and gruesome and there was so much blood. But he loved it, he parted souls from their bodies and the Heart sang.
He ignored the consequences of what he was doing, he let that worry fall away; if a wizard fell to his wand maybe they were meant to, maybe he was carrying out their destiny, not mucking up his future. He didn't know. He didn't care.
He lasted longer than he thought he would, he cut through whole swatches of wizards who struggled to land even one curse on his constantly twistingmovingdancing form, but all it took was one, a lucky hex that split the bone in his leg and the tide shifted from his favor. Ferula kept him on his feet, but his mobility was done for.
A curse that reminded him too much of sectumsempra struck him in the chest and tore through cloth and skin and sinew like butter. Then another hit him like a punch to the gut and he fell back, breath knocked out of him. The fight was over, Grindelwald was probably moving forward already to finish it and he would finally see how much the Heart had altered him.
But then there was a series of sharp crack-crack-cracks and heads all around him exploded. The men surrounding him ducked down, shields went up and they turned to face the new threat. Fucking Steve and his team, who'd ignored the plan he'd suggested to save their miserable lives and jumped into a fight they had no hope of winning.
He let himself just lay where he'd fallen for a moment, choking on curses and blood with each shaky lungful of air, then he snapped a weak bandaging charm that would do nothing much against the wounds on his chest then stood back up. He threw a blasting charm at the cluster of wizards closest to him, they'd thought him dead already or close enough to it and hadn't had any reservations turning their backs on him. They died bloody, but he was already moving on, tossing everything he had at these men, with no plan or finesse, only the mad drive to get their attentions back on him. Because he could survive this, nothing they could throw at him would keep him down, the Commandos couldn't.
"Haven't you had enough?" Grindelwald stepped forward, blocking a cutting curse aimed at one of his men's neck.
"My friends tell me I don't know when to quit." Harry's arm shook when he raised his wand, from blood loss or exhaustion or both, but his feet were planted and he was willing to go until they killed him.
Grindelwald smiled, he looked intrigued and maybe a bit impressed. "You're going to fight me? You'll die."
"That's all right," he spat out a glob of blood and maybe a few of his teeth with it. "I can take it."
He didn't stand a chance. Maybe at full health, after a good night's sleep and a rousing pep talk he might be able to stand against Grindelwald for a few minutes. But as he was then, half dead already, bleeding into the dirt and seeing double, it wasn't any sort of fight.
But he had to try, because Steve couldn't die. Bucky couldn't die. None of them could die.
Grindelwald side stepped his choking curse, ducked beneath his jelly legs, and batted away his bat bogey as if they were nothing. Harry's shield faltered when it came in contact with a hail of conjured arrows, one burst through and buried itself in his shoulder. He stumbled back just in time to avoid the blasting curse that destroyed the ground where he'd just been standing, but he caught on a body and he went down for the second time that night.
Grindelwald was over him in an instant, his lips formed a familiar curse and there was a burst of green from the end of his wand and Harry knew that that was a mistake. Because the wand in Grindelwald's hand was his. The mortal curse that bound it was still in place, but the fractured Heart the dark wizard held knew that one day it would be united and one day it would be his. And just as it had both two years ago and sixty years from now, the wand refused to kill its master.
The killing curse struck him in the center of his chest, it stole the breath right out its lungs and Harry swore he felt his heart skip a few beats, but then nothing. He didn't die. And in that moment of shock, because what else could Grindelwald do but gape at what should be impossible, Harry landed his first spell of the duel and threw him several meters away and onto his back.
He scrambled for purchase, used the men he'd bowled into to crawl back to his feet, but he didn't attack, because finally he was beginning to wonder who was really going to win. Because the if killing curse, the one curse that couldn't be blocked or beaten or survived, couldn't kill Harry, what could?
"Men!" His baritone roared over the fight, maybe amplified by magic, maybe by fear. "Fallback."
And they did. Immediately. The sound of disapparation harmonized with the sound of gunfire and in seconds they were gone and the fight was over.
The Commandos were thrown off guard, the wizard's had been winning, there had been no reason that they could see for them to retreat. But then their attention fell to Harry, the only moving figure in a sea of corpses.
Steve was the first to his side and used one gentle hand on his shoulder to halt Harry's attempts at levering himself to his feet. The wizard scowled at him, and batted at the hand as he did so.
"What the hell happened to going for safety?" he snarled.
"What the hell happened to not dying?" the captain snapped back.
