Kuznetsov's information took them to a facility in Lithuania that hadn't housed either of their targets in some time.

Maybe it was because the scientist's capture had made it back to Schmidt who took immediate measures to protect his weapon, or maybe the compound had only meant to be a temporary residence for the two. But no matter why, when the Commando's tore through the doors of the building and cut through the skeleton crew guarding the place they found no cube and no Schmidt to make any of the trouble actually worth it.

Their rampage through the facility was brutal, the Commando's were an efficient team, but they were only ever so vicious when it was personal. The defending HYDRA agents had barely any time to fire their weapons, and none at all to land a hit before being bowled over by a shield, blasted back by a hail of bullets, or thrown into stone wall by fists and steel capped boots.

They were devastated. Of course they were. And angry. They'd risked so much, sacrificed even more to get this location and it proved to be worthless.

Of course the men from above, the ones who gave the orders and kept well away from the actual fighting, didn't see it as such. Even if the cube wasn't where they'd hoped, Kuznetsov had still given them the location of a fully operational facility. Steve's team returned with coordinates of more compounds, blueprints of what lay inside, schematics of weapons, dossiers of agents, plans of battle, even cyphers to radio codes. It was marked a success even if the Commandos didn't fully agree.

And just to twist the knife even further, they were allowed only a day to lick their wounds and soothe their rage before orders came in for a new op. Another grab and bag just a few klicks south of where they'd lost Harry.

"I put up with about all the shit they can throw at us." Dugan was grumbling, he'd been grumbling for some time, but only recently had he raised his pitch to let the rest of his teammates hear his gripes. "And I don't bitch about it. But I draw the line at wet socks."

They'd been walking for hours, this far over enemy lines they had to be dropped miles outside of the mission start point to avoid being spotted, and most the trek had been through calf deep snow that left not a single one of them with a pair of socks not soaked through. Even Cap with his fancy red boots.

"That's a lie, Dugan," Bucky drawled from his spot at the front of their procession, right in his usual spot at Cap's side. "There ain't never been a day you didn't bitch."

"Fucker," the ginger snapped harmlessly. "'s not my point. All we do for them sonsabitches, least they could do is get us some good damn snow gear."

"Nah, but see if they did that there wouldn't be enough money for those pressed suits they like to showboat in."

"Bunch of meatballs, all of them. A man doesn't need a pressed suit to impress, just a nice hat."

"Meatball or not, they're smart enough to land the job that's got them back on home soil while we're the ones slogging it through kraut territory with the wet socks."

Dugan groaned just at the reminder. "Minute we put a bullet in Adolf's head and I'm back stateside you know what I'm planning to do?"

"Crack a beer?" Morita guessed.

"The second thing I'm planning to do?"

Jones rolled his eyes. "Tell us."

"Kick any man thinking he can tell me what to do. I'm done taking orders from these armchair generals."

"You'll just get yourself stuck in the can starting brawls you can't keep up with."

"Ain't no brawl I can't keep up with," Dugan exclaimed, mock outraged. "And I'm a whole hero back home, best pals with the Star Spangled Man, bulls wouldn't stop me if I was killing a man."

"Maybe try to keep away from the murdering anyway, my friend," Falsworth said with a pat to Dugan's shoulder. "Get your fill of it here, then go home and find yourself a cheap jane. She'll tire out that last bit of fight in you."

"Shit beer and corner girls?" Morita laughed. "A hero's homecoming."

"Well what big things do you got planned then?"

This was a favorite game of theirs, when the miles between mission start and rendezvous were long, when none of them could find sleep past the rumble of mortar and gunfire, or when they just felt themselves slipping into those dark moods all men on the front found every now and again, they took turns picturing their perfect day after the war. It helped just as much as it didn't.

It kept them busy that last hour it took to find their start point, then they were unpacking the gear they'd need to get their guy and Steve was handing out orders.

"Gabe, Jim, get started setting up comms. Monty, keep an eye out to make sure they don't get here any sooner than they should, Dum-Dum, Buck, and I'll make sure there aren't any surprises hiding out." He cast a critical eye over the uneven, snowcapped landscape with all its perfect places for enemies to be hiding. "Let's make this quick and keep it sharp, fellas, we've got a train to catch."


Walden Murphy was thirty-six when his life ended.

