A/N: So a small change you might notice, I cut the amount mages from eleven to six, seven including Harry. It just seemed a bit overkill having that many and I could barely remember all of their names so I could only imagine it might be for you all. I believe I corrected all instances of the team being counted as having eleven members, but if I slipped up somewhere don't hesitate to let me know!


They were in it for the long game, the scientists and soldiers of HYDRA. The work with the mages meant something, might finally achieve something, but it would only remain that way if they kept patient. Uncountable hours had been put into making those mages into the most terrifying weapons their organization had ever seen, and uncountable more were to go into the meticulous execution of their plan of systematic destabilization and destruction.

But then aliens came to earth and the world was introduced to its first ever team of superheroes.

The extraterrestrials wreaking absolute devastation throughout the American city were unnerving. The god that commanded them even more so. But it was the team of enhanced individuals with their flying suits, control over storms, and star emblazoned shields the were cause for not just concern, but alarm.

A group like that would be the first to try and stand against HYDRA just for the principal of the matter. They would fail, there was no other outcome when going against the mages, but others might and there would be others. Because teams like the Avengers had the troubling ability to gather admirers, and with admiration came mimicry. Other superhumans, inhumans, would start getting brave ideas and come crawling out the woodwork and soon they'd have an epidemic on their hands.

So a slow, drawn out dismantling of the world's political infrastructure from the inside out might not be in the cards anymore. But HYDRA could still have their fun, and they could make sure the social climate wasn't one any inhuman would want to out themselves in while they were at it. And the mages, of course, would be the driving force behind it.

Strucker's new team had been incredible from the very start, easily putting the best of their strike units to shame even with the little more than half year they'd been training together. But under Potter's command, they were something else entirely, something unnatural. They fed from his power, growing more powerful just from being in his vicinity. And he, when he was allowed to cut loose and show the breadth of his abilities, was terrifying. Absolute, inescapable death.

He made them better, and the months and resources poured into making Potter what he was had all been proved worth it. It was time now they moved past drills and simulations and finally allowed them to do what they'd been made for.

"Mages." Strucker spoke and the team fell into line perfectly and immediately. "I've done my best to keep you within these walls as long as could be allowed, sheltered and safe while you grew into your abilities. But our enemies have not had such a luxury, they've remained active-worse, they've grown brave. Our absence, while vital to your growth, has left our allies in a very precarious position. It's time now to do what it was you were created for. It's time to make HYDRA proud.

"We have a mission."

They grinned, excited and eager to finally put the months of training and preparation to use. All but Potter, who kept his stoic, yet attentive expression. It was to him Strucker spoke.

"It is an unpleasant task, what I am about to ask you to do. But one that I would never ask unless it was absolutely necessary. Mission briefings will be found in your quarters. Take the night to prepare, we leave in the morning."

Strucker left without offering any further information and immediately the mages were buzzing.

"Morning," Eva from Ireland sighed, full of awed anticipation the moment Strucker had gone. "Morning we'll be going above ground."

"I can barely remember what unrecycled oxygen tastes like," Iola said, sharing her enthusiasm.

"It almost doesn't even matter we're being sent off to kill people. I'm just happy we're finally going to be of some use."

Angel agreed with a nod of his head. "And if it's the task force as the Baron hinted, they deserve what's coming for them."

"Let's break to look over these briefings," Walden suggested, stepping in before the others got too off track. "Reconvene in an hour. At yours?" He posed the question to Harry, who'd been observing the conversation with a veiled sense of amusement up until then.

He nodded. The personal quarters he'd been assigned were larger than any of the others had, large enough to fit their whole team comfortably; they liked to mutter about favoritism, faking it was a joke when they all knew it was absolutely true.

"An hour should do it." He started for the door and they all followed his unspoken cue. "I'll leave the door open."


The briefing was a manila envelope about as thick as a particularly interesting issue of the Daily Prophet. It had been left on his bed, at the base of his pillow, in a move that might be considered an invasion of privacy if they weren't all well aware already that they weren't much more than privileged prisoners with unusually long leashes.

Immediately, he pinched his thigh at the errant, bitter thought not at all becoming of a loyal HYDRA agent. His mind did that sometimes, wandered off onto ridiculous, rebellious tangents; the remnants of the troubled, misguided beliefs he'd held before Strucker helped him see the right way of things. The intrusive thoughts were worst when he was alone, without Strucker's kind presence there to remind him why he fought.

The first page of the briefing was the mission objective; a neatly typed, clinically worded, half page order to "neutralize all threats to their work" while also "ensuring no witnesses or loose ends remained unaccounted for." Just another way of phrasing sanctioned murder.

After were photos. Pages and pages of blurry, far off satellite images of a two-story building sharing a sidewalk with a grocers and a used bookstore, but there were also closer, perfectly rendered images of the interior, taken with a well concealed cellphone or an impossible to spy bodycam.

It was a recruiting office, the next typed document informed, a repurposed community center now used to evaluate potential task force recruits. No persons of interest were inside the building, and as far as they knew, no sensitive or at all useful information was stored within. The personnel running the place weren't fighters or strategist, they were paper pushers and physicians, no one who could be considered a threat to HYDRA's rising regime. And yet choosing to hit this particular location was an ingenious tactic. An ingenious scare tactic.

Because of their low perceived threat, there wasn't much by way of security, a rota of fresh faced guards there to pay their dues before moving on to the big fight, alternating shifts throughout the week with no more than two ever there at once. It would be child's play for Harry and his team to get in, do their work, and leave before reinforcements could even think to be called.

It was genius.

"A lot of people are going to die."

The edge of the briefing pack, where Harry was gripping the paper as he read, crumpled under the sudden clench of his fist. He looked up, gaze locking with endless black, as the figure previously on the peripheral of his vision slunk ever closer.

It was a man with eyes like twin voids of space and something so unmistakably gleeful on his gaunt face.

Harry had been stalked-no, haunted by this apparition since being let out of the dark room. Some part of him recognized the man, some long-forgotten memory that squirmed farther from the forefront of his consciousness the harder he worked to grasp it.

"By your hand. By your power. I'm looking forward to seeing the effect it might have on you."

Just the sight of this creature who only looked like a man sent unease down Harry's spine because he knew something, something important, something Harry had forgotten.

"How do I know you?" Of all the questions the phantom and his cryptic words elicited, that was one of the less pressing ones, but still the one that beat all the others through his lips.

He did know this man, knew him like a newborn knew their mother. Instinctually. Only this connection was frightening and foreign and…incomplete.

