Nick Fury leaned back against his leather chair behind the large desk in his office on the Helicarrier. They were currently in the air, flying across the American continent, and the reason behind the journey was really pissing the Director off. He opened one of the desk's many drawers, and stared down at the old, black cell phone that was the only object inside. He carefully picked up the device, and quickly selected the only number in the phones memory. He held it up to his ear, and waited.
It rang for about a minute before there was a click. Immediately Fury's ear was filled with the sound of profanities. After about five seconds of listening, Fury's eyebrows raised in surprise.
"Agent Potter, what the hell are you up to?"
"SECTUMSEMPRA! Goddammit, DIE ALREADY."
"Agent Potter," Fury growled with irritation, "Inform me of your situation immediately."
Fury detected the sound of an explosion before there was a cough, and Potter replied, "What? Situation? Everything's fine. I'm just, errr, a little busy at the moment. Can I call you back?"
"No you cannot. I need you to come in."
"Are you serious?" Potter demanded with irritation, "You called me only a couple of weeks ago. How could you possibly have found another world threat in so short an amount of time?" There was the sound of a scuffle and swearing, before Fury heard a dull thump that he suspected was the sound of someone's head being smashed into the ground. There was a clattering sound from Harry's end. It seemed Harry had dropped his phone. Fury glared daggers at the wall across from him, waiting for Harry to pick it up again. He knew Potter was older than he looked, but really, sometimes he could be extremely unprofessional.
"Crap. Okay, I'm back. In response to your earlier request, I'm afraid that I must decline. I'm otherwise occupied presently, and I don't have the time to deal with whatever it is you need me for. Why don't you call Stark or something? I saw his suit on the television the other day."
"Potter, I'm not involving Stark in this, and the last time I called you in was over a year ago," Fury growled.
There was a pause, and the silence was filled with the faint sound of explosions from Harry's end.
"Oh," Harry said, softly, "... I guess I just lost track of the time... Pretty easy in my situation," he finished bitterly. Then, there was an angry huff, and Fury heard the distinctive thunk of talons being slammed into flesh.
"Potter, what are you doing? We have a possible alien threat, and we'll need you if this comes to a battle. We have an unidentified individual that when detained, managed to escape, and in the process defeated some of my best men. Apparently this guy is a god. We need to fight fire with fire."
There was a frustrated sigh, "You can't call me in for every problem, Nick. I'm not the solution to everything. Besides, I'm currently dealing with a possible world threatening situation, nevermind your 'god' problem."
"So there is a situation?" Fury questioned.
"Ahh shit," Harry muttered.
"Tell me now."
"Gimme a sec." The phone was set down, and Fury allowed the sounds of a battle wash over him. If he listened intently, he could hear the faint shouts of Harry performing spells. Five minutes later, Harry returned, panting slightly. "Okay, I'm done."
"TELL ME."
"Alright! Merlin, Nick, you didn't need to shout," Harry muttered. "This morning I was hunting down a possible dark wizard when I sensed a massive amount of magical energy. I apparated to the source, a small town, pretty average, and..."
"... And what?"
"Basically, I found a shitload of zombies."
"Zombies," Fury deadpanned.
"Well kind of," Harry sighed in frustration, "They have no life force, but they're sure as hell able to attack me. They're relatively easy to destroy, but, well, the whole town was affected."
"Many casualties?"
"Fury, the whole town was affected. Every last resident is now dead."
"You killed them?"
"They were already dead... They had no life force, their very souls were missing. If I didn't know any better, I would have blamed Dementors, but I know the signs of a Dementor attack. This was done by a wizard. I'm sure of it."
Fury rubbed his single remaining eye with exhaustion. The possible alien threat wasn't leaving him much time for sleep. The bastard had recruited a group of scientists, for Christ sake. He had been planning with Harry's assistance in mind. This just got a lot more difficult.
"Look, I'll try and deal with this as quickly and quietly as I can. SHIELD doesn't need to become involved with wizarding problems."
"I hope not. I already have enough shit to deal with, not including you goddamn fairies."
The Director could practically hear Harry's scowl. "Wizards. Why don't you wake up the Ice Cube?"
"It's not the right time. Also, Coulson is in New Mexico. If I woke up his hero without him, he'd probably quit."
"And shoot you. Look, I gotta go. Could you send some people to clean this mess up? I need to deal with this while the trail is still fresh. Good luck with whatever it is your dealing with. I'd appreciate if you didn't call me again." He hung up.
