Chapter 5
A.N: I do not own Harry Potter, Discworld, or Marvel. The only things I have are a lovely bunch of coconuts and this story.
"HELLO MASTER" intoned the heavy voice of death, not something you want to hear, even when you're the Master of Death.
"What happened Death, what am I doing here?" Harry replied a bit confused, the last thing he'd been doing was breaking and entering into an assassin's apartment. "Hang on, stupid question, I'm dead aren't I."
"YES MASTER, YOU WERE KILLED"
"So what now, ride off into the sunset, my duties fulfilled, must admit I'd have liked to see Teddy grow up, maybe a couple of kids, bit inconvenient and upsetting truth be told." Harry replied sombrely, all traces of his usual flippant attitude now cowered in the absence of any tangible future.
"NO MASTER, YOU SHALL RETURN SOON, WE ARE JUST AWAITING YOUR BODY REPAIRING ITSELF TO A HABITABLE STATE, ONCE COMPLETE YOU SHALL AWAKEN."
Harry blew a massive sigh of relief, the Master of Death role did have some perks, asides from the whole meeting new people and then reaping their soul's thing. In reality he knew he wouldn't be riding off into the sunset, he was immortal, the issue would've been being deposited back into a body of his 18 year old self when he had first united the Deathly Hallows. As much as Harry loved himself, he could still admit that 18 year old Harry was a scrawny runt, his current self was much more like it, it'd taken a couple of years, expensive potions, hard work, and several Davina McCall fitness DVD's to get where he was today.
"So when it's not a serious injury." Although Harry wasn't sure how to classify being shot, as minor. "I'll just return here and await my body being repaired."
"THAT IS CORRECT MASTER, ONLY VAPORISATION OF A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF YOURSELF WOULD RESULT IN A TOTAL RESET. BUT FOR NOW, YOUR TIME IN MY REALM IS COMPLETE, DO TRY TO AVOID DYING WHERE POSSIBLE, IT'LL LOOK EMBARRASSING FOR YOU TO CONTINUE DYING."
Harry awoke with a start, taking a large gasp of breath and instantly cheeking his forehead for damage, hoping to god he didn't have another bloody scar for everyone to gawk at again, the first 17 years of his life with that particular disfigurement was bad enough. His reward for this sudden and shocking action was another sharp cracking sound and a blanket of darkness covering his vision.
"Well that was fucking stupid, stupid trigger happy bitch." It was not a happy Harry that was sat in front of the imposing desk of Death. Fortunately the majority of the time was spent in silence with only the background noises of Death's quill scratching on velum, and the rush of the sand of the billions of egg timers sat upon the shelves behind the desk. All of this being softly interspersed with Harry softly swearing about being an idiot, and how he was going to put that stupid bloody gun where the sun doesn't shine. Soon enough Harry found himself back within his own body on Earth.
"Who the fuck are you and how did you survive?"
Harry took his time thinking through his answer to this and assessing the interrogator. He'd awoken to find himself tied securely to a chair by his wrists and ankles and the majority of his clothes deposited on a table in front of him. The voice of his target he was hearing for the first time, it was calm, unwavering, and indicated a certain familiarity with the process; asides from someone waking up after being shot in the head that is. If Harry was honest with himself, that was reassuring, you don't want an incompetent assassin, Harry had been tortured by all sorts, but it was the professionals that really knew how to make you feel valued, in an unbearably painful sort of way. Nice to see she had a well-rounded set of skills, that said, the rope work was a bit dodgy, but Harry was willing to allow time pressures and her lack of magic for being unable to match the incarcerous for quality of bondage.
"I repeat, who the fuck are you, and how did you survive being shot in the head? Twice!" Apparently Harry had taken too long admiring his situation and thinking things through, this had annoyed the feisty looking redhead. "I swear to god if you don't start talking, you'll be starting to lose appendages."
Harry fixed Red, as he'd not titled her, with a piercing stare, it was quite invasive and would feel to her as if Harry knew every one of her deepest and darkest secrets, Red didn't know it but that was the effect of a wandless legilimency probe, it had a tendency to be clumsy and be a bit loose inside the head, pulling up random memories, not focusing on what was wanted. It was another thirty seconds before Harry spoke, giving up his probe after finding a well organised mind that would require more focus to break into properly. "You know, I lost an appendage once, assuming legs count within that category. That's what you get for fucking about with a sword when drunk I suppose."
This was actually a true story, Harry had decided one night to gain some sword skills seeing as he wielded the Sword of Gryffindor. He'd bought a beautiful replica of the great sword to practice with, better not expose his trainer to any basilisk venom, could result in quite a high turnover for the position if he did. Harry had been out getting drunk with Neville on the anniversary of the end of the war when they decided to duel with swords, it was testament to the sheer volume of firewhiskey knocked back by the pair that neither thought of what could happen. It was fortunate that one of the potions Harry found within the vast Potter family library was for limb regeneration, Harry had commissioned a potions master to brew the draught under secrecy oath and had regrown his left leg within a day, although the process was worse than Skelegrow.
Of course, Harry had looked into patenting the potion, which he'd done, after building greenhouses to hold a monopoly on the rarest ingredients, not that he'd exploit this, he just had good business sense. Andromeda had taken her time to teach Harry about being business savvy, and he'd put those lessons to work, as a result he was now rich, not just rich though, filthy rich. As it turned out the years of being fates bitch had resulted in an elastic effect, he was now flying high, he just hoped these multiple deaths weren't the start of the descent.