Harry's scowl twisted to something more petulant. "I had him."
"Jesus Christ." Steve turned to Bucky, who'd fallen to his knees beside the pair only seconds ago. "Is this how you felt all those times I got in fights?"
Bucky huffed a weak laugh, but it was diminished by the overwhelming worry on his face. "Just about. Gabe, we're going to need you to put that medic training to use real quick here."
There wasn't much he could do; Harry had already splinted his leg and bandaged his chest the best he could. He broke of the shaft of the arrow, but the head buried in his shoulder would have to remain unless he wanted to risk making the damage worse. The rest of his injuries were minor in comparison, a few cuts and bruises to numerous and widespread to warrant the waste of bandages.
"I'll be fine," Harry muttered, trying to hide the way his breath whistled, maybe the blow to his chest had cracked a few ribs. "I'll patch up when we're back to base. Right now we need to move, they might be planning on coming back."
"Apparate back," Bucky ordered. "Rendezvous is a full day's hike away. We'll make it fine but you can go."
Harry shook his head. "I can't. Too tired, to hurt, I'll splinch myself if I try."
"I don't know what that means."
"It means I'll have to walk with you, at least until I can get some energy back."
"There's a little town," Dugan said, map spread out in front of him, "maybe about fifteen, sixteen clicks, west. We can head there instead of rendezvous, rest up, arrange transport."
"We could make that in four hours," Morita agreed. "Maybe five."
"We'll have to go in quiet," Steve said, but his agreement was writ all over his face, "this isn't friendly territory. If it's occupied we'll have to keep moving."
"HYDRA doesn't like to set up so close occupied territory," Gabe reasoned. "They hide among the sheep. Chances are, it's not."
"Then let's move." Neither Steve nor Bucky offered him a hand up, so Harry used a handhold on both of their shoulders to push himself onto his feet. He bit down on his lip when a wave of agony crested from his head all the way to his toes, breaking the skin in the process, but he managed to keep his moan of pain silent.
"I could carry you."
"I'm injured now, Barnes, but I'll curse you blue once I've recovered if you suggest that again."
Harry lasted a half of a kilometer, then his legs mutinied and tried to make his sorry state even worse by sending him spilling all over the uneven ground. He growled, terrifying as a schnauzer, when Steve scooped him up without so much as a 'by your leave' and carried on walking, but he knew he didn't have the strength to make it even the full kilometer let alone all fifteen. So if he wanted to get there before he died from blood loss, he'd have to suck up his pride and let the supersoldier carry him.
There were worse places he could be, he supposed, as he settled in for the journey. He might be getting blood all over Steve's uniform but the stripes were garish anyway, he was improving it.
Without him slowing them down, they made the hike in the four hours Morita projected, even if everyone but the two supersoldiers panted and cursed the entire way. Threads of orange light were slowly trying to creep along the horizon by the time they made it to the town's edge, morning was coming, but there was no time for rest.
"Let's do a quiet sweep," Steve instructed before they broke the treeline. "Make sure we don't have any Nazi forces hiding in with the goat farmers. There looks like some kind of storehouse just past that hill, that'll be rendezvous. Harry you can rest up in there while we look around."
"You should stay with him, Steve" Bucky said. "He should have someone keeping an eye on him. And on the chance we do find some Nazi's crawling around here, your stripes'll give us away in a second."
"He's got a point, Cap," Dugan said.
"All right, Harry and I will wait. We'll give you until sunup to get back, if you're not I'm coming to look."
"Fair."
The structure Steve had designated as rendezvous had once been used to house goats if the smell was anything to go by. But it was warmer than being out in the open air and being there meant Harry wasn't stifling any sign of agony as he was jostled in Steve's arms. The entire hike had been torture, passing out from the pain in his everything would have been mercy, but he hadn't and he refused to slow their progress and put them in danger by putting words to his discomfort, so he'd suffered in silence.
"You haven't stopped bleeding yet." Outside, morning was just trying to creep over the horizon, but inside the shed was still near completely in darkness, Harry couldn't see anything and didn't think Steve could either. But he was a supersoldier, of course he could see the stain of red that hadn't stopped growing across Harry's torso yet.
"It's less now though." Harry's attempt at comfort was as weak as his voice. "I'll survive until we make it back."
"You hope."
"Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner sucks, Rogers?"
There was a rustle of fabric Harry interpreted as a shrug. "I've never had the chance to practice it. It's always been me in the bed."
"Not such a great feeling having the roles reversed, huh?"