"How much of these past months do you remember?"

Harry shook his head, bit his lip. Very little was the answer. Strucker had always been very free in admitting that, in the time he'd fought against the truth of HYDRA's ideals, they'd had to hurt him, hurt him bad, bad enough his mind blocked out the memories to save itself from the trauma. Nothing of the months he'd spent in Strucker's facility could be fully pieced together, all he had were fragmented moments and the overwhelming feeling of pain, agony, total despair. Before that, his mind and memories were hazy, as if they'd happened years and years ago rather than a few months, but they were still there. Erskine and Peggy, Ives and Howard, Bucky and Steve, they were all there. Ans this man…he was there, in a library, in a park, in an old dreary house, but the actual memory of these moments eluded him.

"Why don't I remember you?" He answered the question to his question with another question. "You've been with me longer than HYDRA, longer than I've forgotten, but I don't know you."

"You do," the apparition said with a quirk of his lips that couldn't really count as a smile, "but I think you might have been angry with me, or felt so passionately about my existence and the impact I've had on your sorry little life you wanted to forget. It was no trouble at all for your brain while enduring all that trauma to comply."

"That sounds…stupid."

"Well, I never claimed you were smart."

He bristled for only a minute before letting the slight glide right off his back and getting back to the matter at hand. "How do I know you?"

"That is not for me to divulge."

He huffed in irritation. "Then who? No one else can see you!"

"It was you who caused this mess, and so it will be you to clean it up, quark."

Harry didn't know what that last word was, he was sure it was an insult, but the way the man shaped it, it almost sounded like an endearment.

"I don't like you."

"See now, you're already well on your way to remembering if you've already recalled that important and oft repeated fact."

Harry really didn't like him.

But then there was a knock at his door and, directly contrary to the sour thought, he felt a sudden surge of worry that the apparition would disappear once they had company, but he just gave Walden a curious look as he entered before moving to sit at the foot of the bed, well out of the way.

"You didn't need the whole hour?" Harry asked in place of greeting.

"Neither did you," Walden noted, nodding to the closed briefing packet,

"There were a lot of pictures," Harry shrugged. "What do you think?"

"I think a lot of people are going to die."

"That's what I said."

Harry ignored the ghost on the bed while Walden, just like everyone else, was completely unaware of his presence.

"We're going to kill them," Walden said. "And it'll be easy."

"The first time maybe," he agreed. "And the second. But it won't take long for them to predict where we're headed next, and then it won't be so easy anymore."

Walden didn't look even a little concerned. "They'll still die," he said. "It'll just take longer is all."

Harry couldn't help a snort of laughter. All of the mages had that same, dangerous overconfidence and it wasn't entirely undeserved. They'd run through hundreds of drills and scenarios and always they and their stolengifted power were unstoppable, no matter the opponent or the weapons they wielded. But Harry had experienced firsthand just how cruel muggles could be when afraid, and just how resourceful they could be when properly motivated. If they kept to this belief that they were unbeatable, they'd be beaten all the sooner.

"They're easy to underestimate, muggles." He told the other man. "But none of us would be here if they didn't know how to put up a fight."

It was Walden's turn to snort, but at least he held off on any further comments about how easy it'd be to carve through the muggles' forces. And then the others were arriving, one after the other until the decently sized room didn't have an available surface left to sit and his and Walden's conversation was completely forgotten.

Harry moved to the edge of the bed, bracketed on one end by the still present apparition and by Fen on the other. He was one of Harry's preferred companions among the mages, in a team of outspoken alpha male and females Fen preferred to exert his strength in a quieter manner, racking up his kills in the simulation with neat efficiency while the others, still caught up in the magnitude of their new gifts, put new means to the term overkill. And in the early days, when his position as team lead was still being questioned, Fen didn't. He accepted the shift in the hierarchy without complaint, quicker even than Walden had.

"Did anyone else notice," the man on Harry's thoughts spoke up once settled, cutting through the white noise of idle conversation, "that this briefing is missing something I'd think is important? A location."

Harry had noticed. There were photos of the recruiting center, even ones of the street outside, but there was no address, no clue on what city or province or country it was located. But he'd let the curiosity go before it could even fully form because he remembered how once when he had questioned he'd hurt.

He pressed the pad of his finger into a scar that ran the length of his arm until the skin around it went white. That was the thing about Fen, he held Strucker in high regard, respected him as he should, but he wasn't mindlessly devoted as some of the others were, he questioned. And Harry worried.

"The Baron must not think it important information," he sounded calm to his own ears, even as he scrambled to head off this line of thinking. "We won't be the ones flying the plane after all."

"But what of contingency? If something were to go wrong and we were separated? Lost?"

"Then we stay lost, until we are found."

They all had a thin band of metal wrapped around their throat, a constant reminder of just who they belonged to and that there was no getting away.

His finger pressed harder into the scar, soon it would go from white to a splotchy, bruised purple. He shouldn't think thoughts like that, thoughts as if they were owned, as if they had been forced to follow the doctrines of HYDRA. They were here because it was right. He pressed harder.

"It is a little weird," Angel agreed, just a little hesitant to add his opinion to the mix. "We should be fully informed going into this mission."

This was a dangerous thing they were doing. Critiquing the plan. Critiquing Strucker.

"It's not something we should concern ourselves with," he sounded firmer now, trying to make it clear that it was time to move on to a new topic. The warning in his voice wasn't heeded.

"They're right though," Mihaela said, "it is weird. I think we're just wondering why-"

"Yours is not to question why." The words tore from his throat, sharper than he'd intended and the others went quiet. He'd never raised his voice, never had reason to.

Harry was shaking, nearly coming undone at the seams. He'd questioned once and he'd hurt. It was there, a hazy thing on the edge of his mind; the memory of burning, of choking, of being cut and feeling the drag of salt through wounds, of water filling his lungs and electricity tearing at the soles of his feet. He remembered the screams and the pain and how it had ended when he'd stopped questioning. How Strucker had been there, kind and comforting, a reprieve from the nightmare. He had been the one to give him these mages, made them his to command, his to protect.

Bone white fingers curled over his shaking hand, and he realized how cold he'd gone when he realized he couldn't feel the chill of the touch.

"Quark, you don't look well."

He dragged a breath through his nostrils, looked once at the ghost of the man he didn't know, then let it out through his mouth in one silent whistle. The mages were watching him, he watched back as he said, "We are soldiers." He stopped to reevaluate then corrected with, "We are gophers. Here to do as the Baron commands, when he commands without question. Do not speak on doubts you may have of him or the things he does. Ever. Am I understood?"