Fury lowered the phone, and gazed at it once again. "You say that every time, Potter. And yet, you always come to help us when we need you." Fury dropped the phone back into the door, and got up, striding across the room and back out onto the Bridge. Hopefully the mysterious, blonde, hammer wielding giant would be dealt with without the destruction of most of New Mexico.
Harry sighed as he shoved the chunky phone back into his pocket. He ran a hand through his raven coloured hair, and grimaced at the scenery around him.
What had once been a beautiful, small town, now resembled the battlefield from a zombie apocalypse. Bodies littered the ground, their skin pale and lifeless, and their red, blood filled eyes gazed vacantly up at him. None had escaped whatever evil magic had been cast on the town. Men, women, children, all of them, gone. When Harry had felt the equivalent of a magical bomb going off, he had immediately apparated to the source. He was lucky to have been in a hotel room at the time, out of sight of any witnesses, because he had disappeared without a moment's thought, directly into hell.
He was glad he hadn't called for back-up. Sure, the higher-ups were aware of the magical world, and Harry was positive that they knew about his past, well, most of it. Fury had let slip on a few occasions that he was aware of Harry's lack of family and friends, and Agent Coulson, perhaps the only SHIELD operative Harry had actually talked to long enough to befriend, had asked him if he needed a place to stay, believing Harry to be the age his face displayed. Harry, being in his twenties at the time, had declined, but after that, he had always tried to keep in contact with his almost-friend. Coulson didn't ask Harry about his living situation the next time they met, noticing for the first time how Harry had not aged a bit. Harry was truly fond of the man, and as he crouched beside the corpse of a young man and closed his dead, blood filled eyes, he decided that perhaps he would visit him once he had destroyed the dark wizard who had done this.
They had been dead, but still they had spoken. In rasping voices, they had called his name. Not the name his parents had given him, but the name he had claimed the moment he had picked up the Resurrection Stone all those years ago. 'Master of Death', they had chanted. They had called to him, those three words, over and over again and they tried to slash him with their bony hands that death had curved into claws. Harry had soul-searched them immediately, and had been shocked and repulsed as he discovered their souls and lives had been ripped from them, leaving mangled husks behind that were then manipulated by evil magic. Harry had been quick to end them, knowing that just an hour before, these shambling corpses had been full of life and emotions, but this was his job.
He was the Master of Death.
Someone had murdered these innocent people, stolen their life force, and now Harry needed to hunt them down. He gazed mournfully at the unnecessary death around him, and after searching the town for any life, and finding none, he slowly raised his wand.
"I hope you all find peace... Incendio!"
Fire shot out of his wand, and everything began to burn. Harry turned in a slow circle, keeping the spell going until he was entrapped in a circle of flames. Then he unfurled his raven wings, and shot into the air. He swooped around the town, burning everything in his path, and when it was done, he landed on the tallest structure in the town, a clock tower. He watched as the town was engulfed by flames, the buildings burning along with the bodies. It was the best he could do for them, as there was so many that needed a funeral. Smoke filled the sky as Harry reached out with his magic, searching for the trail. Strangely enough, the last source of magic resided on the same tower on which he was currently perched. He sensed that it was apparition magic, and with great concentration, he managed to detect where the murderer had fled to. New York City.
Harry continued to stare down at the town until the smoke became too much for him to handle.
"You will be avenged," he whispered, and with that, he apparated away.
Five days later, and Harry had no leads. He had searched the huge city non-stop, perhaps getting about an hour's sleep in the last two days. He was beyond pissed.
A dark wizard had destroyed a whole town in what Harry suspected was some kind of Life Draining ritual, so that meant an evil murderer was wandering around New York, being powered by the lives of thousands of people. With that energy, the wizard could destroy the whole city, heck, the whole state. The first day, Harry had been confident that he would be able to find the killer. It wasn't easy to hide that much power, especially since magic wanted to be used. There should have been a trail, but from the moment that Harry had arrived in New York, he had sensed nothing. As a last resort, Harry decided to take the advice given to him by Hermione all those years ago. Check the library.
Like Britain, America had a secret society of wizards, but unlike Britain, there was more than one wizarding school. Over the years Harry had come into contact with a couple of magical communities, mostly during his hunts for dark wizards, but he had never stayed long enough to be recognized. He was not as famous in America, his battle with Voldemort being more than a decade earlier, but even so, he never took the risk of his identity being discovered, and the Ministry coming to find him. He had heard they were still looking for him, mostly just to discover whether or not he was still alive, but Harry didn't want them to. He wasn't sure he would be able to control the guilt that had plagued him since that night long ago.
