Sorry for the worse-than-usual wait, guys :(
Still, I hope you enjoy!
It was easy to get everyone out of the mansion – but for once, Tony wished it hadn't been that easy. Natasha was in the security feed room, Clint was in the kitchen – they both left to stand with the wizards outside, Clint still clutching a half-eaten sandwich.
But Loki, as JARVIS told him, was skulking around on the lower level. Tony was all ready to go and drag him out, but he'd hardly taken two steps to the lift when Loki suddenly appeared, leaning against the wall in a crackle of green energy, smiling casually as though he'd been there the whole time.
"Your lifts are quite cute," Loki said with a grin, "But I find magic rather more effective."
Tony stared. So much for the locks then. The threat of Heimdall would – hopefully – keep Loki somewhat in check, but he still didn't like the idea that Loki could beam wherever the hell he wanted.
Damn magic.
This was just embarrassing. Magic was the wild card, beating Tony at every turn. He wasn't going to stand it for much longer. He had the tools - he'd figure out a way to harness it. After this whole Fidelius business was over with, he was going to lock himself in the workshop until he managed to get some kind of control over the runes.
"Save your gloating for someone who cares," Tony said, gesturing towards the door. "Get out please?"
"You seem bothered, Stark," Loki said, still casually amused. He hadn't taken one step toward the door.
Tony wanted to strangle him.
"Who, me? Bothered?" Tony said, falsely surprised. "I wonder why. Couldn't have anything to do with the fact a pain-in-the-ass sorcerer jinxed me or anything."
Loki's smile didn't fade. "I think you overestimate the bounds of my magic, Stark," he said quietly. "You are blaming me for something that was not wholly my doing."
Tony had no idea what to make of that sentence – and he wasn't particularly in the mood to figure it out.
"And I think you overestimate my patience. Get out before I blast your ass out the door."
Loki laughed, but did as Tony commanded. Tony glared at the god's figure as he retreated. Once Loki was far enough away, standing by Natasha, Tony exited the mansion himself and approached the shabby-looking wizard.
"Okay, Lupin. Everyone's out. Do your stuff," Tony said, waving his hands about to illustrate the magic 'stuff'.
"We'll get right on it," Lupin said with a faint smile. "You need to stay within the perimeter –" he shooed Tony back towards the door as he spoke, "—while we perform the spell. Please, don't leave until we say so. This is a difficult spell, and not one I particularly want to repeat."
"Yes, sir!" Tony said immediately. Lupin didn't catch the sarcasm.
Tonks and Kingsley converged on Lupin – Tony wandered back to the house, sitting on one of the steps and watching as Lupin dragged Hermione into their circle. A long conversation followed, so long that Tony wondered whether he should just go back inside. He would still be inside the perimeter, right? But just as he started to stand up, the group broke and spread out. Kingsley stayed where he was, but Tonks, Lupin, and Hermione started to spread out into a wide circle. Tony saw with some satisfaction that they ended up Apparating to the four points of the mansion – the place was simply too big to walk around.
"Stay where you are, Tony," Kingsley called, then raised his wand and shot a beam of thick silver light into the air. Tony squinted and looked up, to see three other beams arch up and meet it, at a point that Tony supposed was the middle of the mansion. A kind of haze started to spread from where the four beams of light met – it flowed down, forming a kind of bubble around the mansion and Tony.
A high wind suddenly picked up, swirling around the mansion and completing the perimeter. Over the roar of the wind, Tony thought he heard Kingsley shout something. "What?" He shouted back, but the second response was no clearer than the first. Then, faintly from his left, he heard Hermione scream, "Just say yes!"
"Okay, yes!" Tony shouted, really hoping he hadn't just sold his soul away or agreed to some other such magical curse.
Immediately the barrier crackled, and, with a great surge of brilliant purple light, disappeared – Tony felt a shock jolt through his body, and there was a second, stronger flash of light. He closed his eyes against it – when he opened them, everything was as it was before. The wind was gone, the light was gone, and other than a strange chalky taste in his mouth, he felt normal.