Slowly, one by one around the room, he got nods and soft words of affirmations.

He responded with a nod of his own and a nearly silent sigh of relief. "Good." The freezing hand still rested on his, he subtly dislodged it when he reached for the briefing packet laying abandoned just behind him. "Now, eighth page of your packet there's a picture of the main lobby…."


They were wheels up before the sun rose, on their way to a location no one on the flight crew disclosed and no one on their team questioned. Strucker wasn't with them, still asleep wherever he lay his head at night, but he'd sent four men in his place, strangers Harry had never seen among the guards or agents around the facility. Backup or escorts or babysitters, he didn't know what to call them, but he knew anything he or his mages did would be reported directly back to Strucker and he knew they weren't pleased with their task.

"Have any of you ever even been in a real fight?"

Harry looked up from where he'd been working to maneuver the various straps on his harness into something resembling comfortable and met the eyes of the soldier directly across from him. He'd phrased the question to include their entire team, but the look on his face made it very clear he was really only addressing Harry, the assumed weakest link in their numbers.

"I'm asking only because our approved weapons for this op are next to nothing," he gestured to his belt where Harry picked out only a single hand gun and a few knife sheaths, "if it breaks into a fight-which it always does- we're relying on you and whatever freaky powers that scientist gave you. But from what I've heard around, you've all been down in that basement since the baron cooked you up in his lab."

Harry slid the thick buckle of his harness down readjusting the fit of the straps across his chest, all the while keeping eye contact with the soldier across from him. "We've seen enough."

He leaned forward, the leather of his seat creaking in protest of the movement. "How much is enough?"

"Worse than you have." Angel spoke up before Harry could, which was very much appreciated as he was already tired of entertaining the suspicious stranger. "Battle, bloodshed, war. Long before we were 'cooked up' in the Baron's lab."

There was a throaty chuckle from one of the other soldiers, mocking in his disbelief. "Ain't none of you seen war."

"No?" Soft spoken Mihaela had an unusual bite to her voice as she rolled up the long sleeves of her shirt exposing thick, shiny scars coiling along her forearms. They were too much like ones he'd left on Malfoy's when he'd attacked him with an unfamiliar curse in the boy's bathroom not so many years ago. "Even before the task force and the slow discovery of our world, we've been dealing with the sort of evil your worst couldn't even fathom. And this one," she gestured to Harry with a sharp tilt of his head, "he's been fighting them since he was in diapers."

"We've never heard a word on any of these evils."

"You wouldn't have," the condescension in Walden's voice was very poorly hidden. "You're muggles."

Bored with the turn he could feel the conversation taking, Harry returned his attention to his harness- there was one strap cutting into a scar on his shoulder that was still just a little too tender- while keeping only half an ear to the carefully played back and forth of the two sides. They were quickly devolving into a 'my team is the toughest' battle in which he wasn't sure exactly who was winning, and after a half hour listening to the verbal sparring he was too bored to bother trying to keep up any longer. Instead his focus turned inward, a knot had formed somewhere in his gut the previous night and it had only grown worse since then. It wasn't excitement, that much he knew for sure, but it wasn't fear either, rather some kind of weird mix of the two. The whole flight he concentrated on trying to loosen the weird tension, but when they landed on the tarmac and stepped into the early noon sun it was still a heavy pit in his stomach.

"We're about a half hour drive out," one of their escorts explained as he ushered them into an unmarked working van already running. "Just a couple miles into the city's center."

None of them bothered with a response, for the first time since leaving the facility all of Harry's team was absolutely silent. They were finally remembering, it seemed, that this wasn't a vacation, they were here to kill.

For the entire car ride, they sat close, shoulder to shoulder, adjusting the unfamiliar cut of their clothing to distract their shaking hands. They were all dressed identically, in modern styled robes similar to something the Aurors might wear; a lightweight cloth that fell just to the back of their knees, opened in the front from the waist down for optimal movement, and colored a red so dark it was almost black. There was no way they might be mistaken for muggles. But, Harry thought, that might be exactly the point.

"Two minutes out!"

Iola beside him shifted, looking almost nervous, and Walden gave a breathy, anxious laugh. As the car turned down a side road, juddered over a few potholes and began to slow, Harry leaned forward, looked over each of his mages, and did as he so rarely did and broke the heavy silence.

"It was fun, running drills and playing along to the simulations," he said, he was only just loud enough to be heard over the purr of the engine and crunch of gravel beneath their tires, but he had everyone's rapt attention nonetheless, "we were untouchable, unbeatable. But this is the real world, the real fight, and it's time to pay our due.

"The Baron is relying on us to spread HYDRA's message, to show our strength and our power, and in power there is no fear. So bottle away the nerves that are making your hands shake and your teeth chatter and save it for your own time. He said no witnesses so we will leave none, he said no loose ends so there will be none. Yes?"

Iola's knees stopped bouncing, Walden's grin grew back to the steady, maybe too confident thing Harry had gotten used to, they were among the loudest shouting their agreement.

Harry stood from his seat just as the van rolled to a halt, he pulled his hood over his head, hiding his face in unnaturally deep shadows. The locks disengaged and his team all mirrored his movement until they were seven unidentifiable figures. The two doors at the back of the van swung forward, Harry stepped forward, but before he jumped down to the unevenly paved ground he said, "Hail HYDRA." And six voices echoed the call back to him.

They went in through the front, pushing past civilians who looked them over nervously and scurried away in fear when they spotted the guns on their guards' hips. Nothing about them was subtle, it was all too clear that whatever their purpose inside this building was nothing good. But that was exactly the point: to be obvious and exaggerated and impossible to ignore.

The inside of the building looked almost like the reception area of a doctor's office; uncomfortable looking chairs lined the walls, side tables with magazines dispersed throughout the room, and a pretty well coifed woman behind a desk to greet them. But then there were posters on the walls, pictures of men snarling like wild animals and women with unkempt hair and cackling smiles. Wizards.

Bold red words bracketed the unsettling images, the same phrase meant to conjure fear: "Keep this horror from your home. Join the fight."

They weren't even trying to hide what they were getting up to in here.

"What the hell is this?" Harry's righteous fury faltered as a man, who appeared well into his fifties but was still big and broad and just plain mean looking, stood from one of the handful of chairs in the little lobby and addressed their strange group with a suspicious anger. "Who the hell are you people?"

