A/N: Warning for handwave-y science/magic. I don't have a clue what I'm doing but let's at least pretend Strucker does.


Potter's words struck the wizards deeper than they cared to admit. Pale as he was in that white room with those killing curse green eyes, he'd made the perfect omen of death.

Their death.

They fled Strucker's compound without much word to the man in charge and the next day a meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had been arranged. It was with him and his domain that their trouble had started, if they could convince him somehow to end his vow of non-intervention and help in rallying his muggle constituents, the other world leaders might come around.

They weren't meeting with him because they didn't trust in Strucker's work, they had full faith he could deliver on all that he'd promised. But…it was good to have a backup plan, and if they could get the muggles to settle down, that was half their problem taken care of already. Even if only temporarily.

The Prime Minister didn't make it easy, of course, he was still bitter over that debacle with the dead muggles they'd been containing, even though they'd had nothing to do with that and it had been a whole two years since it'd happened. Setting up a meeting with him had almost been impossible, apparently he thought himself a busy man, but after weeks of denying them at every turn, he finally ran out of excuses and had to sit down with them.

He was less than welcome when they arrived, not even bothering to rise when the three representatives of the ICW chosen to attend the meeting flooed in, and he didn't offer them any kind of refreshment.

"This will need to be quick, I'm afraid," he blustered, not even waiting until they'd been properly seated before beginning. "I've a call arranged with my counterpart in Poland in less than an hour, some mess to do with your people I suspect."

Molnar, the ICW's representative for Hungary, looked prepared to snap a scathing response, but Diggory interjected before he could find his voice. "We'll be cautious of your time, then. And it's our hope that by the end of this we can put to rest those very kind of messes."

The Minister didn't look very impressed, but he at least still appeared willing to listen.

"We've come to broker a truce." Diggory continued. "This ordeal between our people is nasty and unnecessary, good people on both sides are being killed and we wish to see that stopped just as much as you."

"At least on that we can agree," the Minister sniffed. "I'm willing to listen."

"Our primary goal is to stop the violence and preserve our world's secrecy. It's been a challenge since the first fall of our wards, we've managed to restore them around our main hubs but the damage was already done. Your people suspect now that there is more out there than just them. Many of those who suspect are harmless, they're curious if not a bit wary. But then there are those like the task force-"

The Ministers hackles raised immediately. "They're not our doing."

"No, of course not," Diggory placated, quick to soothe the man's anger. "But they still pose a problem."

The task force had found their start after the dragon attack in Wales. The wizarding world's relationship with their muggle counterparts was about in shambles by then, the Prime Minister had refused to help them cover up the incident and cleaning up the aftermath of the attack without the muggle government's support wasn't a challenge the Ministry was prepared to deal with.

They'd done the best they could, sending the few muggleborns they had left in their employ to deal with the few bits of footage the muggles had managed to capture. And though there had been too many witnesses to obliviate in full, they did what they could, they altered the memories witnesses had of that night, and when the ones they couldn't obliviate spoke up about the dragon they'd seen dive from the night sky and set their countryside alight, the altered were there to sow doubt with their own corrected version of events.

The fabricated story was the one the papers went with; it was easier to believe an airplane fuel tankard had burst mid-flight, showering the homes below in molten rain before coming down in the center of their town, rather than an honest to god, straight from the storybooks dragon. Muggles wanted so badly for things to remain normal and safe they were willing to believe just about any story they were fed.

Or, at least most of them were.

Not all of the survivors of the attack were convinced. They'd seen the dragon, felt the primal terror of watching the beast drop from the sky and tear their homes down with a puff of its breath and no one could tell them otherwise.

They were the first members of the force.

When they started they didn't set out with violence as their intention, they only wanted answers, but then they found them and they liked none of it.

Decades of secrets, of lies, of careful coverups by their own government were carefully, tenaciously uprooted. They were convinced another world ran parallel to their own, most often it was carefully isolated and perfectly hidden, but the few times they met and mingled the results were disastrous. For them.

Those farmers who'd been attacked some few years back, not all had died, some had been taken and never brought back.

Then there had been that mess with the bridge. Only a few years old and snapped clean in two? Officials had claimed normal wear and poorly manufactured steel as the cause for the disaster, even when there was nothing to back the claims.

