Okay, I lied XD No Harry in this chapter, but there is a mention of him! :D Sorry. This was originally part of a (much) longer chapter, but I cut it so I would have something to post xD The rest of the chapter is still in edit mode (translate: I'm still not happy with it... X( ), but should be up today or tomorrow.

Anyways, enjoy this teaser. And expect good stuff very very soon :3


Fury didn't seem to be taking any chances – the jet that finally arrived was not piloted by Clint and Natasha, but two random SHIELD members. Tony was surprisingly upset by that – he would have preferred people he knew he could trust in a fight. The SHIELD members were polite and didn't gawk too much, but that was about it. Sure, they were probably master assassins and such, but Tony just wasn't in the mood.

The man went to scour the crater for any additional clues while the woman came to help with Thor. Moving Thor, though, wasn't the hard part – it was his mighty hammer that presented a challenge. Tony had heard quite a detailed account from Bruce about that hammer – if the Hulk couldn't move it, no one could. It was resting in the palm of Thor's hand, looking rather innocent and unassuming considering it weighed more than anything else on the planet. He didn't want to just leave it for anyone to wander over and examine, but he couldn't seem to come up with anything else.

Unless…

"Hey, you," He said, gesturing at the female SHIELD member. "Agent Sarova," Steve hissed from the corner of his mouth.

"Sarova, whatever. Come over here."

The woman – pardon, Sarova – glared but approached. "Yes?" She said in a tone that was hardly polite.

He had bigger things to worry about than an insulted SHIELD member. "Get Thor's hand around the hammer. Whatever you do, don't touch the handle."

She did so. Mjolnir did not spark, and it seemed like his hand moved a little bit as she did so. So far so good.

"Keep your hand there," He said warningly as she made to pull away. "Steve, get under his arm and lift when Sarova does. Carefully."

"But Mjolnir—" Steve tried to protest, but Tony cut him off. "Thor's still holding it, right? Let's see if he's still worthy while out cold. He got knocked out nobly and everything."

Steve shook his head but did so. Sarova and Steve carefully lifted up Thor's arm – and Mjolnir seemed fine with Thor's arm being used as a puppet. Amazing the steps they had to take to appease a hammer. An awesome hammer, it was true – but still, a freaking hammer. They shouldn't have to bother trying to keep it happy and non-heavy.

Once his arm was suspended and it didn't seem likely that Mjolnir was going to land on anybody, Tony helped lift Thor up. They awkwardly carried him to the jet and laid him on the stretcher. Once he was down, Sarova went outside and yelled, "Kieran! Finish and get up here now!"

Well, maybe they weren't so polite after all.

Agent Kieran came bearing a handful of the weird metal, a soil sample, and the coiled body of the dead snake. Tony was glad his mask was filtered – everyone's nose wrinkled when he carried the charred thing in. Sarova wordlessly offered him a bag to dump it in. After carefully putting aside the dirt and metal, he quickly put the body inside and stored it in the cargo bay. Everyone looked relieved when the latch closed. Burned snake brewed up a mighty stink, it seemed. He felt kind of bad for it, though. Whatever its crimes, Tony was sure it hadn't deserved to be burned to a crisp.

Tony looked back at the crater as Sarova took off. He had JARVIS use every filter and scanner he had, but he couldn't see the magical barrier that had been their downfall. The scanners registered energy in the area, nothing more. No obvious line at the edge of the crater, no concrete area that shouted, 'there's a magic spell here!' JARVIS could only say that magic had been used at some point in the general area. So helpful.

"JARVIS, take down all energy signatures that you can read. See if they match with anything we or SHIELD has ever come across before."

That would involve breaking into SHIELD's intelligence base again, but Tony could live with that.

"So what did you guys meet down there?" Agent Sarova asked as they sped back toward the mansion.

"Um…" Steve replied eloquently. "…We're not entirely sure."

"She was either Loki's lady friend or some new baddie," Tony replied. "But whoever she was, she's definitely related to whoever massacred everyone at the SHIELD base. She loved using that green laser of death."

"What do you mean, 'whoever'?" Agent Kieran asked from the co-pilot's seat. "That was Loki at SHIELD."

Why was everyone so certain of that? "Right, because Loki's obviously the only person in the entire universe interested in unlimited energy," Tony said. "Of course."

Steve turned to Tony. "What, you think it wasn't Loki?"

