Nick trusted Phil more than he trusted anyone else in the world, but the man had already been compromised once. There was a very good chance that he was still compromised, so Nick did what he did best and planned for each and every contingency.
The moment Potter walked into the diner, Nick began replacing both the staff and customers with SHIELD agents. Barton was on a rooftop covering one entrance and Romanov was playing the pretty waitress. The remaining entrance was covered by a SWAT team.
Phil walked in, bugged as discussed, but unaware of the rest of the operation. Nick had set up a machine that Stark seemed to think would be able to disrupt the energy the man used to teleport with the moment he was gone.
He listened with half an ear to the conversation. Sure, Potter sounded reasonable, but so had Hammer until he'd gone batshit insane.
"You may want to close your eyes," Potter said.
"What?" Phil replied.
"Well, my pancakes have taken an awful long time to arrive," Potter responded.
Nick wondered what the hell that meant, when suddenly there was a crackle of electricity shorting out: the bug had gone dead.
"Go!" he yelled into his mike, before realising that had shorted out too.
So had Stark's machine and every other piece of electronics in his possession. Nick burst out of the surveillance van.
"Get in there," he shouted at the SWAT team at the back entrance. They surged forward, even as shouting came from within the building. Nick kicked the door to the diner open.
Phil sat in a booth, two coffee mugs before him. He was blinking and shaking his head, as were all the other agents in the building. They were standing around, guns drawn, disorientated. As SWAT burst in through the back, they shook their heads at him.
Potter was nowhere to be seen.
"Motherfucker," Nick said.
Phil stared at Nick and tried to not feel bitter. It wasn't working. Nick was pacing his office in the Helicarrier, obviously riled up beyond belief.
"You had a whole operation going that I wasn't aware of?" Phil repeated. "Great. That turned out really well, didn't it?"
Nick turned and glared at him, none the less daunting for only having one eye.
"If you thought I was compromised," Phil continued, "you never should have allowed me into the field."
"I'm aware of that," Nick growled. "It was the best opportunity we had. It's not as if I was expecting him to notice us, or for that son of a bitch to take out all the electrical devices in a thirty meter radius."
Phil held up his hand. "Not all of them."
That stopped Nick's pacing. "No?"
"There were three devices within that radius that were there for medical reasons; a C-PAP, a pacemaker, and an insulin pump. They still work perfectly." Phil raised his brows and smirked. "But go on, tell me that he's dangerous and that what you tried to do today was the right avenue to go down."
When Nick just glared at him, Phil stood and walked out the door. Nick had potentially buggered up any chance they'd had at converting Harry to the Avengers, or even just consulting with SHIELD. He knew that ー he didn't need Phil to remind him.
However, despite the disaster today's meet up had been, something told Phil that Harry might still speak with Phil, if he could ever find him again. For the moment, that would have to be enough.
Tony narrowed his eyes as Jarvis replayed the CCTV footage for him, before it whited out. All the tech in the block, gone – caboom – in what agent's described as 'a flash of white light'. Even Tony's tech, which intrigued him more than anything.
"Have we got anything else on Potter?" Tony asked, absentmindedly tapping at the arc reactor before catching himself and fiddling with a spanner instead.
"Only the footage you're already aware of," Jarvis replied.
With a snort, Tony gestured for it to be rewound. He watched as Harry Potter's gaze followed the first of Fury's agents into the building; he'd been aware of them from the start. This was no stupid kid messing around with powers that he couldn't control. Sure, the guy was young, but he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Get facial rec up and running," he said. "If we find him, don't tell Fury."
He pulled up the other footage of the man teleporting across New York with less than a heartbeat between his disappearance and arrival. He'd managed three teleportations that they'd managed to capture on camera and didn't seem to be tired in the least. Tony ran a hand along his jaw, feeling the rasp of stubble on his palm.
"Fuck it," he said. "Make it world-wide. Who knows what this guy's limits are."
There was a good chance they'd never see nor hear from him again. Tony wished he'd bulldozed SHIELD's little meet and greet with Potter, if only to have a chat with a man from another dimension.
He pulled up the footage of Fury's face when he'd realised Potter had disappeared again and laughed to himself.
He liked the bloke simply for the fact that he pissed Fury off, if nothing else.
In this world, there was no such thing as Little Whinging. The town had never existed. Neither had the Dursleys, as far as Harry could tell, nor Hogwarts, Grimmauld Place, or Platform 9 ¾.
He debated looking for Ron or Hermione and decided not to curse his luck. Even if two people existed with those names, they wouldn't be the same friends he'd known. Harry had mourned their deaths over a hundred years ago and he had no wish to be haunted by ghosts with their faces.
