Cranky

"Crazy woman." Harry muttered rebelliously to himself as he flittered around her form, currently lain carefully on his cabin's only bed. "Dripping blood all over my floor. All the cleaning will be your job I swear."

"A bloody fine state you've found yourself in huh?" he questioned the unresponsive red-head rhetorically. "I swear, the only person I've known to recover from injuries like these was myself. Everyone else would be dead by now."

"'Course it doesn't matter when I can freeze everything in its current state… And not to mention…" he trailed off slowly, glancing around to his bedside cabinet, before carefully eyeing several vials of liquid he had placed out. "These potions won't be suitable for muggles will they?"

At this realisation, Harry scowled slightly. "You just became even more trouble my dear." Harry ran a weary hand through his messy hair, now having a shade of grey in it, looking slightly more distinguished than the ebony it once was. He glanced at a bone white wand strapped to his right forearm, before groaning slightly in annoyance. "This one just happens to be too powerful for delicate tasks like this."

"Freaking Elder is no good for healing anyway. Honestly Harry!" He frowned before distractedly gesturing with his left hand, before a wand came flying into it. He couldn't help but flinch slightly as he turned to look at it, before hastily averting his eyes from the gnarled almost midnight blue sheened wand. He hated it with every fibre of his being. He snarled slightly as he forced a trembling hand towards some of the woman's major wounds. "Lucky you're so resilient huh? I wouldn't have to use this monster if you'd already died like a nice person would have."

His face closed off slightly and his eyes blanked as he began breathing slightly more raggedly. "Stop it Harry!" he mumbled to himself. "Get a grip and heal this damn woman!"

After a firm nod of his head, as though affirming to himself he was ready to begin, he began tracing the wand point over several of the red-heads wounds, some of which looked like had been carved into her as part of torture. "I would know wouldn't I?" he murmured to himself once more, as he gathered his magic. "Pretty women shouldn't be tortured in such a way…" he sighed.

With that, he swept his wand sideways above her body, with each pass from side to side reducing the wounds until they seemed to fade into unblemished skin in a matter of moments. Some random crushed bits of metal, most likely bullets extracted themselves from her body during the process, before the wounds closed over and healed. "Well… I was never that good at healing. You're a strange one." Harry frowned at the incredible results of his healing attempt. "Usually takes me several hours to heal wounds like that. Almost as if you've got your own advanced healing system. Not normal. Hmm."

"Can't complain, I guess." Harry sighed. "Sooner you're fixed, sooner you're gone."

"But not before I find out everything you're hiding in that brain of yours." Harry murmured, eyes darkening slightly. "Nobody just finds their way onto my property." He murmured again, before banishing away his midnight blue wand and drawing the bone white Elder Wand.

As he looked at the now much more relaxed and steadily breathing woman, who was still under the effects of a strong sleeping charm, his lips twitched slightly into a smirk before becoming completely emotionless and detached. "I'd ask if you were ready to tell me your secrets, except I don't ask."

"I find out. Legilmens!"

/

Awareness slowly came to Natasha Romanoff's mind, as she lay on what felt like a very soft mattress. Being a trained spy, she soon became alert to the strangeness of her situation, before remembering what had happened to her.

It had been a routine mission, or so they had said. 'One to advance the glory of the Soviets!' one of her more fanatical handlers had bleated in excitement. Only to turn out to be a setup. They were trying to eliminate her! After all she had done in service to her motherland! The realisation had come after several weeks of torture, you see. No one was coming for her, because, One, She was a spy, with a lot of delicate secrets, therefore she was expected to die in service to her country. Two, She recognised her capturer as a fellow spy, that smirking bastard. The amount of times she had to deal with him was almost worse than being betrayed by the only family she had ever known. He had delighted himself in informing her that her years of service were much appreciated, but she was now being terminated. The project was over, he had said. Of course, being the bastard he was, he wanted to get some payback for all the times she had stomped on his overinflated ego.