He had a hand on his hip, where they could all see the impression of a gun, and the men around him- more recruits waiting to be called to the back- shifted a little nervously but looked encouraging. At his back Harry could feel the guards tensing in anticipation, but now facing their targets, his team was remarkably calm.

"Walden?"

Harry didn't have to even phrase the request before the man was nodding, they'd gone over this and every other possible scenario enough times he knew exactly what Harry wanted.

"You got it, boss."

Walden made it two steps forward before the man was drawing his gun and leveling it at his chest, but the mage didn't falter and just behind him, Harry flicked his borrowed wand and the gun went skittering across the ground to land at his feet. He followed up with a body bind, to curb any fighting before it could begin, and then Walden was on him.

No one moved, the man closest was only three seats down but it was as if Harry had cast the bind over the whole room; they all watched as Walden moved in on the man, got so close to him their faces were scant millimeters apart, and then he breathed out just as the man opposite him inhaled. There was a collective recoil from every muggle in the room, their guard included, when the strong, outspoken old man withered. Gray invaded the flushed red of his face as his skin dehydrated, silver flecked hair went white and wispy as cobwebs, and his eyes sunk deep into his skull. He croaked once, a painful sounding attempt at protest, and then he dropped with a brittle, hollow thud

From the corner of his eye, Harry spotted movement, the receptionist was reaching for something beneath her counter, a weapon or an alarm he wasn't sure. But then Mihaela was there, grabbing her wrist and yanking it back into view.

"Please don't," Harry told her, his tone mild. "We've already killed the one, I'd like to avoid a second so soon. Put her on the floor."

The woman grunted in anger as Mihaela yanked her from her seat and pushed her to the ground just in front of her desk.

"Thank you, now the rest of you, join her down there please."

No one moved.

The four men and two women left remained rooted in their seats, too terrified or too defiant to follow the directive. And while Harry didn't blame them at all for the act of defiance, they were on a tight schedule. He made a show of raising his wand, of swishing it over each and every one of their heads, and enunciating every syllable of, "Imperio."

It was immediate and effortless. Six sets of eyes went blank and when Harry directed them once again to find a seat beside the receptionist they did without hesitation.

"Stay there, don't move." Not a muscle twitched and Harry turned away from the captive muggles, satisfied with their obedience. "How quickly can we gather up the rest?"

There was a moment where no one answered, his team seemed to be attempting to shake themselves from sort of stupor, then Walden spoke up.

"Two floors, five rooms, no more than twenty marks?" he said. "Fifteen minutes, at most."

"Good," Harry nodded. "Iola, Angel stay here and keep an eye on this lot, but have your sentries circle the building, make sure no one tries to get in or out through the back end. Walden take Eva and Mihaela and round up anyone in the exam rooms. Fen and I'll cover the second floor." He spared their guard a quick glance before putting their existence out of his mind, let them divvy their ranks up however they wanted. "Fifteen minutes, bring everyone you find back up here."

The corridor behind reception branched off into two directions; to the left were three rooms fashioned after a sterile exam room where potential recruits underwent their mandatory physicals. To the right, a set of stairs leading up to the second level and the offices where interviews were conducted. Two of the four guards followed in Harry and Fen's footsteps as the cautiously headed up the stairs, they kept well back as they began a careful sweep of the offices but were still close enough where they couldn't fully ignore their presence.

The first office was off the stairs and twice as big as Harry's quarters back at the facility, but it was crammed tight with file cabinets neatly labeled with words and abbreviations that meant nothing to Harry. It was also completely empty. No one was hiding under the desk, behind the door, or in the cramped supply closet attached to the room and the windows looking down onto the street were sealed so tight he was pretty sure they hadn't been opened since the space was built.

The next office was just the same, identical down to the row of filing cabinets and just as empty. And so was the next. And the one after. And the last, there was no one.

"I don't get it," Fen said, scratching at the back of his head. "Briefing said these offices are always in use. Did they slip out the back while we were rounding out the others, do you think?"

"We would've heard them though, right?" Harry asked, pacing the length of the room. "The stairs were right there, there's no way they could have made it past without being noticed."

"So they're hiding."

Harry hummed thoughtfully, agreeingly. "They missed something in the building layout. A space to hide or escape." If it was the latter they might really be in trouble, but if it were the former…well then it wasn't a problem at all. "Homenum revelio."

The spell reached as far as down the stairs and back into the lobby, alerting Harry of the presence of his team and the muggles they had and were rounding up with apparent ease. And then there were the two HYDRA agents waiting for them just out in the hall, Fen at his side, and…six other presences, registering just to the left of him. But there was no one, just the same row of filing cabinets lined neatly along the wall as were in every other room.

But looking at them now, they were just barely bigger than the others, almost as tall as Harry and twice as wide.

"Anything?" Fen asked, voice just below a whisper.

Harry answered by crossing the room and tugging at one of the drawers, it was stuck tight, not made to be opened.

"Here."

He ran his fingers along the seam of the cabinet, looking for a button or a mechanism or something to crack open the hiding spot. And he found it, on the outer edge from of the drawer just above his head, but before he could click it and swing the door open, there was a series of sharp cracks and he stumbled back, pain tearing through his shoulder.

"Protego." The shield sprung from his wand just in time to block another volley of bullets, these ones aimed slightly more accurately at his head.

The cabinet detached from the wall itself, and from a cleverly hidden crawl space leapt two men with their guns leveled at his head.

Harry huffed in muted pain, they'd shot him. The nerves all the way down to his fingertips were throbbing, with the flat of his shoulder being the central point of agony, but if he'd learned anything the past few months, it was how to compartmentalize pain.

Blood dripped from the end of his wand and before the two men could let off another round of useless bullets, he'd sent their weapons flying across the room and them crumpling under suddenly jelly-like legs.

"The rest of you out. Now." Harry snapped through gritted teeth. Immediately four more men spilled from the space, none were armed and they were all dressed in the neat button ups and pressed slacks of desk workers and pencil pushers. None of them were a threat.

"This is all of them?" Fen asked.

"Yeah, six is all the spell showed." A wave of his wand bound the six just as he had his captives downstairs, another and they were all floating in an ungainly procession behind him. "How long have we been up here?"

"Ten minutes maybe?" Fen grinned. "Think we beat Walden?"

They didn't.

"It didn't even take us a full five to round 'em up," Walden bragged. "Thought it'd take you two less."