He was secretary to the head of the office for magic relations and education, a regular at the Blind Pig, and founder of the Rhode Island Red Cap quodpot team's fan league. He didn't have any children or siblings, no wife or girlfriend or any significant other, and his parents had passed early in his life from a freak portkey accident.

He was well liked among his colleagues, even more so among his fellow bar patrons and anyone who knew him would describe him as charismatic, amicable, maybe a bit of a flirt but one with a strong moral code.

He was the one hundred and third wizard in the US to catch the aggressive variant of spattergroit.

He was one of the few lucky enoughto survive it.

Eight months of aggressive treatment and he went home, healthy but unwhole, missing a part so integral he wasn't himself without it. He gave up on work, his league, his friends and he poured every dragot he had into finding some way to return his magic.

Walden Murphy was thirty-seven when a former colleague came to him with an offer. It was insane, and maybe a bit illegal, but the Congress needed wizards like him, ones who'd lost their magic, to submit to trials and tests run by an organization none of them had ever heard of with the hope that they might be able to restore his gift.

He was desperate, had spent months searching and had no answers and not a single riel left to his name, so he agreed and spent a year after being picked apart and bled dry by a muggle who claimed his time would come.

He didn't believe, hadn't after the first month of white walls and demeaning tests, but he had nothing to go back to, with no magic he had no work and his friends probably thought him dead and the muggle, the scientist Strucker, didn't seem the type to let them go knowing all that they did.

So he kept his peace, did as ordered and said nothing when they took enough samples to make a whole 'nother of him and he waited until finally it paid off.

They caught the Boy Who Lived, the one who set this curse loose on their people, and he was told his time had come.

The procedure felt like what he imagined death would be like, but he woke after and he knew he couldn't be dead, nothing in his ordinary life had earned him paradise so the energy, the life, the pure power that vibrated his bones could only have come from Strucker's experiment and not ascension to the perfect afterlife.

He'd been an above average wizard before the plague, earned all Exemplary's on his SALEMs, but the feel of his magic after, it was greater, more powerful than anything he'd ever known.

"348."

He'd been given time to recover and to allow his body to acclimate to the new energy running through it, and now they were back in the room in which he'd been returned his magic. It had been cleared of the medical equipment and Strucker now stood in the viewing gallery rather than out on the floor, he'd been the one who had spoken the assigned number that was as good as his name into the intercom.

"You are the first to receive Potter's magic, prove to us it wasn't a waste."

Walden didn't think, didn't waste time worrying over the fact that he had no wand, he needed to prove to these men that he was worthy of their attention. He raised his hand, considered the most impressive spell in his arsenal, and cast.

He'd learned the patronus charm maybe a year out of Ilvermorny, and even if he hadn't ever managed forming it into a fully corporeal form, the ghostly image of a greyhound almost as tall as him was still an impressive sight. He didn't really have much cause to use it, even in those periods of war, the Congress didn't employ Dementors and Lethifolds were even harder to come by. The most use the charm got from him was when he wanted to show off, which was often enough that he knew how to cast it and knew how it was meant to come out.

But he cast the spell and instead of the silver mist that was most familiar, a creature torn straight from nightmares sprung into creation. It resembled only vaguely his hound, it shared the size of it, the shape, but where once it was formed from a cloud of silver, now it was made entirely from shadow. Dark weaved the shape of emaciated ribs, molded bone thin limbs capped with incredible talons, and cut a narrow face with eyes that burned red and fangs that dripped shadow.

Walden shivered just to see it. Patroni were among the lightest magic to be performed, even when it wasn't cast in full corporeal form just being in the presence of his hound washed him in warmth. But the air around this creature was arctic and he felt nothing but dread.

"Most excellent." Strucker's voice broke his reverie and the nightmare apparition dissolved back to nothing. "What was the spell?"

"It was…" Walden cleared his throat to rid it of its tremble, "…it was the patronus."

There was a pause, then the quiet disturbance of the intercom being handed over to another. Walden looked up to find another man had joined Strucker at the glass, a wizard if his robes were any indication.

"No patronus looks like that."

"No," he agreed. "They don't."


The wizards were flustered and Strucker was irritated because he didn't know why. The magic 348 had cast was unusual, not the sort of spell they were used to seeing, but they already knew that would happen. His subjects were returned their power, but not in the same form they'd once possessed; they couldn't cast an endless number of spells as the wizard they once were could, but neither were they restricted to just one ability as their cousin species was.