He was a skilled torturer, she had to grudgingly admit. The indignity of it all was what hurt the most in her mind though. The bastard hadn't killed her, probably wanting to break her first, as petty revenge. Kill her and be done with it. Dragging it out was simply infuriating. She would make sure he regretted his actions long before she died. And perhaps, she would teach her motherland a few lessons in humility once she got free. And make no mistake, she knew she would get free. She always had. And then, she would unleash hell on them all.

Her chance had come about 8 weeks into her torture, or thereabouts. It was hard to keep track of time in an underground cell, with no access to light of any kind. She judged it as best as she could on guard rotations, and extrapolating from that point to get an approximation of the time that had passed. Her oh so kind torturer had decided to do something different. Natasha was surprised it had taken so long for trash like him to attempt it. She had scoffed in derision when he declared he was now going to demonstrate her place as woman in a 'man's' world. As if she was going to take that without a fight!

She had been working on getting out of her metal restraints as best as she could, with the slightly enhanced strength she had gotten from the Black Widow Ops program. When he approached, she managed to yank her hands out of her metal restraints, tearing the skin off around them, before snapping the man's neck in one swift action. After that, it had been a bit of blur. She had pinched the keys off her torturer, ignoring the damage to her hands and general weeks of torture and starvation, before cutting through the base with a vengeful wrath. It hadn't all been smooth sailing, after being shot a few times on her way out. It got even hazier when she had gotten out, heading towards the nearest sign of civilisation, a small town situated a few miles away from the Russian Base she had recognised. She had barely gotten halfway to the town before her legs gave way. Stubbornly she had continued dragging herself forwards with her ruined hands, before spotting a small cabin a short way away, with a flickering light on in the window.

She had no choice. She wanted to live damn it! She had almost reached the door, when it had flung open, revealing a figure peering out cautiously, before it looked at her. The man had strode over to her, and as her eyesight finally focused for a moment, she opened her mouth and looked at his bright green eyes, before everything simply blacked out.

And then she had woken up, who knows how much later, on a soft mattress. Her mind snapped onto the memory of the man she had seen last, now remembering more details. The green eyes were very striking, but she was more interested in how he was holding a wickedly sharp combat knife of all things, not to mention some of the scars she had seen when his face had been illuminated by a brief flash of lightning. This man had definitely seen combat. And that perhaps, was a problem.

Of course, she was no fool, and recognised that she did not seem to be in any pain, but neither was she numb. The green eyed man must have taken care of her, and tended her wounds. Even now, her mind was whirring, trying to assess possible motives for doing so, just in case. She knew this man must have noticed her advanced healing surely. He had obviously seen for himself. Frowning slightly in her own mind, she realised she was unlikely to have any of her weapons and gear, but neither was she helpless. If she were still a naïve little girl, she would have flushed slightly at the fact she had been changed into some sort of clothing that was not her black combat suit. And in the same moment, she realised her suit would have been mostly unusable anyway, and in the interest of healing her, it would have been easier to take it off.

Slowly she let her awareness drift further away from her immediate area, listening for the sounds, and the smells of the area. She needed to be prepared for anything.

She wasn't prepared however, for the bucket of water that was tipped onto her head.

"WHAT THE HELL!" she screamed in shock, forgetting all of her training as a spy for one single moment of sheer incredulity. She bolted flat upright, arms lashing out in reflex, before settling a wide eyed gaze on a smirking green eyed man sat on a chair next to her.

Before she could vent her frustration on him, he spoke up in a noticeably English accent, as though he were simply bored.

"Oh good. You're awake."

/

"Awake? Yes I certainly am now!" she sputtered slightly, while looking remarkably like a drowned puppy, or at least what Harry liked to believe was a 'drowned puppy' look. In fact it was more like a wet cat, about to claw at him for daring to soak her.

Instead of worrying about her anger, he simply frowned. "Isn't it redundant to state that you're awake?" He inquired lightly. "I'm sure I had already ensured that my dear."