Hadn't he said that at least three times already? "No, I don't think it's Loki. Does any of this sound like Loki to you?" He was going to wait for the big reveal when had evidence and other such things, but screw it. "If anything Thor said was accurate, Loki should still be stuck on Asgard. Even if he somehow beamed himself here, he's not one to just kill everyone, grab what he wants, and get out. He loves the drama, Steve. He wants to see us squirm. Do you not remember the mess he left the first time he paid SHIELD a visit? Like I said, he's hardly a come, kill, leave kind of guy."

"So what, you think you know everything about him? His last plan didn't work out so well, Tony. So he changed tactic, tried something new. And so far, it looks like it's going pretty well for him this time."

It was a good point, but not enough. "Okay, fine. Let's get technical. It's still preliminary, but JARVIS hasn't caught a whiff of Loki's energy signature. Anywhere. Not at the SHIELD base –" He heard exclamations of surprise from the agents driving the plane, but ignored them. Of course Tony had collected all the information he could, by any means necessary. Really, it should just be expected by now. "And not here. Sure, Loki could have teamed up with someone new, but I don't think so. There's no big flashy army, no wormhole, no spectacular deaths and possessed people running around. Sure, that takes more effort, but why would he deny himself all the fun? I could be completely wrong," His tone stated clearly that he doubted that possibility, "But doesn't all of that seem a little strange to you?"

Steve crossed his arms and said nothing. He was obviously still set with his 'new battle plan' idea. Well, fine then. He didn't have to be on board yet, but Tony would convince him eventually, one way or another.

But having evidence would probably help matters.

The rest of the ride back to the mansion was a quiet one. Agent Sarova briefly spoke up to say they'd located Bruce, thankfully not the Hulk, in the middle of the woods – another jet was already en route to pick him up. So no worries there. Everything would have been okay – except for Thor. The thunder god remained as still as death in the back of the jet. Tony felt helpless – there was quite literally nothing he could do to rouse him, short of making a great deal of noise and seeing if that worked. But though it was tempting, he really doubted it would actually work. So Tony was left twiddling his mechanical thumbs and watching JARVIS run the energy scans. It was disheartening to see that through thousands upon thousands of references, he had yet to find a match. Still, for every thousand he compared the signatures to, there were still thousands more. They'd find a match eventually… or that's what Tony told himself, anyway.

When they landed in the mansion, Fury himself was waiting to greet them at the hangar doors. "We finally found a contact," He said with no prelude or trivial things like hellos. "Someone who might know what's going on here. Come with me." He walked off immediately, leaving Tony and Steve to follow.

Ah, no. This was not SHIELD HQ. "Uh, excuse me? This is my mansion here, Nick. I'll be doing the 'come with me,' if you please."

Fury turned around. "Take your ego down a couple notches, Stark," Fury snapped. " 'Your' mansion? You may own the building, but it is outfitted for SHIELD agents. So that makes it mine as well. Of course I know my way around - And I also know where the contact is. You don't. So shut up and follow me."

"Pissy cyclops," Tony muttered under his breath. He was going to have JARVIS program in some surprises for Fury next time he decided to visit. He was busy plotting when he noticed Steve's expression. The captain was turned away, but he was definitely hiding a smile.

"Something funny, Rogers?"

"I never thought I'd see you lose a war of words to Fury," Steve said, chortling. Swearing under his breath, Tony shouldered past Steve, accidentally knocking him into the wall in the process. "Information first, continuation of pissing contest after," Tony said over his shoulder.

"I heard that," Fury said from in front. Tony ignored him.

"So, who's the contact?" Steve asked, brushing drywall off his shoulder as he caught up. Fury kept walking as he talked.

"We sent out descriptions of the attack in the Tesseract room, trying to find a match, whether this has been seen on Earth before. We got a hit through the British prime minister. He patched us through to someone who promises to have all the information we need."

"And the catch?" Tony asked. Was this person a defector, or something? Would there have to be a tradeoff for the info?

"No catch." Tony snorted. "No catch," Fury repeated. "He checks out clean, so far. He wants him beaten as badly as we do."

"So, who is he?" Tony asked, wondering whether he knew him – and why, whether he knew him or not, he hadn't surfaced sooner.

Fury turned the corner and opened the door to the conference room.

"His name is Harry Potter."


Yay for Harry!

Should mention - Sarova and Kieran are just random SHIELD members, not canon, I just made them up ^^;

Hope you enjoyed this, but I also hope you will forgive me for this very short and fairly pointless chapter. As I said, teaser, yes? xD

But for serious Harry and co. are going to be in the next chapter, and Loki in the one after that. Then things are really gonna get interesting... D

And I really need to start naming my chapters...

Anyway. Thank you again again again for the reviews and favorites and follows - yaaaaay it's always so wonderful to see that people actually like reading this! :3