And old man Dirk could still be found in some pubs every now and then with stories of a beast much like their own disturbing his day at beach and puncturing his lilo.

The founding members of the force saw the truths behind those careful lies and they were enlightened. The wizarding world had always been precise in their coverups, but they'd been uniform, following the same pattern of response for every incident, and once one knew what they were looking for it was no challenge to find every point in history when their two worlds had clashed.

It was only natural that after learning all that they had these muggles would want to know more of the people who lived secretly alongside them, but all evidence pointed to their government being in on the secret, any queries would be swiftly and surely shut down. They would have to take matters into their own hands, and in times like these, where the magics the wizarding world had relied on was failing them, there had never been a better chance to do it.

Their first encounter with wizards had ended poorly. The wizarding couple had been just an addition to the rapidly growing number of whose household wards failed and outed their existence to their neighbors. The day was terrifying enough for them already, so when a mob of muggles arrived as they were trying to alter their neighbors memories and restore their home's secrecy, the panicked and they attacked and both sides were lucky to leave that day with no casualties.

Their next attempt at outreach went no better. Nor did the third, the fourth, the sixth, the tenth. After the dozenth the muggles concluded these people were not the sort to be spoken to and negotiated with, they were not the sort to be respectfully approached and gently questioned. No, they were to be dealt with with force.

It spiraled from there.

When they wanted answers, the force attacked. Grabbing vulnerable wizards where they could and running them off with violence when they couldn't. These people who had caused so many of their deaths and lied to about it afterwards couldn't be trusted.

Their numbers swelled in direct correlation with the amount of wizard spottings and while most incidents were harmless not all were. Some wizards weren't as willing to be run out of their ancestral homes by a bunch of hopped up muggles, they'd rather stay as that first couple had, try and restore their wards and clear the memory of themselves from their neighbors' minds. But it didn't always work and these strange people with their sticks and their mind meddling were met with fear.

By the time of this meeting between the factions of the ICW and Britain's Prime Minister the task force had swelled to a coalition of several thousand spread all over Europe and a few even in other continents, convinced that this world they still didn't fully understand needed to be dragged into the light and made to pay for the crimes they'd committed against their people. They were the parents and children and siblings and friends of those victimized by the wizarding world, they were angry and afraid, especially now in this troubling times for the wizarding world, and they were targeting every witch or wizard unlucky enough to stumble into their path.

"If they are allowed to continue as they are, these encounters between my people and this task force will continue to escalate past the few tragic casualties we've already seen."

"We'll see war."

Diggory bit down on his frown, they hadn't needed Molnar's input, he'd ordered his words carefully enough that the Prime Minister would know exactly what he was alluding to. But he held his tongue, because they had to appear a united front to the muggle, and just nodded as if the interruption had been planned.

"We have magic, powerful and destructive kinds, but you have weapons and technology we haven't even begun to understand. No matter who comes out that fight the victor, we'll both have lost."

And the Minister knew that, the wizards could see the agreement he was trying best not to display. "What do you want from this truce then? How would we work to stop this?"

Moreau was immediate to step in, of all the wizards present she dealt best with brokering agreements. "We'll need your aide again, active aide, in quelling all attempts at finding out more about our sort. This task force needs to be criminalized and dismantled with haste. And we ask you be on standby at all times in the case of another incident in which our wards should fail."

"And in return?"

"We impose stricter laws on our people, all contact between our two worlds will be limited past what we've ever done before. You'll no longer need worry about us crossing into your domain and causing trouble."

There was a lengthy pause in which the Prime Minister was silent, waiting obviously for something else to come. But then nothing did. "What else?"

Moreau and Diggory shared a confused glance. "What more were you expecting?"

"More than just your word that you'll keep away from us." For whatever reason, the Prime Minister appeared agitated. "By my count we've killed a few hundred of yours. But us? You've killed thousands of ours, and that's what we know of. I've no doubt you have every intention of doing as you say and cutting off interaction with us non-magic folk, but who's to say all of your people will so easily fall in line? We need assurance."

Not one of the wizards liked the sound of that. "Tell us exactly what it is you want." Molnar demanded.