They could perform a multitude of magics, more concentrated and powerful than any spell, but there would be some that was simply beyond their capability. No longer wizards, but mages he called them, skilled in one specific craft.

"Tell me why you are worried," he demanded of the wizards after too long spent in confusion.

"His spell," the usual representatives, Diggory and Moreau and their companions weren't present today, to observe 348's first display of power he had been joined by scholars and spell masters better able to understand the extent of the subject's abilities, "the patronus charm is what it's called, is a very light bit of magic, it's meant to protect, to elicit a sense of comfort and warmth. To foul it as his has been is unheard of, nothing we know of, no spell or ritual, is capable of twisting a patronus. Only that it would require a very dark, very dangerous sort of magic."

"Potter's magic?"

"That would be the obvious answer, but…Harry Potter was a known light wizard. He didn't dabble in the dark arts, for Godric's sake, he killed the dark lord with a disarming spell."

"But that was before he unleashed the curse on your world, wasn't it?"

The wizard with his bug like spectacles blinked up at Strucker, not yet following. "I'm sorry?"

"The artifacts he united, these Hallows, were gifts from death as the story says." He'd done his reading, delved deep into the tale of the Hallows and all the lore surrounding it to understand the best he could what he was dealing with. "And whether that's the truth of their origins, their history is one steeped in murder and the darkest of magics. When Potter united them, he took on their power, their blood soaked past, and perhaps it changed him, his magic."

The wizard nodded. "And now we've a put that magic in the one down there."

"Yes." It was nice to see not all wizards were idiots. "When we took magic from our first donor wizard, the one gifted in transfiguration, the resulting mages could manipulate the form of any object around him. The mages made from the young lady with the proficiency in herbology had control of all that came from the earth."

"And now this mage, borne from Potter's magic tainted by the Hallows is capable of our darker arts?"

"No," Strucker said. In the story of the Hallows there was one constant in all of the brother's individual encounters, and even in the ones that followed. "Death." He reached for the spellbooks the wizards had brought for reference, flipping quickly through the thick pages as an idea began to take root. Then he spoke into the intercom, "348, cast Avada Kedavra."


He was perfect.

Strucker had engineered truly powerful subjects, ones whose powers were so incredible and geared towards destruction he could weep from pride and uninhibited exhilaration. But 348 was something entirely different, something lethal and terrifying even while still untrained.

They worked with him a full day; pitching spells and suggestions for him to attempt until he was pushed past his limits. And when he'd done all he could accomplish alone, they brought in an opponent.

Before he'd received Potter, his wizard allies had provided Strucker with dozens of their own for testing; not just wizards struck magicless from the disease, but those who still held the ability to cast. He needed both in order to understand their magic, he'd told them.

Most who entered his lab expired through faulty experiments and their own weak wills, and the ones who survived were given the honor of donating magic to his mages. But in order to produce a sufficiently powerful mage he needed an equally, if not more, powered donor wizard. Not all who survived the experiments were powerful enough to donate, but they couldn't be released to live their lives in traumatized freedom, they'd seen too much of what he did and who he did it with to walk free, so he found another use for them.

Newly created mages needed to test their power, not just against inanimate objects but against something that could fight back. His leftover wizards, while not powerful enough to be donors were still wizards, still had access to their magic, and when thrown in a life or death situation, they still put up a hell of a fight. Throwing these wizards and a mage into a room and letting them fight it out was the best way to see just what his mages were capable of. And if the mage didn't survive the fight? Well then they had no place in his army anyway.

He never gave them a wand of their own , allowing the wizards their own perfectly matched weapon was simply asking for trouble. But he made sure the one they were given was at least somewhat compatible with the wielder, they needed to be of some challenge to the mages.

The wizard he brought in to fight 348 was capable of fighting with whatever he was given, he'd killed the last mage he'd gone up against with his borrowed wand, the only one to do so. Strucker was expecting one hell of a fight, and while he still expected 348 to win, he'd predicted the mage would have to put in work to see it done. But then he gave the order to begin, and the wizard wasted no time casting three curses (two bone breaking and a jelly leg hex he was told), and they didn't work.