Red fixed Harry with a questioning gaze as if debating whether the man in front of was serious or even real. Harry was used to this reaction, his positive outlook could throw some people through a loop.
"Apologies, names Harry, you are?" If anything the conversational approach to the interrogation was another spanner in the works for Red, apparently people didn't just open up like Harry had, nor in such a cheerful manner.
Recovering quickly and attempting to regain the upper hand. "You didn't answer my question, how are you alive?"
"Ah yeah, that, would you believe I was immunised against death, comes in handy that does." It was a flippant stupid response, Harry expected the slap and wasn't disappointed. "I see they remove your sense of humour when you join S.H.I.E.L.D." Red recoiled in shock at this, she had never contemplated that someone would connect her with S.H.I.E.L.D whilst at this apartment and not in her S.H.I.E.L.D uniform.
"What do you know about S.H.I.E.L.D? She asked in a near whisper, this couldn't end well for her or the man in front of her, Fury would be sure to ream her out for being compromised, and not even on foreign soil either.
"Well let me think, big hard on for biometrics, very security conscious, they love a camera, good web design, really top notch website…. Oh yeah, one more thing, you work for them and have killed five men in the past year, that I know of. Nothing else I can think of at the moment." All of this was conveyed with a cheery smile, like a ten year old answering a teacher with a verbatim answer.
This time the assassin did reel back, so much so that she fell back onto her sofa, "How… how do you know about the killings, you weren't there."
"Wasn't I?" Harry replied smugly with a drawl that would put both Malfoy men to shame.
"No, I would've seen you, I know what I'm doing." Her voice was wavering at this point, but her pale face was slowly regaining its colour.
"Well I saw you, the first one was the Dictator in Africa, not sure where, but poisoned with red wine that you handed him, that dress looked good on you, wouldn't mind seeing that again." Harry said all this with what he hoped was a flirty smile, it wasn't the first time he'd turn the tables on his opponent but he always enjoyed the feeling. If he was honest it was a bad habit he'd got into when bantering with Voldemort.
"I've got to call this in" she said distractedly to herself.
"I'm afraid I'm not going to let that happen, as lovely as you are, I'd rather not spend the next week as your guest." As he was saying that Harry wandlessly cast a quick severing charm at the ropes holding his hands, before quickly casting a wide area stunner at the redhead who was caught surprised and whilst still collapsed listlessly on the sofa had no time to react or dodge. Reaching down Harry severed the ankle ropes and stretched as he stood up, his shoulders and back popping in protest, Harry was thinking about the lack of people owning chaise lounge and the rarity of being tied to a piece of furniture comfortably as he collected his belongings. "Thank god she didn't shoot through the cloak, now that would've been annoying, that said, at least I'd be able to use my very first transfiguration spell, haven't used that since first year."
Once he'd collected all of his belongings Harry moved back to the lounge, levitated his former captor onto the chair he had just vacated and conjuring thick ropes that wrapped around the girl. Retrieving his vial of Veritaserum, Harry tipped the girls head back and poured three drops of the liquid onto her tongue, with his wand, He cast a silent enervate, her eyes opening in the glassy state he expected.
"What is your name?" The key to veritaserum was to be direct, indirect answers could be avoided and foisted off with platitudes, rather like the riddles the old coot used to speak in. Unfortunately the response would also be blunt, giving no extenuating details or expanding on the topic.
"Natasha Romanov"
"What is your job?"
"I am part of the Avengers initiative as well as being an assassin for S.H.I.E.L.D."
At this point Harry was side tracked from his planned questions. "Avengers initiative? What's that?"
"We are a group of extraordinary individuals who will protect the Earth when trouble arises."
Harry mulled this over in his mind. "Who else is part of this initiative?"
Maintaining the dopey state, Natasha responded in the same monotone voice. "Iron Man, Bruce Banner, Captain America, Clint Barton, and myself."
Harry had no idea who these people were, but sensing his time was coming to a close he asked one last question. "How did you know I was here?"
With the eyes becoming less glassy Natasha responded. "Pressure pads in the floor, your weight set them off, tracked you on my phone. There are also infrared lasers but they didn't trigger until you were right outside my door." Harry mused, the cloak must also be impervious to lasers, useful to know.
Thinking through the information Harry considered his options, deciding that it was unavoidable that this would be investigated, Harry decided to obliviate his captive and to modify her memory, making her think that she missed her two shots, making the intruder scarper in panic through his entry route. Moving down the hall from the once again unconscious girl, Harry scourified the blood patches, ensuring to catch all the splatter, it wouldn't do for S.H.I.E.L.D to bring in a real life version of Dexter to nail him. Harry also made sure to retrieve the bullets that had been deposited on the carpet when he returned to his body, cleaning them of the blood before banishing them into the wall, to further the illustration that Natasha had missed.
Satisfied with his work he strode back into the living room, he released Natasha from the ropes and levitated her back to the bedroom, casting a sleeping charm on the already disabled agent. Returning to the window that he entered, and cancelling all traces of magic as he did so, he climbed out onto the fire escape, casting more disillusionment charms on himself and his broom, he took off and returned to the Surrey Hotel. He had a lot to think about, and plans to make.