"Receiving the same amount of respect I offer you would be a nice start. You've your man in my office," the Minister waved at the portrait hanging behind his desk, who froze comically mid nose scratch at being called out so suddenly, "and a way in whenever you want." The flames were still crackling a merry green from their arrival. "I want open communications between us both and a way for me to reach you whenever I have need."

None of that had been discussed, but Moreau knew those above her would think nothing of the request in exchange for the muggle's cooperation. "That's something I'm sure we could arran-"

"And I want embassies."

That stopped them all short, even the Prime Minister who hadn't expected for those words to come from his own mouth. But once they'd been spoken aloud, he found them to be to his liking and went with it.

"If we're to be sure you really will stop our worlds from mixing where they shouldn't, I want a team of my own men in your Ministry, to oversee the going ons and assure you're sticking to what was agreed."

"That would be somewhat counterproductive, wouldn't it?" Molnar grit, shocked by the gall of the man. "Muggles in our ministries."

"It's a common practice among our countries. It's good for continued peace and understanding our allies' cultures."

"Yes," Diggory agreed as he scrabbled for the most diplomatic answer. "But bringing muggles into our mix, especially in these uncertain times, would be…unusual."

"Well it's what must be done if we wish to come to that truce." And the Prime Minister spoke with such conviction they all knew there was nothing that could be said to convince him otherwise.

"Unfortunately that is not something we here can decide." Moreau spoke up before her colleagues, Molnar especially who was looking a little red in the face, could ruin the fragile calm they had between them all. "We'll have to take your counter offers to our superiors and allow them to come to a decision."

The Minister nodded and sank back in his seat, clearly satisfied with a job well done. "Take your time. But if you don't mind, it's close to time for that call."


"I've never met a man so arrogant."

Needle nose pliers, delicately gripping a strand of bright green wire between their teeth, twitched in a once steady grasp.

"How can he, that muggle, have fooled himself into believing he had any ground to make demands of us."

It had taken him so long to settle into that mindspace where there was nothing but him and the bit of circuitry he was, plate by plate, assembling.

"He's deluded. He's seen our temporary hardship and somehow convinced himself that it makes him above us."

But it was gone now. His careful calm shattered by the increasingly loud and ever uncouth wizards who walked through his halls without any kind of care for the delicate work they were doing. Strucker set aside his tools and replaced the protective set of glasses he wore with his monocle just as his magical allies brought their noise and not entirely welcome presence into his workspace.

"Meeting with the Prime Minister went well, I take it?"

None of the wizards looked particularly amused by the statement, but Strucker was much too irritated by the unscheduled visit to care much for diplomacy.

"We left with nothing achieved," Moreau confessed. "Only another matter for those higher ranked than us to squabble over."

"Pity." Strucker tucked his project away and turned to boot up a nearby monitor, he wouldn't find the quiet he needed to complete his work until the wizards had gone, but there were a few measures his head of security needed reviewed and he might as well finish some work. "Though I still confess to not understanding why a meeting for peace was scheduled at all. Do you not trust our work here?"

"We trust," Diggory assured, "but what's being done here won't be a quick fix. Even once we have the numbers we need, you said yourself it will take time to groom them into a force to be feared. We don't have time."

"Then you should have taken whatever deal was offered."

They looked outraged by the very idea. "What they want is beyond reason; embassies within our wards, seats in our governments, to have a say in what we do."

Strucker shrugged already bored with the conversation. "Well then I hope a few years of continued isolation proves to be worth your annihilation."

"Excuse me?"

"They will die, these men who seek to oppress you, but only in time. There must be patience. But if you can't manage that, if you can't stomach working alongside your inferiors for just a few years more, then you will not live to see this done."

Strucker hadn't made this alliance to waste valuable time educating men who were meant to be equals, and yet most his time seemed to be spent doing exactly that. Their magic was useful, yes, and their willingness to provide as many subjects as needed was appreciated, but he was quickly finding any virtues the wizards had were outweighed by their many, many flaws.

"How long exactly must we be patient?" Moreau questioned, her mouth was set in a deep frown but Strucker could see she was at least considering his words. "We've yet to have a real answer; a day, a time, an idea in when our sacrifice will finally pay off. If we're to break our most sacred laws, we at least deserve the right to know for how long we'd have to tolerate it."