Considering his prior experiences with magic, this had gone over a lot better than expected. No crushing darkness, no dusty corpses, no disgusting potions… definitely a success in Tony's book.
While standing up and stretching (just to make sure everything was working) he glanced over at the gathered Avengers and wizards. He kind of expected everyone to start to filter back in, but the Avengers stayed in their awkward-looking bunch… out in the open, where Voldy could beam in anytime. He was just about to usher the idiots in when he heard a distinct shout.
"Where the hell did the house go?"
Clint, subtle as always.
"Guess the spell worked," Tony said to himself. He'd forgotten they couldn't immediately see the house – that Tony actually had to tell them of it to let them in.
Well, might as well take advantage of it. Striding confidently forward, he both expected and enjoyed immensely the gasps as he crossed the invisible line and became visible to them again.
Tony would have liked to stay and gloat awhile, but their exposed position unfortunately ruled that out. He didn't exactly want Voldy to come and kill everyone while he was taunting them."Welcome to the mansion, everyone," he said, going to each person in turn and telling them the address, as Kingsley had explained earlier. "Okay – now let's get inside before Voldy comes and wastes all our effort."
Harry, Ron, Hermione, along with all the Avengers, quickly hastened into the now-visible house, but the other three wizards stayed put. "We must be getting back," Kingsley said in his deep voice. "This house is protected now. So long as you keep the secret, not even the Dark Lord may enter."
It was effectively the same sentence Tony had heard at least twenty times before. Despite being a clear genius and all, they often didn't treat him as such. "Got it. If a bald noseless man ever comes up and asks me where I live, I promise you I won't say a word," Tony said seriously.
"Do not tell anyone," Kingsley emphasized, "Regardless of looks."
"He understands, Kingsley," Lupin answered for him. He glanced worryingly up at the sky. "We really must be going. It's not terribly safe, standing out in the open like this."
"If 'the open' is so dangerous, you could just take about ten steps to your right," Tony suggested, glancing over to where he knew the invisible barrier he paused, and found himself adding, "You can stay, if you like. In times of war and whatnot… a spell-protected mansion is probably a pretty good place to stay." Tony was a little surprised at his own generosity, but these wizards had just helped out in a big way – and besides, this was a war. If it was safer for them here, then they could have the top floor. Yet another benefit of a mansion – they could certainly pack a lot of houseguests.
"Thank you for the offer, but we really must get back," Lupin said. "Don't worry -The Order is well protected." With a nod, Lupin said, "It's been a pleasure to meet you, Iron Man." The pink-haired witch gave a bubbly goodbye, then the three turned on the spot and vanished with a loud crack.
Tony blinked, stared for a second at the place they'd just disappeared from, then turned and headed for the house. No time to ponder the mechanics of Apparating. The protection was cast – now they had planning to do. With Voldy in possession of both the Tesseract and an all-powerful wand, time was definitely of the essence.
Tony wandered into the living room, where everyone was holding an impromptu meeting. Harry had a few roughly-drawn maps spread out on the table – a few minutes of explaining told Tony that the long-fingered thing they'd rescued from the Manor was a goblin; a goblin from Gringotts, the very place they were trying to break into. Even better, the goblin knew the basic layout of the underground tunnels, and knew the exact location of the vault they wanted.
Despite their advantages, though, it soon became clear that Gringotts was nearly impenetrable. They had maps, yes, but no way to get to the tunnels the map showed. Harry and Hermione tossed around the idea of polyjuice potion, but they didn't have nearly enough to get everyone in.
"You're a sorcerer, Loki," Steve unexpectedly shot at the god in the middle of the conversation. "Why can't you magic up something and get us in?"
"I am indeed a sorcerer, Captain," Loki said, his tone condescending as usual. "However, this is a magical stronghold. I do not doubt they have spells in place to detect magical concealment. This Gringotts – it resembles many vaults upon Asgard. I would guess their protections to be similar. Any cloaking spell could very well fail as soon as we enter."