"You were going to let them kill you."
"I didn't plan on dying."
"But you were. That was stupid."
"I suppose you and I aren't as different as I sometimes like to think."
"I'm not laughing," Steve's voice was sharp with anger.
"Neither am I." But Harry was, at the irony of this conversation. "I've heard the stories; you've been jumping onto grenades, into enemy territory with no backup, into fights you know you can't win, all your life. I've seen it. But it's always been because you had to, right? It was your duty. Your fight. You could so you did. You would never stand by and do nothing. Only when it's someone else's turn to do right, do you see the recklessness and the danger in what you do."
"We could have all fought, together. We did."
"No. You all almost died. They were going to kill you, Grindelwald was going to kill you."
"We've fought them before," Steve argued. "We've won and we could have again, you just needed to…"
"Sit back and do nothing?" Harry scoffed. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I refuse to do nothing."
Steve went silent and stayed that way for a while after.
Harry left him to his thoughts, he was exhausted and the thin cushion of hay he was resting on wasn't as uncomfortable as he might have thought. He could get some sleep, prepare for the next leg of their journey home, maybe even build up his drained magic enough to apparate them all back himself.
He managed half an hour of restless sleep. Only a half hour. Then something outside their little shed moved and Steve's reactive jolt to attention startled him back to full, unhappy consciousness.
He tried to look around, listen hard for whatever had startled the man, but his average human ears didn't pick up anything. "What is it?"
Steve silently unfolded himself from the floor and slid toward the closed entrance. "Voices."
Every now and then, around the entire perimeter of the little barn, the wood of the walls had warped and bent just enough to separate, allowing a way to see out and into the structure. Steve leveled his eye with one such gap, stooped down just enough to stand even and looked out into the slowly lightening countryside.
It was only a few seconds before he was quickly moving away.
"Wizards. They're casting spells around the barn. We need to go."
His body screamed in protest at his quick and rough movements, but Harry scrambled to his feet and across the little bit of space to try and see what Steve had.
There were less than before, maybe ten at most, but they all had their wands out and the sight of the man at their forefront made his stomach drop out.
His day had been long, awful, full of blood and death and all sorts of unpleasantness. And now it had just got worse.
"I'll have to apparate us out." Harry moved back to Steve's side, grabbed hold of his arm and steeled himself. His magic wasn't recovered, not near enough. But they had to move. "I'll drop you off at town, somewhere close to the others and I'll keep moving."
Steve frowned down at him, he didn't yet understand how much everything had changed, but he would. "Why would you keep moving? If this is another plan to try and draw them away from us-"
"Steve," he only whispered, but the urgency in the one word stopped the captain in his tracks. "Steve. Those aren't Grindelwald's men."
"I don't understand."
Harry grit his teeth, breathed in deep to try and quell some of his panic. But all he could think of were the men outside, with their Auror badges and unspeakable robes, with the familiar face of Gawain Robards leading them.
"They're not Grindelwald's," he repeated. "They're mine."
He'd fought alongside Robards, he'd been there during the Battle of Hogwarts, fighting Death Eaters and helping to assure Harry's victory. He'd also been there the night Harry was lost to time, among the mob there to tear the wards from his ancestral home and drag him forward to answer crimes he hadn't committed.
And now he was here.
"They're from my home," he forced himself to speak steady, he didn't have time to repeat himself, Steve had to understand now. "They're here for me and for nothing good. We need to leave."
He understood. He still didn't know all that was happening, but he understood the urgency, Harry could see it, so he tightened his grip and disapparated. Tried to.
It was like hitting a wall made of pure magic, caging them in and cutting off their one hope of escape.
"Wards are up, we're stuck."
"We can keep them back then, just until the others get here."
"No." Harry hadn't let go of Steve yet, he rested all of his weight against the man for a moment, he knew he could take it, and he let himself think. Think of a way out. Think of a way they could survive this. Steve could survive this. He could only think of one.
He released him, moved back just enough, then said. "Stand by the wall."
Steve didn't hesitate, he trusted him fully, implicitly. Harry felt only one stab of guilt, straight through his chest, then he turned his wand on Steve. "Petrificus totalus."
Harry didn't let himself see the look of total shock on his friend's face when he carefully lowered him to the ground. A gentle tap at the crown of his head and the disillusionment washed over him, hiding his now silent and still form completely from sight.
Then he moved away, back to the spot he'd almost managed to find rest, he sat down and he waited.