After arriving in the States, Harry had made a point of memorising all the cities that had a high wizarding population, and therefore the areas where there were wizarding communities. He liked to be up to date with the goings on of his fellow magical folk. Lucky for him, there was a street a couple of blocks to the west that was said to house a small pub, a few shops, and most importantly, a library, all exclusive to Harry's kind.
It took him a while to navigate the unfamiliar city, but an hour later, he was standing on a street filled with garishly dressed individuals. There were no robes, for which he was thankful for, as if there had been, he would have stood out, dressed in his dark jeans and hooded t-shirt. His fellow wizards wore modern clothes, but made more extravagant, with bright colours, and strange accessories. Harry just sighed. You could change the century, but you couldn't change the insane fashion sense that seemed to be ingrained into wizards at a genetic level.
He glanced at either end of the street, observing how the muggles would pass the narrow street by. Someone had obviously cast some pretty powerful unnoticeable charms during the streets construction, and Harry doubted even SHIELD knew about this street. Then again, they had known about him...
Harry shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, flipped up his hood, and set off down the street, gracefully avoiding the witches and wizards that were laden with oddly shaped packages. Shopping. A concept he had yet to fully comprehend. He reached the end of the street, and found himself in front of a medium sized, blue building. It was the library, if the mounds of books filling the windows were anything to go by, and hesitantly, Harry entered.
Inside, it was quiet, with only the faint sounds of pens scribbling on paper, and pages being turned. A woman with her hair tied back in a tight bun was seated behind the counter, and Harry carefully slipped past her, silently, not wanting to gain her attention. She had reminded him too much of Professor McGonagall. He reached the bookshelves and quickly lost himself in them. The small library had nothing on the Hogwarts library, but it felt good to be surrounded once again in textbooks of magic. He located the shelves that housed the historical documents, and after grabbing the books that contained information from the past hundred years, he lifted the heavy pile over to one of the last empty desks, and immediately delved in.
It was painstaking work, but Harry found he was enjoying it. He discovered a lot about the American magical society that he had not previously known, and he kept having to redirect his concentration, constantly losing himself in random accounts when he was supposed to be searching for information on the murderer. He had already been searching for hours, the sun having set long ago when he found something. He had almost given up, seeing as how he had reached the last book that contained the history from one hundred years before, but it seemed the wait had been worth it. There, on the last page, was an account from a witch who had been a young girl during the year the book was about. It was the same date as five days earlier. He read the passage carefully, and then read it again:
It was a massacre, pure and simple. We had been staying the night in a muggle town, returning home after a day of trading in the city, when the evil came. We awoke to the sounds screaming, and Father told myself and my sister to stay inside. He and Mother grabbed their wands, and after casting protection spells on the room, went outside to see what was going on. Myself and my young sister Mary, against our parent's orders, decided to look out of the window. We had been warned to stay away, but we were children, and we were curious. What I saw that night still haunts me to this day, even though forty years have passed. Even now, I do not fully understand what happened to the people all those years ago, but from the perspective of a nine year old child, it seemed like the devil himself had decided to destroy the town.
The townsfolk, who earlier had been so kind and welcoming, now ran to and fro, screaming in terror. Some of them, unlike the others, wandered aimlessly along the streets, shambling along like they were being controlled by a puppet master. Every time they approached one of the townspeople, he or she would run away, screaming, unless their escape was prevented. At first we did not understand, but as soon as we caught sight of one of the shambling individuals, we too knew only fear. His eyes were red as blood, no life or mercy, and as we watched, he knocked down a running woman, clamping a hand around her arm. We didn't know what he was going to do, and in the end he did nothing, just stood there.
And then the man cloaked in white appeared.
His face was covered by a hood, but immediately I knew him to be a man. He placed a hand on the woman's brow, and there was a flash of white light. When she turned around, her eyes were as red as her captors. She was released, and limped away, her once beautiful face vacant, almost as if her soul was gone.
I tugged Mary away from the window, and we hid under the bed. I held my sister that night, trying to shield her from the screams of the townspeople, and the horror of what was going on outside. By morning, all was silent.
We were discovered a day later, still hidden under the bed, having not moved an inch. We were then brought to a nearby town that had been worried by the lack of contact with its neighbours. We tried to tell them what had happened, but none of them were wizards. We were the only people found in the town that day, the red eyed ones that no one believed us about seeming to have fled.
We never saw our parents again.
Harry stared down at the page, and his stomach filled with dread. It had happened before? One hundred years before? How was that possible? The perpetrator would have to be immortal!