Natasha was now utterly flabbergasted. This man… This man had unceremoniously woken up a person obviously recovering from grievous injuries, with a bucket of ice cold water! Of course she felt perfectly fine, if a little more tired than normal, but still! The principle of the matter was that nobody did that unless they were deliberately trying to torture someone! With that thought she slightly tensed up, drawing the man's attention again.

Harry raised an eyebrow slightly at the sudden tensing before mentally reaching the same conclusion the woman had. Natalia was her name he had found out, or Natasha, but he wasn't sure who she would refer to herself as anyway. Her memories had gleaned quite a lot of information, some of which Harry had barely batted an eye at, especially given some of the things he had witnessed. He simply interrupted her train of thought with a slight assurance, or what he hoped would be assuring. "I didn't wake you up to torture you, you know?"

Catching the slight relaxation of her form, he continued getting to the real issue.

"In fact, I would like it if you would leave now. You've had my bed for several days, and I'm getting very cranky having to sleep on my sofa. You just can't show up on people's doorsteps, bleeding over everything and expect to be waited on hand and foot. What are you trying to be? A Celebrity huh?" he ranted slightly, channelling Snape for a moment.

Sadly Natasha's training had gone completely out of her head, as she struggled to make sense of being somehow lectured for getting injured… and annoying perfectly nice ordinary people? Was that what he was muttering now? When he got to the fact he had to clean up all that blood, and the offhanded mention of how difficult that always was, she focused on him with slightly more interest.

"I'm sure you're used to cleaning up innocent maiden's blood. What does one more matter to you?" she blurted out in the middle of the man's muttering. She suddenly realised the connotations of what she had said, and forcefully tried to ignore what she was sure was now a slight flush creeping up her face at her embarrassment.

"True." The man simply replied to her without a single ounce of deceit. "I usually don't clean up afterwards though."

Natasha frowned subtly as her misdirection seemed to work, but still hadn't managed to get her thoughts back on track as she blushed even more at the innuendo.

"Innocent is probably not a word I would use to describe you with though, my dear." Harry smirked slightly at his guests little human games. How useless. Playing that little act won't work on someone who knows your every little trick.

"So drop the act Miss Secret Thingamajig, and get out." Harry spoke coldly. "Your stuff is in the other room."

Immediately after he had spoken, he was now looking upon a cool and detached expression that had formed on her face.

"I see. It seems we have a problem then." She spoke flatly.

"Liabilities huh, what can you do?" Harry retorted slightly mockingly.

"I'm sorry, but I can't have anyone knowing about me." She continued on with her emotionally detached voice.

Harry simply lifted an eyebrow as if to say. 'And what are you going to do about it?'

Without warning, Natasha Romanoff sprang at him.

AN

So… Muse still kicking. Oh joyous day!

First meeting I guess. It's all perfectly plausible. Harry is a liability, and as a trained spy/assassin etc, no matter how distasteful, she has to cover all her bases, especially since she has been marked for 'termination' in a way. She was also trained to stop any emotional bias from causing issues. It's understandable. Governments would probably sweep things like the Black Widow Ops program under the rug as cleanly as they can anyway. Especially in this universe.

I should inform you that there are no Wizards other than Harry. It was alluded to in the first chapter, but there you have it confirmed. It'll be confirmed in the story as well, but I'll clear it up now.

Harry Potter is the Master of Death, but what that means, I won't discuss yet. Also, he is not in his own Universe anymore. I have something lined up to explain how, but you can guess why he left his old one I'm sure. A good deal of this fic is based on Harry and Natasha's interactions, but he will have some role in the Avengers story. How big and what exactly he's going to be doing is also interesting.

You'll get to see lot more detail on what actually happened to Harry later on. You got a fairly gruesome glimpse towards the end of that prologue, but not the full scale yet.

Should be a nice read to see what happens next.