"I don't have one to give you," Strucker shrugged. "A day, a time. This is not the kind of work that can be given a neat little timeline and a proper schedule to follow."

"Give us something. You've had Potter months and he's done nothing but rot in his cell and plot ways to escape your hold."

Strucker could feel the nerve above his left eye trying valiantly not to twitch. They were relentless, these wizards, if he didn't offer them something he wouldn't be rid of them for hours. "He's adjusted to the collar, finished with all that vomiting and moaning, we've begun the process of acclimating his magic to the pods. Give us a week, seven days down to the hour and he'll be ready for the first procedure. I can say nothing for how long the rest will take."

Diggory fished a battered old pocket watch from his ridiculous robes and took a moment to examine its face. "A week," he murmured, "I suppose we can do."

They didn't have much say in the matter, but Strucker allowed him a polite smile nonetheless. "Then it's settled." He was already turning back to the monitor, hoping against hopes they would catch the nonverbal cue to leave. "In the meantime you would do well to contact that Prime Minister and come to some sort of agreement."


They were gone after an hour and another few dozen questions, complaints, and demands. By the time the tail end of the last robe disappeared into their green fire Strucker was exhausted, so much so he couldn't bring himself to take back up the work he'd been forced to put on hold. He needed a menial task, something to keep his hands busy without much thought while his depleted energy reserves worked to replenish themselves.

The aides were in the main lab squabbling over who would be the one to venture into Potter's cell to collect their daily fluid samples. Their continued reluctance to approach their most important subject would have to be addressed at some point, but in the meantime taking blood from the flighty wizard was just the task he'd been hoping for.

Potter had always been one of many words; when he'd first arrived he was always quick to offer a snarky comment or a barbed statement regarding the morality of their actions, but now he preferred to watch in silence.

Whether he was being fed or tested on or dragged from cell to lab to cell again, those eerie green eyes tracked the nervous forms of his minders. It unnerved his handlers and set Strucker's instincts on edge, the boy almost seemed as if he knew something, as if he were waiting for something. What it was, he couldn't say. Any hope Potter might have had of escaping should have been neatly done away with the moment they'd snapped that modified collar around his throat. But where all of Strucker's other subjects might have conceded to the hopelessness of their situation, they boy remained attentive.

In the end, it would be Strucker who had to root out what it was he had to be so patient about, it always was. It was fortunate that he excelled at stripping away the defensive walls and pathetic secrets his subjects liked to keep.

When he entered the cell, he didn't address the boy immediately, he took his time erecting a quick stand to set the case of medical paraphernalia onto. Potter didn't address him, choosing to watch him work in silence. But when Strucker held out a hand, a clear signal to come forward, he complied without question.

Maybe it was because of the armed guards watching him intently, maybe it was the forced calm the drugs were constantly feeding into his system, or maybe it was part of whatever strange plan he had cooking up in his crafty little head, but no matter the reason, it was strange seeing the boy so compliant when everything he'd been told and witnessed firsthand had proved he was everything but.

"The color's come back to your cheeks." Strucker kept his focus on his work as he spoke, collecting a thin strip of latex to tie as a tourniquet around Potter's thin arm, within seconds of his applying it, blue veins bulged visibly beneath his translucent skin. "That's good. We lost valuable time waiting for you to recover."

Strucker thought he might have seen Potter quirk something of a sarcastic frown, but it was gone just as quickly. And there was certainly no expression when he stuck the needle in the most prominent vein of his arm and began a steady pull of the plunger to draw his blood.

"What has you so quiet lately, Harry? Your minders say you speak nothing when they're around when before it wasn't often they could get you to keep quiet."

Potter looked up at him, and this close, even Strucker could admit there was something eerie in the way he watched. The green of his eyes were poisonous but there was a shadow of something in them, and his young face as a whole, that was unspeakably old.

He was too much of a professional to allow himself to become unsettled when the boy focused all of that attention on him, but he was still startled when he actually chose to speak.

"It just seems I haven't been in much of a mood to hold conversation. It's like you said, I was recovering."

