Just a quick note: Because it has been a while since I have uploaded a chapter, it may be a good idea to go back and read the last few, just to reacquaint yourself with the storyline. This is merely a suggestion; do whatever you see fit. I want you to have the best reading experience possible. Anyway, enjoy!

The first strand of blond hair falling to the ground as he tidied up his bird's nest of a hairstyle.

Discovering that he wasn't who he thought he was.

Battling with inner demons and hating people who had nothing to do with what was now his life.

Becoming the man he was now, through trial and error, meeting those who he added to his family.

Harry's life flashed before his eyes like a grotesque kaleidoscope and he found himself thinking: Not again. Not this time.

I'll stop him.

No matter the cost.

As the blazing sun began to set over the New York skyline, everything switched. The floor to ceiling windows of Avengers Tower shattered, glass flying inwards. The creaking of metal coupled with screeching concrete created a terrible symphony that could be heard all over the city. Through the dust now swirling lazily through the hazy air, the outline of a spaceship could be seen. It hovered, letting out a neverending barrage of bombs to utterly destroy the tower.

Harry screamed in agony as a large steel beam landed on his leg. Blood splattered up onto his face. "Fuck!" The entire tower was collapsing around him. It wouldn't be long before the entire thing was mere rubble on the ground with his twisted body hidden within the remains. ground.

A faint roar met his ears. Angry. The Hulk. There was no way that Hulk would be stopped by a building. After the warning, Stark made sure to keep one of his suits near at all time so he could slip into it at a moments notice and escape. Clint...Harry was pretty sure that Clint was up on the roof, keeping a lookout. With his reflexes, it wouldn't be hard to spring to another building. Thor was currently on Asgard. That left Steve and Natasha, who were in a room above him.

Gritting his teeth and grasping the elder wand, Harry twisted. With a crack, he disappeared and reappeared in the crumbling room a story above.

"AGH―" Harry hacked up blood, leaning on the wall to stop from falling over. His right leg, just above the knee, was missing. The jagged end of his bone stuck out, sinew and muscle clinging on for dear life. Red coloured the floor and his vision. He swallowed the pain, grunting out, "Steve! Natasha! Are you in here?"

He prayed for an answer.

For a second, there was nothing.

Then, a very faint, "We're coming! Help us lift this beam!" Natasha!

He hopped towards the sound, finding a gap in the concrete with fingers tucked under it. Even for Steve and Natasha combined, it was too heavy. Jumping out of the window wasn't an option, seeing as they were too high up. Lifting the beam was the only way to get out. Harry tucked his own fingers under it, leaning on a wall for balance. Even though he could feel his leg beginning to grow back, for an injury as large as this it was a long process. It would take at least ten minutes. Those were minutes they couldn't spare. He would just have to make do.

He started heaving upwards, feeling the strain on his arms almost immediately. Why did concrete have to be so damn heavy? Hang on….fuck. Harry was being incredibly inane. He was a wizard, with a wand, who could do wondrous things with a flick of that wand and a few choice words. What was he doing, heaving like this when he could easily help in another way?

"I'm letting go. Just hold on."

The muffled voice of Steve came back. "Be quick, I don't know how much longer we can hold this."

Harry didn't reply. Gently easing his arms back from the concrete, he got out his wand and cast spells to enforce the concrete around the slab they were trying to lift, before hitting it with a featherlight charm. It shot upwards, crashing into the ceiling. Steve and Natasha dove through before it could fall down again.

They looked absolutely dreadful. Steve's hair was full of debris, grime coating his face. His costume was torn in several places, blood dripping down from his temple, lip, and hand. Natasha wasn't in a much better situation. Though her face was disturbingly blank, even more so than usual, her nose was slightly crooked and red. The same could be said for her leg, splayed and swollen, despite no grimace marring her face.

They didn't notice how the blast of magic disabled their comm systems.

Harry shifted, wincing as pain lanced up his own leg. It didn't go unnoticed. Both their eyes flickered down and widened imperceptibly at the sight of the missing limb. They knew he could regrow limbs. That didn't mean that the sight was familiar to them. This was the first time they saw him like this. It showed.

"Look forget my leg, it'll grow back," Harry said brusquely, shooting a quick healing spell at Natasha's. Her relief was palpable as it popped back into place. "We need to get out of here. The bombs are only going to keep coming. I can change into the thunderbird and fly us down to the ground, where we can rendezvous with the others."

"You read my mind," said Natasha. "We need to get out of here. Whoever is attacking us, we need to stop them."