The first struck 348 at his wrist, the second two in the center of his chest; he was thrown from his feet and even in an entire room separate from the two duelers they could hear his cry of pain, but the bones in his wrist appeared intact and where his sternum should have been caved in and his legs unresponsive noodles beneath him he was whole and surefooted. He was hurt, a vicious bruise was already beginning to take form on his wrist and he rubbed his chest with a grimace, but he should have been dead.

The wizard was stunned, but the expression of shock was the only thing he managed before the nightmare patronus took form and charged. His shield did nothing, it tore through it like wet paper, so he conjured his own patronus and Stucker finally got an idea of what the spell was truly meant to be. His was a bear, twice the size of the hound and shaped from seemingly insubstantial mist, but when they clashed it was with a resounding snarl that had absolutely nothing insubstantial about it.

Moonlight and shadow carved into each other, battling viciously to snuff the other from existence. The wizard was sweating, every bit of his focus and his magic were directed at the fight, he made the mistake of assuming his opponent was in a state similar.

But 348 had left his creature to finish the fight itself, and while the wizard remained intent on the two creatures in the center of the room, he melted from existence.

Strucker had felt the unfamiliar grip of panic when his subject had first performed that trick some hours ago; it was unlike the disillusionment charm the wizards viewing the demonstrations with him had claimed, there was some degree of visibility with that one, a telltale shimmer around the caster. This was like being draped in a particularly excellent invisibility cloak, the only saving grace was 348 seemed incapable of holding it for long, a few minutes at most before he began to fade back into existence. But in this fight, he didn't even need that long.

A quarter of a minute passed between his vanishing and his reappearance half a step behind his opponent. He reached around, plucked the wand from his hand and snapped it clean in two. The grizzly who'd barely been holding his own in the fight, disappeared the moment the connection was severed, and the hound was upon the wizard in seconds.

It inflicted no physical wounds, as solid as it may seem it apparently couldn't affect the corporeal plane. But the wizard still screamed.

Shadow dipped claws and canines burrowed into his chest, searching and tugging for a prize none of them could see. And the wizard beneath it wailed in the kind of torment none of them had heard before.

"Enough, 348."

The hound disappeared immediately upon Strucker's command, 348 fell back and the wizard curled into himself, alive and conscious, but shuddering with sobs and garbled words unintelligible to all of them.

Strucker turned to the wizards who were pale with what might be horror. "What are your thoughts?"

"He's horrifying," the wizard with the bug like eyes whispered. "He's incredible."

"Yes," he agreed, electricity burned his blood, shivered awe through his bones. "And he's just the first."


The wizards wanted hundreds. Strucker had promised them an army and so they imagined mages in the dozens, enough to lay waste to entire cities, to topple governments. And they would have it, Strucker hadn't lied, but there was danger in so many.

The mages Potter produced were a breed of their own, a form of deadly that frightened them all. To have too many would risk losing control. But more than that, they didn't need hundreds. A team of just five could be as dangerous as an army in the hundreds if one knew how to handle them properly. And he did.

So they worked Potter carefully, one mage a week until they had a team of six. The wizards complained, offered their opinion where it was not wanted, but he'd become rather adept at tuning out their moaning and when confronted with the sheer destruction of the six their protests lost their steam.

"What comes next?"

Strucker was back to working with his normal group of representatives, the useless lot but at least a familiar one. The job of reviewing the statistics gathered from their team wasn't a job the whole of the ICW seemed to feel the need to be present for.

"Next is direction." They were in his private office, reviewing mounted footage of their six puttering about their cells. "They'll need to be taught control, of themselves and their power if they're to be of use to us. The start of next month I'll have a few associates step in to aide in their training. If you have any from your end you think might be of some use, the floor is open to suggestions."

"I'm sure the Supreme Mugwump will want to send in a team of aurors to help in their training. Maybe even a few unspeakables." Moreau said. "Who do you intend to bring in?"

"Just a few old friends," Strucker said with a negligent wave of his hand. "HYDRA has produced some of the most formidable strike teams in military history, my allies have shown interest in handling this team from the start."

"But to begin next month, you said?" Diggory jumped in. "Why so long?"

"First we'll need to practice a little team building, and put in a bit of work to strengthen their allegiance to our fight." Strucker patiently explained. "Our six are formidable, we want to make sure that their goals are our goals and that it remain as such."

"Yes, well that is important." The wizards shared a look among themselves, none of them were exactly sure how Strucker intended to ensure the mages total allegiance but they could all agree they didn't want to know. "The matter of Potter will also need to be discussed."