"They had a secret room to hide in, spent most of our time figuring that out." Harry explained exasperatedly. "The actual rounding up didn't take but a minute."

He settled his catches just beside their first group from the lobby and took a moment to assess their numbers. Walden's earlier estimate had been just a few off, there were twenty-four bodies all together, mostly potential recruits with less than half being the building's staff.

"Line them up along the walls, two rows."

Harry stood back, mindful of his still bleeding shoulder, and watched as his team hastened to drag the muggles into formation.

"Now what?" Iola asked.

"Now," Harry fingered the wand that wasn't his, "now we send our message."

The twenty-four captives were in the perfect spot, seated on their knees just below two of the worst propaganda photos, the snarling wizard and the deranged witch, and just in view of the camera mounted on the wall and it's blinking red light.

"You're going to kill us?" asked one of the guards from the office, maybe even the one who'd shot Harry.

He nodded.

"Why?"

"Retaliation. You killed ours, we kill you."

"But we haven't killed anyone," said another, one of the recruits rounded up from the lobby. He was young, tall and thin, and trembling like a flutterby.

"Not yet you haven't," Mihaela sneered. "But what else would you be here for?"

"We just want to make the world safe."

"And joining a genocidal cult is the way to do that?"

"Enough," Harry cut in, they'd already been here too long. "No one forced you into this building, this was entirely your choice. And as I learned very quickly growing up, there are consequences to every choice you make."

"Please."

He'd started crying, great heaving sobs that left no room for false bravery or dignity, this was a kid and he was terrified. Something in Harry ached; he wanted to scream, to run away, to leave. Instead he raised his wand, and aimed it right between the boy's eyes.

The curse wouldn't come.

The words wouldn't form and he felt stuck.

But then a chill swept along the back of his neck, and there was another presence, pressing into his back, along every line of body, supporting him, holding him up. A hand wrapped around his wrist, steadying him and his barely trembling wand.

"It needs to be done, quark." He shuddered at the silken voice spoken directly into his ear. "You made me a promise, and this is part of keeping it."

He had, hadn't he? So long ago, or maybe not so long, he'd made a promise in a decaying forest to this man.

"I will…" he couldn't remember the promise he'd spoken that kept this apparition tied to him, but even in not remembering, he knew it couldn't be broken.

"You will."

He breathed in deep, in tandem with the chest at his back, felt resolve stiffen his spine to steel. "Avada kedavra."


The ride back was silent .

The chatter from earlier, the almost comfortable back and forth between the mages and guards, it was gone. No one could think to speak, probably couldn't even find the words after what they'd just done. They'd walked from that building painfully aware that of the twenty-four men and woman who'd previously occupied it, none were still alive.

Some had gone quietly, some had begged and pleaded like the boy Harry had cut down, and some had tried to fight, tried to struggle free from their bonds and away from the curses and nightmare creatures tearing their ranks apart even though they knew it would do no good.

None of them walked away unphased; not always cheerful Iola or unflappable Fen, not stoic Mihaela or even Walden who always seemed so eager.

But Harry was more than disturbed or unsettled or whatever the others were feeling. The killing had left an awful feeling in his stomach, but worse than that was the feel of something crawling under his skin, worming along the sinew of his muscles, in the channels of his magic and leaving him feeling distinctly…changed. He didn't know how, couldn't find the words to describe how other he was left feeling, but it was there and unignorable. It had something to do with the apparition he knew, and whatever promise he'd made him. If only he could remember what it actually was.

But that would have to be a thought for another time, later that night, he hoped. But right now the van was pulling into the shadow of the plane they'd come in on and it was time to move.

They'd taken the longer route back to the private airport, to shake any potential tails, it was a long enough ride Harry's legs had started going a bit numb but it didn't excuse the way the world tilted the moment he was standing on the tarmac. If it weren't for Angel and the supportive arm he looped around his waist, he would have faceplanted right then and there.

"Shit." Fen appeared at Harry's other side, aiding Angel in keeping him on his feet. "I didn't even remember, he got shot. He's still losing blood."

"We've got first aid on board," one of the guards said, giving Harry a quick once over. "Let's load up and we'll get the bleeding taken care of."

He would have preferred to walk under his own power, but he felt a little like he'd fallen victim to a jelly-leg jinx, so Harry allowed the help of his team just this once. They were exceedingly gentle as they helped guide him to the same spot he'd reserved as his own for the flight over. The HYDRA agent was less so. He cut through the thick fabric of his outer robes and the thinner undershirt he wore as a second layer with the knife he'd kept on his belt, then started prodding at Harry's shoulder with about as much compassion as the lab technicians he'd gotten so used to.

"No bullet and he's got an exit wound through the back," the man declared after a few tense minutes. "Best I can do while we're in the air is disinfect and bandage it for you. But we've got some clotting sponges so you at least won't bleed out."

"Oh what a relief." Harry's only slightly slurred mutter dragged into an equal parts furious and agonized hiss when the agent doused both sides of his shoulder in an antiseptic that bubbled and burned upon contact. He grit his teeth though when the man shoved thickly padded gauze over the wound and taped it down with non-too gentle hands, refusing to show any further sign of pain.

"That should hold until we land." A hand towel, dampened from a water bottle, was dropped into his lap. "Clean yourself up, we don't need you staining the leather."

Harry bit down on a scowl, but accepted the towel nonetheless. The tacky feel of old blood on his chest was starting to bring back some not so great memories.

The moment the HYDRA guard was through, Fen was there, taking the spot he'd just held kneeling just in front of Harry. "I should have said something sooner," he said, the perfect picture of apology. "I don't know how I forgot."

Harry shrugged his good shoulder as he methodically scrubbed at his skin. "To be honest so did I. I got so caught up in…everything, it didn't even register after a while."

"I'm not sure how that's…." Harry gave the now completely ruined towel one last sweep over his chest before tossing it carelessly to the side. It hadn't done that great of a job cleaning up the good half liter he'd bled, but it wasn't so thick anymore as to obscure the silvery scars mapped across his skin.

Fen noticed them immediately.

"These…these came from the dark lord?"

Harry hummed distractedly, a little light headed from the blood loss, as he looked down at what Fen saw. He remembered only pieces of what happened in the bright room, of his 'reeducation', but the scars he'd been left with told a pretty clear story; patches of skin raised and unnaturally shiny from burns, silvery lines of precisely drawn knife cuts, thin, barely visible rings around his wrists, his throat, remnants of a rope pulled too tight. He'd been a very difficult student to teach.