So the silence hadn't been a part of some ploy to aid in his escape. Or maybe it had and now, face to face with Strucker, Potter was reevaluating that ploy. But that was something to be considered when he wasn't here.

"You've been well for days."

This time he really did see the boy smile, bitter edged and full of sarcasm.

"What is it you've been wanting to hear?"

Strucker set aside his first vial, full now with blood, and reached for a second one as he said, "Nothing of consequence, but I learned long ago that when men in your position go silent trouble is brewing."

"You'll get no trouble from me." Potter's free hand scratched idly at his collar. "I've been so effectively defanged."

"It shouldn't come as any kind of surprise when I say I don't feel at all assured."

He screwed the lid on the second vial and contemplated going for a third, but honestly they had more than they could need for their daily checks.

"But your cooperation thus far has been greatly appreciated. We all hope you might keep it up." He snapped the tourniquet from Potter's arm and made sure to add it to the rest of his collection of waste before folding his case and snapping the temporary stand closed. "Continue to rest, you've a big week coming up."


Harry watched Strucker and his two minions file out of his cell, quickly falling back into the quiet stoicism he'd taken on these few weeks past. It was only after the door sealed shut behind them that he allowed himself to slump into some approximation of relief. A hand fell to his forearm, where the skin was dotted with dark bruises from the countless needles he'd been stuck with. He wasn't sure what they needed it for, but every day like clockwork someone would come to collect a vial or two of his blood.

This was the first time Strucker himself had come to do it. Harry had assumed the man thought himself too important to waste time performing such menial tasks, so his presence must have had a purpose. He'd been looking for something in Harry and the things he said, he just wasn't sure what.

It made him nervous. Strucker made him nervous. Because of all the things Harry had faced, basilisks and dark lords and his own Ministry, he'd never encountered a man so focused.

Voldemort had been intense, obsessed, but years of fragmenting his soul and taking part in the worst sort of rituals had done him no favors. He was erratic and too easily controlled by his anger and while Harry would never say he was an easy opponent, he was at least a familiar one.

But Strucker, he was precise in everything he did. He was calculatingly patient and Harry just couldn't get a read on him.

It was because of Strucker his chances of escape sat so bleakly at zero, if Harry were being held by wizards, he was sure he could have found some way free by now. But of course the one time they chose to be competent in anything, it was when deciding on his captors.

But it was fine, he could be like Strucker, he could be patient, because Death had sworn he couldn't die. But his captors could, they'd grow old and weak, and their minds would grow old and weak. And he'd wait and comply, he'd follow every order they gave, be their perfect test subject until there came a time where they couldn't remember how desperately he'd wanted to be free, couldn't remember every measure he'd taken, and life he'd stolen just for the chance of it. They'd forget why their armed guards and their collars were so important and that's when he'd strike. He'd get out, he'd jump and this time no one would catch him.


It was easy keeping to his creed for the first week.

After the sickening side effects of the collar had worn off, his days fell back into the same routine they'd followed pre-breakout. He was fed twice a day, taken to shower every three, and otherwise ignored. The only change in the repetition were the blood draws.

Remaining on his best behavior wasn't any kind of trouble because most days he interacted with no one.

But then, after two weeks stuck between the same four white washed walls, seven days exactly past Strucker's visit, his solitude ended with the arrival of four guards, their big guns, and Strucker's very own second in command, List.

Harry had sensed something was to happen that day, something big. His blood hadn't been drawn for the first time since receiving the collar, and instead of his normal morning meal of hash, he'd been given a strange smoothie like drink that looked like spoiled milk and tasted about as good, but was assured held all the nutrients he'd need for the day to come.

His restraints had been upgraded from the simple manacles trapping his arms in front of him to a set around his wrists and a set around his ankles attached by a chain thicker than his forearm. It seemed even with his shiny new collar they still didn't fully trust him.

It was a challenge walking so tightly bound, the most he could accomplish was a sad little shuffle that had them all moving at half the pace they might usually be. And if he was exaggerating his difficulties just a little? Well the looks of frustration his guard tried to hide beneath their carefully stoic masks almost made him smile. He had to find pleasure where he could nowadays.