Strucker raised a brow. "What of him?"

A short woman with oriental features and whose name he had never bothered to learn was the one to answer. "He's given us our army, outside of providing a spare or two, his usefulness has run out. It would be best to deal with him before he comes up with more trouble for us all."

Surely he was misunderstanding the implications of their words? Wizards were an outdated race, and sometimes their speech reflected that, perhaps something was being lost in translation. "Are you suggesting we kill him?"

"Humanely."

"That would be a waste."

"Perhaps," the woman agreed. "But Potter is a man who is irritatingly and unalterably good. He would sooner accept death than comply with us, especially after all we've done to him. To keep him around any longer than necessary is asking for disaster."

The others nodded, all mindlessly agreeing to disposing of the boy as if he were an old, worn out shoe rather than the greatest source of power any of them had ever encountered. He was astounded at times, by their incredible stupidity.

"This certainly is a conversation to be had," he kept mind of his tone, but only just enough to keep away the worst of his disdain, "but at a later time, I think. There's much more that needs to be done here."

The witch nodded, conceding easily to his request. "We'll leave you to your work then. Expect to hear from us soon on the wizards we wish to aid in training."

"I'll look forward to it."

They saw themselves out, which was just fine by him as his patience was already beginning to wear thin, while List moved to replace Diggory in his seat directly across from his own.

"Something tells me they're already set in the decision," List said.

"They're afraid of him," Strucker sneered. "Terrified. It's hindering their ability to think logically, and it is beginning to grow old." He paused, drummed a line of fingers along his desk as he thought. "But perhaps they were right."

List only looked interest. "Were they?"

"We have everything we need, usefulness has run out. Maybe it is time to move on."

And List wasted no time with protests, with needless questions and unasked for opinions, he nodded and he said. "What would you like me to do?"

"Take 348 to Sub-2, prepare him for a demonstration." He was already pushing himself away from his desk, moving toward the door. "I'll collect Potter."


"You're holding up remarkably well."

Harry rolled onto his back, looked up at Strucker who stood framed in his open doorway.

"Six procedures and still no sign of wear. It's impressive."

"I never was one to do as expected. It drove my professors mad." He pushed himself up into a sitting position, uncomfortable with the man looming over him as he lay on his mat. "Why are you here?"

"We're going for a stroll."

"It's only been three days."

Strucker smiled indulgently. "Not another procedure. We have things to discuss and I thought you might like to stretch your legs a bit."

Kindness was never offered without a price, but seeing something past his cell walls was tempting. He stood, let himself be shackled accordingly, then followed a half step behind Strucker from his cell and out into the hall.

"Where are we going?"

"Sub-2."

But that was where they took him for the procedure, at least for the very first time. "You lied?"

Strucker snorted a quiet laugh. "What need would I have to lie?"

They descended to the lower level, but rather than leading him onto the open floor of the cavernous room, they climbed a narrow staircase and exited into the viewing gallery that overlooked it.

Strucker settled into a seat closest to the glass and gestured magnanimously for Harry to join him. "I thought you might want to watch."

There was a woman and two men out on the floor; they were on their knees, a gun pressed to each of their heads.

Harry didn't sit, he moved closer to the glass to see the spectacle better. "What is this?"

"They wanted to run, not a punishable offense by itself, but then they attempted to organize their peers into running. That couldn't be forgiven."

"So I'm here to see what happens if I try to run again."

"No." Strucker offered him a soft, fond smile. "I've been told intimidation does nothing to deter you. You're here for a different sort of demonstration."

Another man entered, this one Harry recognized. He was the one from that first procedure, but he looked different, healthier than when they'd sat beside each other all those weeks ago. He was tellingly free of the cuffs that bruised Harry's wrists and he wore a collar, but it was a thinner, less serious version of his own. And when Strucker spoke to him, he smiled.

"We have a special guest today."

The three guards with their guns to the prisoners' heads holstered their weapons and stepped back from their kneeling forms, they marched through the door, into the hall, but before the last shut it behind him, he drew something from his vest and tossed it at their feet. Wands.

"Impress us."