"No shit," breathed Harry. Steve didn't even bother shooting him a disapproving look. "Alright, I'm going over to that hole in the wall and transform. Stand back." Before he even said that, they stepped back, knowing what was to come.

Harry walked over to the hole and closed his eyes, breathing deep. Because his Animagus form was bigger than usual, the transformation took slightly longer than it would otherwise. Compared to, say, Sirius or Rita Skeeter, who could transform with a snap of the finger or a blink of the eye, his own transformation took twice as long. There was no discomfort that came with it; it was similar to the flow of a waterfall.

He triggered the transformation. Instantly, iridescent golden feathers began sprouting from his skin, two massive sets of wings growing from his back. His face elongated to that of a bird's and his feets morphed into talons. He gave a mighty screech and turned to face Natasha and Steve.

As soon as he did, he crashed to the floor. What the hell? Harry glanced down and realised that one of his legs was gone and cursed his luck. Of course. Injuries from when Animagi were human transferred to the Animagus form. Where his talon would be was a bloody stump. At least his wings weren't affected.

He ruffled his feathers, motioning his head for them to get on. Both did, deftly mounting themselves on his back. The building began to creak around them, dust raining down. We've got to get out of here and fast. Harry hopped over to the ever edge of the building. This takeoff would be difficult without his leg. That didn't matter now.

He began to beat his wings, standing in one spot. Then he launched forward with his one leg. For a moment, it was unbearably wobbly. With a few twists and turns, he straightened, gliding through the air. His eyes scanned the ground below, searching for Iron Man, Hawkeye or Hulk. Through the debris, it was hard to discern anything.

The devastation below them was something to behold. Not in a good way. If they thought the damage from the Battle of New York was bad, they were mistaken. For miles around the Avengers Tower, New York City was reduced to rubble. The only thing left standing, if you could even call it that, was the tower itself. The dangerous slant and chunk taken out of the bottom betrayed it. Not even Tony's genius engineering could stop it from crumbling.

As they flew away, it finally keeled over. Concrete against concrete, the empty space where it once stood filled only by the memories each of them held. Impossibly loud noises, similar to bombs going off, filled the air and their ears.

And soon real bombs filled the air.

The spaceship in the air, a behemoth of twisted metal, began firing off missiles. A whistling filled the air. Harry barely dodged the first. It whizzed past him, crashing into the rubble and exploding. What used to be a city flew sprayed outwards.

Holy shit.

Those things packed some firepower. Harry vaguely recognised similar technology to that of the Chitauri. So there was a link between the Voice and the alien attackers. His suspicions, everyone's hunches, were confirmed.

Realising that there wasn't much he could do as the bombs continued flying, Harry dove towards the ground, a crazy plan forming inside his head. Their hands tightened around his feathers, almost pulling them out. The others wouldn't like this, but they couldn't come back from death. For them, it was kaput. Harry wasn't going to have that happen. Not to anyone close to him.

He hovered above the ground. His wingbeats were so strong a clean space was cleared on the street below them. Steve and Natasha slid off, crouching as they landed. The pair glanced up and him, waiting for him to transform.

Harry bit back the regret that rushed upwards in his throat.

Before they could realise what he was doing, Harry took off back into the air. Cries of "HARRY!" and "What the hell!" reached his ears. He blocked them out. His leg was grown back now.

He soared towards the giant spaceship blocking out the sun. Missiles shot towards him. He dodged and dived, wings beating so hard that his shoulders began to ache, his body beginning to burn. The missiles that he couldn't dodge, he sent an uncontrolled blast of magic towards them. Explosions bloomed, fiery balls that he flew straight through, screeching out a war cry. Using magic was one of the benefits of having a magical creature for his Animagus form. That, and the incredible ability that came with the Thunderbird…

He could only imagine how Steve and Natasha were feeling. This was a side of him they'd never seen before. The part that was prepared to do anything, even more so than his usual personality. This was the side of him hardened by years of battles and operations, the side that didn't care about emotions and feelings.

Despite this, a single tear rolled off his feathers.

As he drew closer, small figures of all shapes and sizes appeared in the windows, all turned to face towards him. They raised their weapons. He was now too close for the missiles to be of any use against him. Harry narrowed his eyes and gathered the power to release his trump card. It would blow a hole in the side of the ship, gaining him entrance.

A few seconds later, lightning blazed across the sky, a mighty golden bird silhouetted at the centre.