"This one is," he said in answer to Fen's question, prodding at the jagged scar snaking up his forearm, a remnant of Wormtail's crude knife handling skills. "This is the one that raised the dark lord from the dead. But the others…they're a little more recent."

"Who?"

They'd drawn the attention of the others, they were watching, silent but attentive, as they took in the sight of him. But he didn't know how to answer, not without causing another million rounds of questions.

"A year ago, HYDRA and I were on completely different sides," he finally decided on. "I had ideas, beliefs that were very, very wrong. They fixed me."

"This was HYDRA?"

Harry grabbed Fen's chin, forcing him to lock eyes, that same frightening intensity he'd wielded the previous night when reprimanding his team was back. "They fixed me," he repeated. "And now I don't question. Ever."

And finally they understood what he'd been trying to tell them this entire time.

"And neither will we."


"My dear boy, well done."

Strucker was waiting for them when they landed, a look of incredible pride and triumph written all across his face. He took Harry's face in his hands the moment he was in reach and looked down at him with a smile that made that feeling in his gut twist.

"You've made me so proud. Done so well for us all."

"But still it's nothing compared to what you've done for us."

The Baron leant forward, pressed a firm kiss to the crown of his head. "You continue to exceed my expectations. I heard you were hurt?"

"Only a bullet," Harry shrugged. "It barely bled."

"I'll have someone come to take a look, we wouldn't want to risk infection." Finally he turned away from Harry and cast a look at the rest of the mages waiting several steps back. "Today was a great success. Clean yourselves up, get something to eat, and rest. Debrief can wait until tomorrow."

He patted Harry on the cheek once more, and then he left them to meander to their quarters on their own time,

"He's right," Harry said after a half a moment of silence. "Today went well. It was difficult and messy, but we did HYDRA proud and it'll get easier every time."

They nodded, convinced for now, and followed him dutifully from the hangar and down the corridors. Once he was finally in his own quarters, he all but dove for the shower; the water pressure was shit and the temperature lukewarm at best, but he still nearly cried in relief as he finally began scrubbing viciously at his skin.

As red swirled between his toes and down the drain, Harry deliberately kept all thoughts away from the recruitment center, away from the group of people, most strangers to each other and how they'd huddled together in their final moments. Didn't think of how so many had tried to plead for the sake of their loved ones, their spouses, their children. Like the receptionist, who'd trembled and cried, but looked him in the eye still, told him her name (Enid), that she had a husband (Markus) and a daughter (Lana, not even a year old) and then fell under the jaws of Angel's hairless, pointed eared hound. He kept away from the thoughts of how their blood looked, seeping into the cracks between the tile or of how many of them hadn't died right away, but lay as gaping, soulless husks before their bodies had simply given up. And he most definitely didn't once think of how this hadn't been any kind of fight he knew, this wasn't an evenly scaled battle, just another facet of war, this had been a massacre. One none of those people had at all been equipped to defend against.

When he shoved his face under the weak spray of water it was with the intent of scrubbing away the grease and grit that weighed down his hair, not to wash away any evidence of tears.


A woman was waiting when Harry shut off the shower. She was familiar in a way that all the unnamed agents and doctors and scientists and nurses floating around the facility were. She'd healed him before, more than once, and judging from the case she'd set up the end of his bed, she was here to do so again.

"The wound is on your shoulder?"

Harry nodded and slipped his shirt just low enough for her to see the gaping hole in his shoulder unimpeded.

Her hands were cold and her touch rough, but his mind was far off and he barely felt the uncomfortable tug of thread being pulled through his skin. Before he really knew it, she was repacking her kit and reciting the aftercare instructions he was only halfway listening to.

"Stitches should start dissolving in a week. Try and keep them dry for twelve hours and covered for at least twenty-four, don't pick at them and don't tear them."

She left quickly after that, as if she were uncomfortable being alone in a room with him. But he had more reason to be afraid of her than she did him. He'd turned over the borrowed wand when they'd first arrived back at the facility and the safety band around his throat had reactivated almost the moment they'd boarded the plane hours ago, preventing any reckless use of his magic. She had all the power.

It was still early, there weren't any clocks in his room, but he'd seen the time on the digital watch the nurse had worn; barely past seven in the evening. Several floors up the sun was only just now starting to set, but his little cot in the corner was starting to look really inviting. He'd done a lot today; left home, traveled for hours, and helped in the exhausting job of cleaning up the filth ridden world, he deserved an early rest.

But then someone knocked at his door.

He didn't groan like he wanted to, or shove his head under the pillow and pretend he hadn't heard, there was no telling who was on the other side. No, with slow, disgruntled steps he shuffled over to the door and threw it open. It was Walden. He'd showered and changed, in one hand he carried a covered tray and the other a thermos.

"You didn't make it to mess before they packed up."

Harry blinked once in exhausted incomprehension. Then once more for good measure.

"I brought you dinner," Walden elaborated, giving the tray a little wiggle.

They stopped serving the last meal at seven, and Harry had known that when he lingered for way longer in the shower than necessary. He didn't have the appetite for food right now, or conversation, but it seemed both were at his door whether he liked it or not.

"Right, thanks. Um, did you want to…" he gestured to the room behind him, silently hoping Walden would decline. But of course he didn't, he gave a little nod and slid past Harry into his quarters for the second evening in a row.

"I already ate, but I thought I might keep you company."

They'd come a long way from the snarling, defiant animosity they'd had at the start, Walden had fully accepted him as leader and proved repeatedly that he trusted him in the position. But they weren't friends, none of them were, and they didn't keep each other company.

And yet Harry nodded anyway, gestured to the only place to sit in the room, the foot of his cot while he clambered closer to the top. Walden sat slowly and watched as he peeled back the clingfilm on the top of the tray; it was some kind of stew, surprisingly well flavored with tender chunks of meat and cooked vegetables, poured over a brown rice. Harry poked at it halfheartedly, waiting for Walden to speak and get to the real reason he was there.

"And I wanted to ask you something."

There it was.

"Confess something."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Walden twisted awkwardly so that he was almost fully facing Harry at the head of the cot but still had his feet planted on the ground, as if he were ready to run at a moment's notice. "After today and your," he gestured at Harry who didn't know what he was referring to at all, "I just…I volunteered for this."

Harry blinked. And he waited. And he waited some more. But that couldn't be the confession? He'd already known that. Sure no one had outright told him but he knew none of the mages were here by force. That was a good thing, their loyalty to HYDRA hadn't been bought or inflicted, so why did Walden look so worried?