"Then what good are you?" Clint muttered.
Loki snapped back, and the meeting dissolved into individual arguments and conversations. Tony checked out entirely. He'd heard everything he'd needed to in the first few minutes – this was a seemingly impossible task. Even some very sneaky (and rather disturbing) suggestions from Natasha were shut down for one reason and another. And if Loki – a god – couldn't get them in, then how the hell would they stand a chance? There was always the option of letting Thor blunder in and create a distraction, but there was no way for him to create a distraction long enough to go miles and miles underground – assuming they could even get the key in the first place.
Subterfuge, concealment, distraction… nothing. What else was there, aside from just marching in and asking for the horcrux?
For a split second, Tony wanted nothing more than to pull out one of his old missiles and torch the place. That would get the job done. If there was one thing he'd learned, it was that a few explosives went a long way.
Wait…
It took two seconds for the entire plan to form in his head. There were a few variables to be ironed out, but he had it. He definitely had it.
"We can talk about this till the world ends if you want to, but I think we need to accept that we're not getting in by magical means," Tony said, cutting across all the babble.
Everyone turned to glare at Tony. "What else is there to do? We can't just give up," Hermione said crossly. Ron opened his mouth, looking ready to back her up.
"Wait. I know that look," Bruce said from the sofa. "What have you got, Tony?"
"C-4," Tony said simply.
Silence. Taking advantage of the fact they were all listening for once, Tony said, "We have an advantage here. Other than Liesmith over there," Tony said, gesturing at Loki, "None of us are versed in magic."
"And that's an advantage how?" Ron said.
Tony grinned. He'd been hoping for a response like that. "It's an advantage, Ginger, because you magic folk always underestimate electricity - anything normal- I mean Muggle."
"What are you suggesting?" Harry said slowly.
"I'm sure they'll expect Expellify or whatever it is that you do, but I doubt they'll expect Muggle technology – in this instance, namely bombs."
Silence reigned once more. Tony was getting pretty good at causing that reaction.
"You want to blow up Gringotts?" Hermione said, looking utterly shocked.
"Not Gringotts, specifically. Or at least not the fancy entrance part." He picked up one of the maps to illustrate, since they clearly weren't getting it, as usual. "These tunnels extend for miles in every direction, right? So go to the perimeter, far away from the main entrance and find a safe place to blow a few holes in the ground. That will give us access to the tunnels. We can set some as decoys, so it's not too easy for those Death Eaters. They'll be expecting magic at every turn, but I doubt they'll be expecting TNT."
"I don't think anyone was expecting TNT," Bruce commented dryly.
"My point exactly, doctor," Tony said. He stood up.
"What, you're leaving? One half-assed plan and you're finished?" Clint growled from his perch on the sofa.
"If that's your definition of half-assed, I can't wait to hear what you come up with," Tony replied. Before Clint could retort, he said, "Sure, we can get in. That's great. But then one blast of green light would kill us all dead. I'm planning on fixing that before we go wandering into a wizarding stronghold."
He turned and left the room, heading for his workshop. Normally he would have stayed and helped them figure out the rest of the plan, but again, the game could be up any second. He'd feel a lot better with a magical shield between him and the crazed noseless man.
He'd given them enough to work with. They'd figure out the rest of the plan. It wasn't the biggest concern – Tony now just needed to figure out how to use magic himself.
He was going to make it work or die trying… literally. Voldy would see to that.
So that didn't leave much room for failure, then. Difficulty and impossibility aside, Tony Stark was going to make this work.
J.K. Rowling didn't give much grounds for the Fidelius charm, so I made it up xD I know the Fidelius charm was different in the first book, but I went for more of a Grimmauld Place type spell. :)
Thanks a million to all my readers, as always - can't say it enough! This story never would have made it without you all helping it along :)
Hope you enjoyed!