The three dove for them at the same time Harry's magic thief attacked. He didn't have one of his own, but it was obvious almost immediately that he didn't need one. A terrifying hound, dark as Death's cloak, melted into existence and latched jaws around the first wizard's legs. While he screamed, the only witch faced Strucker's pet head on; she cast in rapid succession spells meant only to kill. But he marched toward her without an ounce of fear, ducking spells where he could, but when he couldn't he shook of their effects with a wince and kept coming. The wand fell from her fingers the moment his hand wrapped around her throat, she didn't try to fight him only wrapped her fingers around his wrist until they bled white.

Harry pressed impossibly closer to the glass, unwilling or maybe unable to look away from the horrible scene. The first wizard was dead, there was no blood to be seen, not a single open wound on him, but the emptiness behind his gaze and the horrific way his face had screwed up and then frozen that way, confirmed even what he couldn't understand. And the woman, dangling from that iron grasp, was rotting.

Not in a metaphorical sense. Harry's brain wasn't forming pretty comparisons to describe the brutal beauty in which she was dying. No, her skin was literally peeling from muscle, bubbling with a sudden, unnatural release of gas as it darkened to foul green-tinged black with a ring of bleach white at the edges. And it was originating from where Strucker's pet had her by the throat.

The smell had to be awful, the feel of her flesh coming loose and necrotizing beneath his fingers even worse, but he didn't release her until she wasn't breathing, until the grip she had around his wrist slackened, before falling free altogether.

He dropped her then, her dead weight making an awful, brittle sort of sound, and he looked up at Strucker with pride.

"There's still one more."

The third wizard had disappeared, he'd cast a disillusionment while his opponent had been distracted and retreated out of the way of the carnage, but a glance at Strucker showed him not the slightest bit worried.

The dog like creature did a lap around the room, stopped in the corner furthest, and slammed headfirst into a shield. It dissolved on contact, but the protections keeping the final wizard from sight fell with it. He was crouched low to the ground, shoe in one hand and wand in the other. He'd tried to apparate, Harry guessed, but the wizards had prepared for that no doubt, and the portkey he was trying to create probably wouldn't work any better.

He knew it too, he choked on a wail of pure terror but he didn't pause in his frantic casting.

The man, the horrible product of Harry's own magic, looked up at them once more, a terrible expression on his face, then he raised a hand.

"What is he doing?" Harry almost didn't realize he'd spoken, he wasn't sure how he'd even managed around the snitch sized knot in his throat, but then the words were out in the open and Strucker was turning his pale eyes on him.

"He's putting on a show."

The corpses moved. The wizard with his unmarred body and the witch flesh peeling and blackened twitched grotesquely across the ground, their limbs flopping and flailing until a foot pressed into the ground, a hand levered them upright, and they were standing. Under his command.

Harry had seen inferi before, he'd been much too close to the things if he was being honest, and after he'd researched wildly to understand the awful creatures he'd encountered. He'd read enough to know that they couldn't be raised in a handful of seconds with no incantation spoken and no wand, not even Voldemort was capable of it. The process of raising a corpse was long and grueling, not one done in the heat of battle, and yet somehow this man had done it.

They moved forward on jerky legs, arms reaching for the wizard who had abandoned his shoe to cast every curse in his arsenal at them. But even when he hacked off limbs, blew holes through their chests, scorched them with fire, they kept coming. And when they fell upon him they tore into him as if they hadn't once been allies plotting a daring but ill fated escape together.

Harry turned away then, two wars and two dark lords later and he still couldn't fully stomach the sight of carnage. At his back the wizard died and Strucker's experiment collapsed to his knees, exhausted but exhilarated.

"What did you do?" The words tore from his throat as if they were lined with barbed wiring.

"Oh no," a horrible satisfaction lit Strucker's eyes, "I can't take the credit for this. He is yours."

Harry shook his head, not the slightest bit interested in trying to solve the man's mad riddles.

"You are the source of his power, we drew from you to give to him. Your magic is rooted in death, and so his will be as well. All of theirs will be."

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Because when you first arrived in my care, I gave you an offer." Harry felt his stomach sink, he remembered. "To work with us, to be an ally rather than a prisoner."

"And I said no, I still do."

"Even if it costs you your life?"

He wanted to ignore the man, he knew his type, with their silver tongues and half-truths. He was better left ignored, but if he knew something….

"The wizards plan to kill you. You've given us our army and now they'll kill you to stop you threatening us any further."

Oh, was that it? He'd been expecting that from the start. "I'm not afraid to die."