And as the silence grew longer he grew even more so, mistaking Harry's lack of response for anger. "I'm a half blood," he said, almost tripping over his words in his haste to get them out before Harry could stop him. "But barely. My mother's parents were no-maj and she married a history teacher. I knew of magic growing up, saw it around the house and had my spurts of accidental magic. But I wasn't a part of that world, their culture until I went to Ilvermorny and then-and then it became everything. It became my whole world, the thing I built my entire existence around. So to lose it, I lost myself. I was destroyed.

"But then the Congress was telling people it could be reversed, we could be fixed and I didn't hesitate. I didn't know what I was signing on for, or with who, only that I had a chance of having my magic returned and, at the end of it all, that was the only thing that mattered. I put up with everything- the muggles knowing our secrets, them keeping us locked down here where they could test us and experiment- with the hope of what it would all yield. And when I found out that it was your magic we would be taking from, it felt right, it-it felt like justice. You'd caused this misery, it was only right you sacrificed your own magic to make it right.

"But now I'm not sure, now I don't know."

The world was shrinking and Harry felt a horrible dread. "What are you saying?"

"That this," and when Walden gestured again, this time between the both of them, Harry knew exactly what he meant, "this doesn't feel like justice."

"You're having doubts."

"I don't think I ever believed."

"Murphy," Harry hissed. There was no camera in his quarters, not one he could see anyway, but he knew they were listening, watching. They always were.

"I didn't know." He powered on, ignoring Harry's visible anger. "When I volunteered they said I would get my magic back and in return I would help protect our world. I expected a fight, prepared myself to kill in defense of my people, not to line them up in neat rows and execute them."

"What difference does it make where it's done? On the battlefield or in the lobby of a recruiting center, are they any less dead?"

"There's no honor-"

"Since the rise of the task force they've killed thousands of us unprovoked, broke into homes, raided safe houses, attacked schools. They've killed women, children, our elders without discrimination. Do you think something like honor has crossed their minds even once?

"I don't like killing either, none of us take joy in it. But that anger you had for me, the blame you put on my back was right. We're here because in fighting that last war against Voldemort, I was like you, I was weak and naïve and held onto the childish belief that I didn't have to kill to win. If I had been smarter, more ruthless, and done what needed to be done, none of us would be here right now.

"This is hard, it's horrible and ugly, but it is necessary."

He took a long, deep breath, the day had been long and he was so tired. But he needed to say this, needed to save Walden from the same pain he'd endured.

"You saw what happened to me," there was no anger in his voice now, he was gentle, soothing as he hit his point home. "What needed to be done for me to understand. It was a hard lesson, but I learned. And one I endured so you don't have to. Listen, hear me, what we're doing is right."

Walden didn't respond, maybe he didn't know how to, Harry had certainly run out of words. So they sat together, silent and contemplative until eventually the older man stood up, nodded once, and just left. Harry's little monologue had gotten to him, he knew it had, he just wasn't sure in what way. But he would eventually, one way or the other.

It was early still, probably barely past seven, and the tray Walden had brought in was still mostly untouched, but Harry was ready for the day to just be over already. He shut the too bright lights off, leaving just the single emergency light glowing faintly in the corner and tucked himself under the sheets.

He was asleep with minutes. The deep sort that didn't allow for dreams and fears to creep in and interrupt his rest; he was exhausted, drained physically, emotionally, magically, and only a long, uninterrupted sleep could heal him.

He got six hours and then the alarms started wailing.


Once, before his reeducation, Harry had tried to run. He couldn't remember much of it, mostly hazy images of blood staining a white sheet, a cramped space and a horrible heat below him, his bare feet slapping against freezing concrete. But the thing he remembered most, that stood out clearly in his memory, was the silence. He'd been expecting an alarm, a deafening, wailing to announce the urgency of his pending escape, but there hadn't been anything. This godawful caterwauling that had torn him from his sleep was exactly what he'd expected.

The door to his room locked from the outside, for his own safety, so he couldn't poke his head out into the hall to see what was causing the chaos, but it had a window and through it he could see the corridor outside and the doors of his teams' rooms where they were pressing their faces to their own windows.

There wasn't really anything to see, for what had to be at least five minutes not a soul passed in front of their doors, and they couldn't hear anything past the shriek of the alarms. But then a group was approaching from the end of the corridor, and at their head was Strucker. He unlocked each of their doors with more haste than usual and before they had all even fully stepped into the hall, he was speaking.

"An attack has happened in the night," he didn't strain to shout, and yet Strucker's words carried effortlessly over the alarm. "The task force struck several wizarding hubs all at once, the death toll has still not yet been counted but it climbs even as we speak. Our wizard allies, in their understandably heightened emotional states, have intruded upon the facility, we believe they're looking for you. I think it best we meet them before they cause any further havoc."

They nodded, agreeing without question, but Strucker didn't lead them to the rampaging wizards immediately, instead he turned to Harry.

"They think you dead." This was clearly news to the rest of his team, but neither Harry nor Strucker paid them any mind. "Let's keep it that way for a while longer. Keep out of their sight, but stay close, I'm sure I'll have need of you before the night is over."

The baron extended a hand and in it was the pale wand meant to replace his own. He accepted it, wrapped his fingers around the worn handle right as a familiar current skittered from the base of his skull and down his spine. It was the feeling of the collar around his throat deactivating, of his magic being released.

He wasted no time with a verbal response, layering a disillusionment spell on top of a notice me not over himself as he stepped out of his place in the line he and the mages had formed.

Strucker turned his back. "I'll give you the word," he said, not even a little concerned that Harry was armed and completely invisible just behind him, "and when I do, I'll need you to act quickly."

"Always."

It was easy tracking the wizards, their magic had knocked out most of the cameras posted up in the corridor, but they'd left a trail of bodies- mostly stunned our bound- in their wake. All they had to do was follow the breadcrumbs and they found the group of furious wizards, one floor up wreaking havoc in the research wing.

Harry recognized them, they were the same group who'd cornered him in his cell, shot an AK at his chest, and called it mercy. Diggory was there, and so was the Auror with the greying hair and stone face, Robards.

Strucker had forgiven their actions once, but Harry had a feeling he wouldn't be near so lenient this time around.

"Gentlemen," the baron drawled, unimpressed tone cutting through the discord with little effort. "Ladies. It's late, or early, and last I checked we had no meetings scheduled."

The wizards paused in brandishing their wands threateningly at the skeleton crew that patrolled the halls in the night and switched their focus to Strucker.