Instead, Harry returned to America, truly leaving his past behind. He stayed away from big cities and bought a VW Campervan. With liberal application of an Undetectable Extension Charm, he created a modest flat within the vehicle. He was determined not to let SHIELD's existence stop him from exploring the world he'd ended up in. As he explored the country, he was confident that he'd left SHIELD and any other tails he might have had behind him.
The various diners and bars he'd stopped at on his travels always seemed to be showing some form of the news, whether it was the week's latest superhero and celebrity gossip or discussions of the stock market. When planning his road trip, however had had not accounted for a man whose name he only recognised from the constant media attention.
When Tony Stark sauntered into a bar in rural New Hampshire, Harry knew it was going to be one of those sorts of days. Stark sat down next to Harry as if he'd chosen the seat without any consideration for who Harry might be, playing on his mobile phone before chucking it onto the counter.
It wasn't the sort of coincidence Harry believed in. He sighed, glancing around the gloomy interior of the bar. Patrons were nudging their neighbours and nodding toward Stark. They were beginning to take pictures, whispering about his presence, probably tweeting about it too. Harry ducked his head and glared at the other man.
"I'm going to have to abandon my campervan, now," he said. "Damn you."
Stark shot him a sideways glance and smirked. "That ugly old thing? I'd have thought you'd be grateful to be rid of it."
"One man's trash…" Harry said, leaving the rest of the idiom unsaid. "I recommend the buffalo wings, by the way."
Stark grunted and ordered a plate of wings and scotch from a star-struck bartender.
Harry checked his watch. He'd starting wearing the digital ones once someone had figured out how to stop electronics from breaking every time they came into contact with magic. It was a little after seven in the evening.
"How long until SHIELD, or some other intelligence agency arrives, clamouring for my blood?" Harry wondered. "Did you fly here in your suit, Stark?"
Dark eyes regarded him as Stark sipped at his scotch. "Yes," he answered. "Probably fifteen minutes, I'd have thought."
Harry huffed. With a thought and a touch of his finger to his wand, he collapsed the spells he had on the van, undoubtedly sending bedding and pots and crockery crashing to the floor of the now tiny living space. As usual, everything he had of importance was on his person, so he did not mourn the loss.
"So, you've found me," Harry said after they sat in silence for a few minutes. "What the hell do you want?"
Stark had been eyeing the plate of buffalo wings approaching, but he turned to give Harry his full attention.
"Everything," he said. "Starting with, hmm, let's see: how did you travel across dimensions? How did you manage to perfect teleportation? Is it an exact science? Oh, please don't say it's 'magic' or some such nonsense. Did you synthesise the drug you gave Coulson yourself? Because, if you did, you should really come and work for me, we could use someone like you."
Stark ate a buffalo wing, wiping his fingers on a handkerchief he kept in his pocket. "Damn, these are good." He ate another. "My questions are endless and I'm sure the moment you start answering them, I'll have even more. However, what I really want, Mr Potter, is to determine whether you're a threat to me and mine. You see, I don't think that you are, but boy, you sure have given the beehive a good old kick."
"I'm rather good at that," Harry replied. "It's a talent of mine."
Stark snorted. "Don't think that you're the only one. It's a fine line between hero and villain. Be careful not to fall off it."
Harry suddenly felt the entirety of his two hundred and fifty years. "All I want is to be left alone so that I can travel the world, Stark. Is that too much to ask for? SHIELD came after me, not I after them." He stood, tucking a few bills under his empty pint glass. "Thanks to you, I've now got to move on again."
A warm hand on his shoulder startled Harry.
"I don't think you're here to cause trouble, but that doesn't mean there won't be any," Stark said. He grimaced. "But I'll see if I can get them to back off a little."
Harry supposed that was as a good as an apology as anything. Stark was right in thinking that trouble always seemed to find Harry.
"Fine. Say hi to Phil," he replied.
"Phil?" Stark said. "Who's Phil?"
Harry shook his head and walked out the back door. In the distance, three black SUVs approached and if he stretched his magic he could sense three airborne bodies in a helicopter. He glanced around and spotted the camera he'd missed, the one that must have given him away. He gave it a lazy salute and grinned before Apparating away.
"What did you get from him, J?" Tony asked, flipping over the scanner he'd placed on the counter. It was the mirror image of the lastest Stark Phone, but the tech inside was anything but.
"He's is a baseline human," Jarvis answered into his earpiece. "As far as I can tell from an external scan."
Tony stared at the door Potter had exited from, tilting his head as if it would help him think.
"Really," Tony said, mind racing. "Interesting."