"I believe you." Strucker sat forward in his seat. "But I'm not one to waste. I won't allow you to be killed."

And Harry believed him. Strucker was just the sort to have an unhealthy attachment to his toys, no matter the trouble it might cause him. "For what though? To keep me around in case you lose one of your experiments? In case you want more soldiers for your army?"

"Because I have more use for you than a magical battery. The mages you created are powerful, greater than any we've seen so far, and they're only copies. Cheap imitations of you." The way he was watching Harry, so focused and fascinated, set his hair on end. "It goes against everything I am to dispose of that kind of power."

"What does that matter? What you want? The wizards want me dead, so I'm dead. You're smart, scarily so, and you have the backing of an incredibly evil organization behind you, but you're still just a muggle, and at the end of the day they'll do what they want because they can."

He'd been expecting anger, irritation at least, at the reminder of how little he could actually do against Harry's world, but Strucker only looked amused.

"Do you know who introduced the idea of the alliance between yours and mine? I did. I walked into your ministry, brought your people to their knees, and I told them I wanted of them. And they agreed.

"They gave me wizards, as many as I asked for, they gave me you, and in return them, I gave them magic. The kind they'd never thought themselves capable. I gave them an army, a small one," he admitted, "but powerful. Unstoppable, if we play our hand just right. And who is this army loyal to? The ones who betrayed them, handed them off as if they meant nothing? Or the ones who gave them their magic back? Made them into gods? I intend to do great things with them and the wizards intend to stand back and reap the benefits of my miracles.

"It seems just as they said for you, that they've outlived their usefulness."

Harry clenched his jaw around the desire to gape at the man, then in an unknowing mimicry of Strucker's own words, he said. "You want to kill them?"

"I want you to kill them."

And didn't that stop Harry right in his tracks? "I'm sorry?"

"You must hate them. They told me the stories, how you sacrificed your childhood, your family, your life to save them all from the dark lord their world created. Then before his bones had even begun to rot, they're at your door and they want your blood. You were lost to time because of them, forced into another war and then dragged back here before you were ready. Killing them is your due."

"But they dragged me here, to you, who's imprisoned me and used me, stolen something that was never yours to touch."

Strucker nodded, he didn't even try to defend himself. "And I would change nothing. Because I am here, performing these atrocities, not from malice or greed but because I want my people to live, more than that, I want them to thrive as the greatest versions of themselves that there can be. And to do so, some must suffer, but it is all-"

"For the greater good."

"So you understand."

Harry shrugged. "I've heard this speech before. But I still don't understand what it is you expect of me? To kill your allies and then join your little army in taking over the world?"

"Not join, lead."

Harry laughed at that. "Lead it?"

"They are six incredibly powered individuals, equal to each other, inferior only to you. None of my men could control them and none of their own has the advantage they'd need to keep them in line for long. They'll follow only someone stronger than themselves."

"How do you know?"

It was Strucker's turn to laugh, like Harry was something cute. "This is what I do. I know because I've done this before." He gestured to the experiment below them, who still sat on the ground, catching his breath. "Subject 384 is powerful and driven and he's loyal, I could raise him up, mold him into an effective leader, but for this team I don't want just effective. I want perfect. Only you would be."

"And why would you think I would ever…?"

"Because the asking is a courtesy. I can make you, but there would be a mess and I would much rather save us both that trouble."

"My consent is not a requirement," Harry parroted words the words Strucker had taunted him with probably a dozen times over, and the man smiled.

"So you are capable of learning." He stood, gestured for Harry's rota of guards to join them again. "Take some time, think on it. We'll speak again in the morning."

In the quiet of his cell Harry did exactly that. It wasn't that he wanted to, but what else was there to do in the solitude? And once he started, well he couldn't exactly stop, because really he had only two options; submit willingly or submit painfully, because he had no doubt Strucker could do exactly what he promised.

Neither option was one he particularly liked, but there was one that was at least a little less awful and hadn't he endured enough pain already?

The fact that he was even considering made something like shame curl in his chest. This was HYDRA, actual Nazis. They and Voldemort were kin, with their shared ideals and ruthless methods of upholding them. If his friends were here to see him, caving to the honeyed words of one the organization's most influential members, there would be disappointment. Hermione would weep. Ron would rage. And Steve would be so ashamed.

But that was the thing, the one unfortunate truth that had led him to this one awful moment. They weren't here.