Harry hurried over to the shelves once again, and quickly grabbed the books that contained the history of two hundred and three hundred years before. After frantically searching them, he discovered that on exactly the same date, every hundred years, what had happened just days before, and to the woman and her sister, a town was destroyed in the same way. Each account was different in how the destruction came about, some direct accounts by a lucky survivor that had managed to stay hidden, and some accounts coming from those who had discovered the towns the day after, missing all its citizens except for the rare corpse. Sometimes, everyone was 'converted' simultaneously, and sometimes it was dragged out, like what had happened to the woman a hundred years before. In all accounts, however, one detail was always present.
Eyes filled with blood.
The 'zombies' he had destroyed five days before had had those red eyes, and Harry knew that he had witnessed history repeating itself by his count for approximately the eighth time. Harry rubbed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, causing his hood to slide off. He stood up, stretching the muscles that had fallen asleep through his prolonged sitting, and began to return the books to their shelves. He was just putting the last one away when there was a gasp to his right.
His head shot up, his emerald green eyes meeting dark blue before the blue flitted back to his forehead. He realised that his hair had parted slightly, leaving his scar in full view, and with a curse he tugged the hood back up.
"Ha-Harry Potter?"
"Shit," he muttered, before he silently apparated away. With his luck, the 'Potter Sighting' would be all over the wizarding news by the next day. It was time to leave New York.
But first, there was one last thing he had to do.
He appeared in the alleyway opposite a nondescript white building. Harry hurried across the street, shoved the buildings door open, and strode inside. An equally nondescript man was seated behind a plain counter, and without a word, Harry placed his hand on the counter. The metal under his hand grew warm, and with a faint whirring sound, and a section of the wall to Harry's left slid open, revealing a long corridor. The man didn't even glance up from his computer as Harry entered the corridor, ignoring the faint humming of the wall sliding shut once again.
After about a minute's walk down numerous stairs, (they really needed an elevator), Harry reached the offices of the New York branch of SHIELD. Hey, even spies had to do paperwork. Harry wandered through the many desks, failing to catch the attention of every agent present, and smirking as he reached the door at the opposite end of the room. Without knocking, he strode inside.
Phil Coulson looked up from the paperwork on the new Mexico incident he was currently filling out, and smiled blandly at the black clothed figure as he dropped into a seat in front of him, and propped booted feet on top Coulson's desk. Coulson just sighed, and shook his head, returning to his paperwork. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only other person in the room.
"What the hell? Who the hell is this guy?" demanded Agent Clint Barton from where he was seated on top of the tallest piece of furniture in the room, the filing cabinet.
"Just ignore him, Clint," Coulson replied, smiling slightly as he noticed that Agent Potter's chin was now resting on his chest, "Look, he fell asleep."
"Yeah, I got that. Who is he?"
"Classified."
"Phil, come on. Give me something. An alias, his codename?"
Coulson sighed at Clint's curiosity. In many situations, it made Clint an excellent spy, but right now, it was just annoying. "He has a codename," Phil said, "And you've probably heard of him. I believe they use him as an example for younger agents of what do to in the event of situations that involve nuclear bombs."
"Holy shit," Clint muttered, "That's the Grim?"
Phil smiled at the mention of the name. It was sentimental to Agent Potter, but the reason why was something Harry had yet to reveal to him. "Indeed. You'd do best not to wake him up. I understand he's been on a mission for the last week, and knowing Grim, he hasn't slept since he started."
"I'm sleeping now," Harry mumbled in irritation, blinking at him blearily.
"Harry, you able speak? I thought there was some complicated reason behind your lack of a greeting. It seems I was mistaken," Phil said neutrally.
"Shut up, Phil," Harry muttered.
"Any reason why you're here?"
There was an awkward pause.
"I, err, just wanted to say hi?"
"You want me to do your paperwork," Phil corrected.
Harry pushed his hood back, and gave Phil his best puppy dog look. Coulson stared at him, unmoved by the expression. Harry gave up, and sighed. Coulson noted the dark circles under Harry's bright green eyes, and saw that his suspicions were correct.
"Go get some sleep, I'll sort it out." Harry smiled slightly, and closed his eyes again, immediately asleep once again.
Coulson sighed and took out another form, starting to write up what Fury had told him after his conversation with Harry on the phone a few days before.
"That's really the Grim? The best agent SHIELD's got? He took down a terrorist operation in one day when they were armed with a nuclear bomb?" There was a pause. "He's really young," Clint observed.
Coulson almost laughed. "First rule they teach you, Hawkeye. Appearances can be deceiving."
Extra long chapter because there's only one update a week for this story. I should really be studying for exams, but I updated instead. Ahh well. Review and whatnot, thanks for reading.