A bit of his amusement died though when, instead of turning into the lab like he'd expected, they went further down the corridor to the elevator. In all his time in the facility, the only places he'd been permitted access to was the lab and his cell and the little bathroom area he was taken once a week to shower. Any deviation from the little routine was going to be immediately met with trepidation.

The button for Sub-2 was pressed and they dropped a floor lower where their silent procession marched to a familiar room; the cavernous hall the ritual forward had deposited them. But it was no longer empty, filled now with what appeared like half the lab from the level above with a few additions.

Serious work had to have gone into moving the machinery, none of it looked very light, but then Harry saw the far wall, the upper half of which was actually a window looking into another room, and he understood the need for all the trouble. They were in an operating theatre of sorts, and in the room behind the window were dozens of men in robes to watch what proceeded.

Harry had done a good job distracting himself with escape attempts and magic repressing collars that turned his stomach inside out, but Strucker had told him the very first day he arrived that he was here for a purpose, there was no forgetting that. They wanted his magic, to take what they could and use it to restore power to those who'd lost it to the disease. And maybe Harry had assumed the man was all talk, magic wasn't a physical object, it wasn't something that could be collected and transferred from person to person, especially not by a muggle. And maybe that made it easy to forget, to ignore.

But Strucker shouldn't be underestimated, he'd learned that already, and if there was any muggle capable of accomplishing such an impossible task, he would be the one.

He met them on entry, smiling in a way that made Harry distinctly nervous. He'd learned from experience that when men like Strucker had something to be happy about, it was usually to his detriment.

"Is that all of them then?" List asked by way of greeting, he was looking up, into the viewing gallery, with a moue of distaste on his thin lips.

Harry felt a prickle of amusement among all the confusion and dread building within him, if the wizards knew how poorly these muggles, their inferiors, viewed them, they would be outraged.

"Yes, their various leaders and entourages all accounted for, they didn't dare be late." Strucker turned his little smile onto Harry who did his best not to scowl in return. "Mr. Potter, welcome. We'll be heading this way."

Among the semi-familiar monitors and gurneys and unnamable devices out on the floor was a set of upright, human sized structures built on three sides with metal and the fourth glass that he was about eighty-percent certain he would have to go into at some point. They looked oddly like futuristic sarcophagi connected by some sort of glass tube.

It was all very unnerving and Harry could only feel his anxiety spike higher when he was pushed back onto a gurney only a few feet away from the devices and directly beside a second gurney that was already holding a thin man who looked about twice his age. He looked ill, or as if he'd recently been ill, pale and trembling and bearing a nasty ring of scars around his throat, but when he looked at Harry his face shone with hope.

Harry looked away, felt his hands clench almost involuntarily around their thick chain. Surrounded by clean pressed, white coated aides, the man stuck out sorely, they didn't need any interaction for Harry to know who the stranger was; he was the one to receive his stolen magic.

He looked away, could feel anger warring with disgust battling with a rising desperation build somewhere beneath his sternum, but he still tried to empathize. His own magic wasn't gone, only temporarily bound and it was still as if he'd lost a limb, months had passed and he had yet to adjust to the enormous feeling of loss being without it left. If instead of being blocked off it had been drained away, gone for good because of a disease never even seen before, there was honestly no telling what he might do. He might try and live with it (he had after all spent the first eleven years of his life not even knowing such a thing as magic was real), perhaps he could in time grow used to being without it. But it was just as likely he'd find himself sitting where the man opposite him sat. Willing to undergo some mad procedure to siphon the power he'd lost from another, especially if that other was, debatably, the cause of his loss to start with.

So there was understanding, mixed in somewhere among all that anger, but it didn't make this any easier to stomach.

"You look so serious, Mr. Potter." And as if his mood weren't foul enough, now Strucker wanted to engage. "You shouldn't. This is a good day for you, you're doing an enormous service for your world."

"Service?" Harry snorted. "That's what we're calling it? Should I expect some form of compensation then?"

"Let's see how well today goes, then perhaps we can have a discussion. Until then," he reached for a tray and came back with a sizeable syringe, "your arm if you would."

He'd only made the vow to himself to end all acts of defiance a week ago, but one look at that needle and his resolution to comply with all that they asked was already faltering.