"This is an emergency assembly," snapped a woman with an accent thicker than Fleur's, Harry vaguely remembered meeting her alongside Mr. Diggory just after his attempted escape. "We've been attempting to contact you all evening."

"I'm afraid past midnight we don't have anyone attending to the fireplaces. What is this emergency?"

"Don't pretend you don't know. We've worked alongside you long enough to know how well informed you are, always."

Strucker almost looked flattered. "The attacks," he said obligingly.

"Yes, the attacks. Two villas loaned to us from old blooded families for refugees, the offices of the New York Ghost, three clinics, and a thestral reserve, all attacked and burned to the ground. We're looking at deaths in the hundreds."

"The cause of these attacks?"

"Retaliation," said one of the men flanking the French woman, he spoke with a British accent and wore auror robes even though Harry didn't recognize him. "A vigilante group of wizards hit one of their recruiting offices, killed the whole lot of them and this is their response."

"And so you've come here, in the dead of the night to…what? Vent your troubles?"

"We've come for the mages."

Strucker smiled a not quite smile and said, "Is that so?"

"We've been cooperative," Mr. Diggory said, "we've given you all that you asked for and yet have seen nothing from it. The muggles continue killing us and we can do nothing, there are too many of them. But those mages could make all the difference, so we're taking them."

"It was our magic put into creating them," added Robards, "they belong to us. We'll take them by force if we must."

There was a ripple from Strucker's side of the crowd as they all reached for their weapons. "The alliance-"

"Fuck the alliance," the head auror crossed the few meters of space between them and pressed his wand to Strucker's throat. Immediately every gun trained on him. "We might not be enough to take on the task force, but we brought plenty for you and your men. We are the true power here, muggle, it's time you understood that."

The point where the wand was digging into his throat warmed dangerously from what could only be a slow build up of magic, but Strucker only smiled wider, full of vicious teeth. He pressed in closer. "You have no idea what true power is." Their eyes remained locked, but when he spoke again it wasn't to Robards or any of the silent wizards. "Allow me to fix that."

They hadn't discussed it, but that was Harry's cue, he knew it, knew Strucker couldn't resist a dramatic one liner.

Just a thought and the disillusionment and notice me not unraveled and he was there, just beside Robards who tensed in surprise.

That was the only reaction he was able to express before Harry's wand dug into his ribs and he cast, "Bombara."

There was a horrific spray of blood and shattered bone fragments and Diggory, who got the worst of it right in the face, screamed in horror while the others fell back.

They took a moment to just stare, jaws slack as they realized who had blasted the auror's ribcage into nonexistence.

Diggory gulped, the blood dripping down his cheeks already forgotten. "Shit."

"That," Strucker said, "is a surprisingly accurate summation. My boy, kill them."

All of the intruding wizards had come expecting a fight, they'd known Strucker wouldn't submit easy and prepared for the very eventuality. They were all fighters and good ones at that, but Harry had not been created to lose. A dozen wands were up, trained at him with curses on the tips of their wielders' tongues, they never got the chance to cast them.

Once, lifetimes ago, the man with the hollow cheeks and two eyes like coal had told him that their existence, their magic was rooted in death. Being in proximity to it lent them strength, power. And Harry had been in proximity with a lot of death today. The blood of the slain auror was splattered all up his forearms and the expressions of the dying muggles he and his mages had slain were still painted on the back of his eyelids every time he blinked, the collar around his throat was off, his magic was loose and he felt powerful.

He dropped his wand arm, tucked the useless stick of wood into the back of his pants and he unfocused. The shadows in the already dim hall went darker, reached farther into the light and something in them stirred.

Every one of his mages had a twisted, corrupted version of a patronus, the same creature as the original spell but deadlier, with claws and fangs that mangled souls. Harry thought he knew what his would be, but the creature that slunk from the shadows was not Prongs made vicious with cloven hooves and sharpened antlers but a beast straight from hell. It had a tail longer than he stood tall, a body of pure muscle, and nine, serpentine heads.

A hydra.

It lumbered forward and the wizards shrank; their wands stayed up, turned in the direction of the enormous beast but Harry saw more than a few trembling grips. When it growled, a low, hissing sound, there was a whimper. And when it struck, they screamed.

Spellfire lit the hall as the wizards threw the most powerful, most destructive curses in their repertoire at the beast and watched as the shadow it was formed from consumed the light. The nine heads struck with terrifying speed, snatching a wizard in each jaw and digging through flesh to find the soul beneath, and while they fought and failed, Harry approached.

The first wizard he reached didn't notice him until he was almost on top of him, but he still reacted quickly enough to throw a bright purple curse right at his head. Harry batted it away as easily as he'd once blocked the little foam projectiles Dudley had liked to shoot at his head, it met the ground to his left instead and left a scorching crack in the concrete. He wrapped a hand around the wizard's throat and within seconds rot had consumed his entire body.

The next wizard he didn't even have to touch, he twisted his wrist and the tether that connected him to the plane of the living was uprooted and he dropped.

The three after were dragged down and torn apart by their comrades who'd fallen under the hydra's fangs only to be reanimated with just a twitch of Harry's finger.

Until…until then there was just one. The French witch who'd never been outright cruel to Harry, but who had stood by and been an active witness in his misery; she was drenched in blood, hers or another's he didn't know, she'd lost a shoe, and her neat updo was in complete disarray. She was stuck between him and the shadow hydra, but she glared with no fear and opened her mouth no doubt to say something witty when a curse shot from behind Harry and cut a gaping hole in her throat. She fell, dead on impact, and Harry spun around to face a shocked Mr. Diggory. He'd obviously been aiming for him, but he was shaking, could barely keep hold of his wand.

Harry swept his hand in the man's direction and a cutting curse to the front of his legs brought him to his knees. At his shoulder, the nine heads of the hydra rumbled, but under Harry's silent command it remained still. He wanted this kill for himself.

It had only been a few hours since he'd sat before Walden and told him that he took no joy from the killing, and already he was proving himself a liar. But this one was different, this one was personal.

To his left, Strucker approached, stepping over mangled bodies and pools of blood until he stood at Harry's side.

"Behold." Diggory didn't twitch at the word, spoken softly yet so full of awe, he didn't tear his gaze from Harry. Not once. "True power."

Across the room, standing at Diggory's shoulder, Death grinned, a horrible thing too full of teeth and malice.

And Harry grinned back.


A/N: Happy new year all! I'll see you next decade.