"The city is under attack! Get out as soon as you can. If you can't do that, find cover in a safe place." Silence. Then: "It is unknown if we will survive this time."

Terrified screams filled the air.

Steve wasn't entirely sure how to feel.

As the city fell around him, so did his faith in his son. He was flying towards the battleship, not giving a damn about them. About the team. So much for working together. His rallying cry from a mere two days ago suddenly lost a lot of the weight it held. Instead of being a rallying cry it now rang like a damaged bell, a lie wrapped up in deceptive, shifted truths. A distraction. A lie. A lie. The worst kind of lie. The kind of lie that Harry wouldn't tell.

Sure, Harry was headstrong and rushed into battles with half-baked plans. He liked to play jokes, often annoying his team-mates just for the sake of it. This...this was something else. Something he had seen before. It was lust for battle mixed with the desire to keep his family safe. Put those two emotions together in a mixing bowl and you get someone who doesn't care about the consequences, someone willing to die for the sake of others. Coupled with Harry's literal inability to die and you got something that you never wanted to become, never wanted to see someone else become. He, himself, was willing to die for others, but there was common sense resting in his brain. Somewhere near the back. Deep down.

It was as if someone was inside him, pulling invisible strings. Forcing him to do things he would never do.

"HARRY!" He yelled out, rushing forward, outrage and hurt warring to create a distorted cry.

At the same time, Natasha called out, "What the hell!"

He turned to face her. "That...that's not him."

She grimaced. "It is. He gets like this. We've got to get up there and join the fight. Tony and Clint should be there soon. He's going to do everything he can do stop them."

"And so should we," Steve growled. His fingers curled around the leather strap of his shield, knuckles going white. Screw logic, screw common sense. This was the fight of their life. Their enemy was already far more dangerous, even though they were comfortably sequestered up in the spaceship being a coward.

"Agreed." Natasha tapped the comm in the air. Nothing happened. It was dead. Damn. Steve tried his own with a similar result. Nothing. No matter.

"Let's get on top of that building, we can get a visual from there, on both the spaceship and our team members."

And so they began heading upwards to the peak of the half-destroyed building. Occasionally, they found someone still struggling feebly in the rubble and helped them out, then continued.

There were bodies everywhere, men, woman, children. Dressed in all manner of clothing, from strangely archaic yellow robes to bloodstained tuxedos. Even for Natasha, who was a seasoned killer, it was enough to bring bile to the back of her mouth. And we thought New York was bad.

Halfway up, an impossible large explosion of lightning lit up the sky. Harry, Steve thought. They would be up there soon, fighting with the self-sacrificing idiot.

As they reached the top, their comms suddenly crackled back to life. Steve winced, turning the volume down. Static, nothing but static. A frantic voice cut through it, unmistakably Harry's. Panic flooded Steve.

"Call for Heimdall! Asgard! He's going to Asgard. His name is Thanos. You've got to get there, fast! Call for Hei―" A terrible, bloodcurdling scream, the likes of which Steve had never heard before, cut off his frantic message. His stomach dropped at the awful sound. A low chuckle backing up the scream along with joyous catcalls, creating a twisted symphony.

Nothing.

The comms cut off again. A glance was shared between them.

"Heimdall, open the Bifrost!" they cried in unison. It was only as the rainbow lights engulfed them that they caught sight of shattered gold and red armour, splattered with blood, lying on an outcropping of the building across from them.

Tony jerked his eyes open. It was dark. So dark. Footsteps sounded before he even had time to register what happened.

"Hello," said a husky voice with a slight mechanical tone tinging it. "We're going to need something from you."

"I'll never give it to you. I don't even know what you want, so that's a bit of a hurdle. Can I have a drink, in the meantime? Always nice to offer your guests a refreshment."

"You'll have no such luxury." He didn't even need to see his attacker to know that she was smirking. "And don't worry, you'll know what we want soon enough, I assure you."

I have returned from my extended break. Things have been busy for me. Got a job, finished my exams, passed my Grade Eight Musical Theatre Exam with distinction, which is really nice. It's been difficult to find the time to write this, but I finally got it out. We're nearing the end now. I sincerely hope that I can live up to your expectations, even though I've learned that I need to write what I want to read (thank you Markus Zusak, he's awesome, talking to him was a highlight of the year).

The next one should be out next Sunday. Back to the old schedule, aye? Ah, this is nice. There's a certain sense of relief that comes with getting back on top of my writing.

Sincerely,
Mariadoria