"What is it?"

"A mild sedative only. To keep you calm until the end."

"The one being fed into my jugular isn't doing it for you?" But Harry held his arm out anyway, not seeing much reason in wasting his time trying to put up a fight.

The effect was almost immediate, and however mild Strucker claimed it to be, Harry could already feel his limbs going numb.

Strucker smiled at him and ran a hand over his head in a way that felt mockingly paternal. "Keep calm, this will be done quickly and it won't hurt a bit."

"I don't," Harry said around a heavy tongue, "trust you."

"Such hurtful words." He sighed, not a trace of upset in his expression. Then he turned away, moving his attention to the wizards gathered above as he accepted a microphone that fed audio directly into the viewing room. "We're prepared to begin if you'd like to find your seats."

There was a few moments spent shuffling about as they found their seats and settled in for the show.

"Our alliance has been a strong one thus far, you've given me every resource needed to succeed and in turn I've returned magic to those who thought it gone. But I believe it's past time I delivered on what I truly promised." He paused, no doubt for dramatic effect, and then, "Our army."

The wizards tittered in excitement and all the while Strucker continued on grandstanding and monologuing, but the drone of his voice faded into the background of Harry's mind as he just watched.

It was cinematic, the picture Strucker made; standing tall and overconfident as he spoke to a room of dignitaries and bureaucrats, all who hung from his every word, unwilling to miss a single moment of the miracle he was preparing to perform.

It was also a familiar one.

It had been almost a year since Brooklyn and the lab hidden beneath the little antique shop but the memory of it, even in his drug addled stupor, hadn't lost its edge.

The similarities between these two scenes, separated by over half a century, were as striking as the differences between them were. Back then, in that lab, he'd been a part, a willing member of the wonders to be created, no one in that room was there against their will. But here, even while the setup of fancy equipment, bespectacled scientist, and eager audiences were near identical, the undercurrent of fear rather than excitement was such a telling difference Harry ached with the desire to be back then. Because even sixty-six years in the past, with not a single idea how to get back home, he'd at least had some bit of hope.

The gurney beneath him jolted, and Harry realized that while he was lost somewhere in his mind Strucker had finished his speech and now they were moving. He was dragged to his feet, propped between his usual two guards who did most of the work supporting his weight, and (yeah, he'd guessed it), led over to one of the two capsules.

Inside the contraptions was a bit stuffy, which wasn't much of a surprise as he couldn't see any kind of proper ventilation inside the thing. But the capsule at least was narrow enough that he could lean against any of its walls to keep himself propped mostly upright. Next door, his fellow wizard was being loaded up, then Strucker took a moment to talk a little more, and then finally something was happening.

An aide approached, decked in protective gear and clutching an oblong crystal so bright and blue it almost hurt to look at between a pair of forceps. The crystal went into the compartment beneath Harry's feet while another aide fixed a monitor to the tip of his pointer finger. He was tempted to rip it off, just to be petty and hold up this very serious procession, but his arms still felt like rubber and it would only earn him more distrust from Strucker and his men so it stayed in place.

The back hatch shut behind the aide, effectively sealing Harry in on all sides, and Strucker, the asshole, came around to knock on the glass.

"Any discomfort?"

Harry very maturely offered him a middle finger in response.

"Good." He turned, looked dramatically across the room then up at the wizards watching.
"Let's begin."

On the other side of the room a series of commands were punched into a monitor. Harry's pod rattled to life and the temperature rose with almost no warning, then rain began to fall from the roof of his capsule.

It wasn't so bad, barely a light mist and it was warm, better than the showers he was offered any other time, but a shudder still traveled up his spine, rattled all his bones, and once it started he couldn't stop it. Within minutes he was soaked through and trembling worse than he ever had while living in a cardboard box in the middle of a New York winter, but it wasn't from cold, or discomfort. He wasn't entirely sure what it was. Couldn't find just one word to name the cause of this uncontrollable reaction.

Raw, was perhaps the closest. Stripped down. Vulnerable.

The tiny capsule with its glass face put him in the mind of a pinned butterfly behind the glass of a frame. But he wasn't just there to be admired as a pretty, dead thing, he was there to be used, to be harvested from and by people he'd once looked to as kin.