They didn't keep him waiting long.
"Potter." Harry tucked his knees to his chest, dropped his face into the cradle of his arms at that familiar voice. How long had he been wishing to be reunited with the people of his home? How long had he been pushing and working to get back? But not like this. "You're in there, we already know it, and we've already surrounded you. Please don't make this a fight."
Before, to save Steve's life, he'd been willing to fight, to the death. But now, to save it again, he knew he couldn't. So he kept still and quiet as the door to the barn swung open and the head auror stepped inside. He was flanked on either side by three wizards each, they all had their wands raised and lit, but they stopped short when they saw him.
"Merlin, you look a fright."
Harry shrugged his uninjured shoulder, carefully casual. "Turns out I don't get along with any dark lords, no matter the time."
Something tight and unpleasant crossed Robards' face. "Did you kill him?"
Harry shook his head. "He's not meant to die for another sixty years. And I'm not the one who's meant to do it."
"Good. One less mess of yours to clean up."
"Are you here to kill me?"
An eerie calm had swept over him and it unsettled them, he could tell. The wizards beside Robards shuffled nervously, but the man himself remained steady. "Of course not."
"To take me back then? For what? You can't fix what happened, only I can."
"I know."
Of all the responses he'd expected, that hadn't been one. "You…know?"
"You're our hero, the boy who lived." A smile of false adoration and mania twisted the auror's face into something awful, and Harry shivered. "We're here to bring you back, to get you to fulfill your purpose of saving our world one more time."
That was all Harry wanted. He'd been striving for the same thing since the start. But why did it feel as if Robards and he still weren't on the same side?
"I can," he tried to appeal, a tremor was trying to work its way into his voice. They weren't going to kill him. He didn't know what they were going to do and it made him afraid. "I can fix this. Go back before the fight at Hogwarts and stop the union of the Hallows. We can stop all of this before it even happens."
"No."
No?
"That's not the plan."
"What then?" Harry whispered.
"You've been gone a while. Things got worse, a lot worse." And yet Robards didn't sound angry, he sounded serene, he sounded pleased. "But then we met someone and things got better. Seeing thousands of our people die from plague and starvation and muggles is horrifying, but there was good that could from it."
Robards stepped closer, his silent shadows moving with him, and Harry pressed himself further into the wall, as far from him as he could get.
"In our time of dying, we realized that hiding is no longer an option. Even if we stopped the war, even if we repaired the wards and found solitude again, they wouldn't forget, and one day they would find a way to end us." He spoke with the gentle, quiet tenor of someone speaking a bedtime tale, and it worked because Harry was captivated. "So we must let our weak die, and those who remain will evolve into people that can end them. A people who will no longer cower in fear from those weaker than us. A people who will be powerful and plentiful enough to rule entire countries, continents, worlds, instead of the isolated corners of them."
"And how do you intend to accomplish that?"
"Through your help of course."
His terror and foreboding spilled over in the form of a tear, only one that cut a trail of cleanliness through the dirt and the blood that mucked his face. "I would never."
And Robards laughed in his face. "Well see, you don't have a choice."
The moved in tandem, conjuring coils of dark gray light to curl around his limbs. Harry grit his teeth as they yanked him forward, cruel in how little they cared for his obvious injuries, but he kept quiet and he didn't struggle.
"No fight?" Robards had the audacity to look disappointed.
"Would it do me any good?"
"No, but your Harry Potter, fighting is all you do."
And that said it all didn't it? Any other time, in any other place, he would have fought until one of them was dead. But he had more than just himself to think about.
"Not anymore."
"Good." He stumbled on his injured leg when Robards gave a leading tug to the binds trailing from his wand.
The unspeakables had been hard at work while Robards' was preoccupied; they'd hardened the dirt just outside where Harry had been hidden to stone and in its face carved a ritual all too familiar. There were runes different, and it was bigger, more complex, but the basis remained the same.
"The ritual your friend used to send you back was genius," Robards said when he noticed where Harry's attention had fallen. "But flawed. Luckily a few runic genius' survived your plague and were all too happy to work out those kinks."
Harry went willingly when Robards dragged him to the center, allowed the man to arrange him just so, and kept quiet when the unspeakables, one at each point of the runic shape, began to chant.
His stomach twisted even while he tried not to laugh bitterly at the irony of this situation. He'd wished for this, wanted it so bad it ached. He'd been willing to break his code and his morals and all that he stood for to get to it. And now it was here.
He was going home.