He'd grown up shunned and slandered by the muggles, when he'd found the wizarding world they were supposed to be his chance at finally belonging. And even in the times when the Prophet and the Ministry had found reason after reason to spit on his name it had never been so bad as before Hogwarts, because he had his friends, and his headmaster, and his magic. Now he had none, and now it wasn't just one profit seeking paper and one finnicky Ministry against him. Strucker had said everyone was there; world leaders, prime ministers, members of magical governments from all around, to watch as his magic was taken and given to another because he was no longer considered one of theirs.

It just took him being in this capsule, drenched in artificial rain and being watched from every angle to finally realize it.

He looked up into the viewing gallery, stared each one of them in the face the best he could until the fog that had begun rising from the compartment beneath his feet filled the entire capsule and clouded the glass.

The trembling changed into something else not long after that.

Harry had been inhaling the fog, not thinking it was anything more than a product of the humid temperature in the capsule and the man made rain, but then it solidified in his lungs. It was like breathing something down the wrong pipe, only worse because while it was down there wreaking havoc in his airways, it expanded until it felt as if it were trying to burst from his chest.

And then, through no way he could explain, he felt it spread; thickening in his arteries, twining along his nerves, and injecting itself within his muscles. With every intrusion it felt as if the fog, or whatever it really was, was unmaking him, pulling apart every strand of DNA, not searching, but trying to change.

He gave up trying to stand straight, he fell to his knees and he clawed at his chest to get to lungs that wouldn't work. All the while his entire frame shook, spasming erratically as if trying to knock loose the intruder tearing him apart. It didn't do any good, of course it didn't, and meanwhile Strucker and his cohort and the most important men in the wizarding world stood by and watched.

He hadn't hated even Voldemort as much as this.

Maybe a minute passed, maybe an hour, then through the haze of blinding agony of having every cell in his body attacked, he heard Strucker speak, a command, and then something changed.

There'd been a buzzing in his ears for weeks, maybe even since he'd got here, that had become such a constant Harry forgot it was even there until it was gone. And then something new rose up to meet the foreign energy laying waste to his insides.

His magic.

He understood then, of course Strucker had lied, the "mild sedative" wasn't to keep him calm, it was to keep him so disoriented and weak he could do nothing when they released his magic. And he'd fallen for it, hadn't considered it to be anything less than the truth. But how else would they draw from his magic if it was kept repressed by the collar.

Under the brutal attack of his magic, the intruding mist fell back almost immediately, releasing its hooks from his muscles and when Harry heaved it spilled from his lips.

Upon its appearance it was no longer an unassuming grey mist, but black as slick and writhing in a way that appeared almost sinister. Harry watched the way it hung in the air around him disgusted just as much as he was fascinated, but then the hatch sealing the piping between the two capsules slid open and the pull of air coming from within vacuumed it from his capsule and into the one neighboring him.

He couldn't see what was happening, the metal sides of his pod obscured everything but what was directly in front of him, but he could hear the man's screams, could feel the impact of his fists or his feet or his body resonating between the two connected containers. When he stopped, the silence so sudden it was jarring, Harry was left to wonder if perhaps everything had gone horribly wrong.

But then he looked to Strucker, and he was smiling, and Harry's meager hopes were dashed.

"Very good Harry. So very well done." The baron crouched so they sat eye to eye. "Perhaps they weren't wrong about you after all."

Harry would have loved nothing more than to spit something cutting and cruel at the man, in this place where he'd had everything stripped from him, his words were his only weapon. But they stuck in his throat, couldn't push past the rush of air he drew desperately into his lungs, and all he could do was stare back with his hitching breath and inexplicably wet eyes.

"Rest now, regain your strength." He climbed to his feet, began to turn away, but not before one last word. "We've one complete and just a few dozen more to go."

The wizards were waiting to meet him at the door, grins enormous as they shook his hand, uttered congratulations, and Harry gasped, a shudder tore through him, and all he could do was bow his head, fold into himself, because they would not see his tears.

Compliance, he forced himself to remember, show them compliance, deference, let them think he was defeated. But every last one of them was going to burn.