Harry ducked under a flaming tree, pivoted around a smoking bush, and stepped over a sparking pile of glitter in order to stand next to a man with long, dark hair and an expression that could only be described as 'over fucking everything, leave me the fuck alone.'
Harry highly commiserated.
The man raised a single eyebrow at Harry, possibly because he'd managed not to spill either drink even with his evasive manoeuvres, probably because Harry was not leaving the man the fuck alone.
"You've been standing here watching the chaos for five minutes and not a single piece of debris, flaming or otherwise, has come within three feet of you. I want to exist in your bubble of luck," Harry told him.
The man blinked, then huffed. "The luck will turn."
"Well, yeah, but that's five minutes of peace I wouldn't have otherwise," Harry said as he sipped the hot chocolate in his right hand. There was caramel in it and was therefore delicious.
With a sideways glance, Harry evaluated the man beside him, trying to figure out exactly what kind of hero he was. Harry had been around long enough, had gained enough skills after surviving a war and over a decade of being one of the only competent Aurors in the entire fucking department, to be able to read the danger and readiness to the man's stance. The man wasn't exactly concerned about the fight happening a block away but he was still prepared.
The man clearly was finishing up a similar appraisal, since he spoke. "Odd place for an English hero."
Harry nodded, because that was true. He was technically on holiday but also not sure he was going back. It would really all depend on Teddy. "I'm running away from stupidity," he said, because that was also true.
"Don't talk to the Hero Commission, then."
"There go my hopes and dreams of validity. Oh well, back to being a wanted man I go."
The man opened his mouth again, the smallest of twitches telling Harry he was amused and possibly curious, when he instead shifted to the balls of his feet and his hair started rising. It fell again when the villain that had been chucked their way hit the slightly green barrier currently in front of them.
The villain groaned as she hit the ground but Harry didn't have to do anything as the man casually stepped forward and bound her wrists with a white band. When the man glance back at Harry, he took another sip of his drink and followed it up with a lopsided grin.
"What? My foreign hero license lets me defend myself. The villain would have hit you and you would have knocked into me, causing me to spill my drink which is hot and would've hurt. I defended myself from pain."
The man started for a long moment before grinning back, all sharp teeth and manic edges. Harry decided in that moment that walking over and starting a conversation had been an excellent decision and not just because he got to tell Hermione that he had a social interaction beyond Teddy and customer service workers.
"Use that exact excuse and I will absolutely back you up. Preferably when a man in a long coat with a truth quirk comes asking."
"Oooh. I love fucking with truth-tellers." He had a lot of experience with telling truths nobody would believe, partly because quirks and science made people less inclined to believe in magic and unicorns, partly because Umbridge was a bitch and he hadn't been able to lie properly since the lingering effects of the blood quill. "Wait, is this truth-teller a friend or a stooge?"
The man titled his head. "Does the answer have to be either or?"
Harry was about to respond with something along the lines of absolutely not, when he got distracted by a giant spray of ice appearing to block half the road, followed by a glowing blue shield and a girl floating along and pulling civilians out of the way of the debris that was no longer flying right towards them.
There was a proud look to the man's eyes, so Harry changed direction. "Which one's yours?
The man crossed his arms. "I don't know what you mean."
"Liar," Harry sing-songed.
With another huff, the man turned back to the fight. "All of them. Fucking all of them." He narrowed his eyes. "Except the blue one. Maybe. He's new."
"The blue one's mine," Harry said with maybe just a bit of pride.
They both watched as Teddy ducked under a swinging fist twice the size of his head and pushed back his long blue braid to send a blast of coloured energy his attacker. The magic sent him right back into the hands of a purple haired kid, who used white wraps of a similar kind to Harry's stranger to keep the villain down for the count.
The man hummed. "Good agility."
Harry snorted. "A necessary skill to survive his extended family. Yours have very good teamwork for being so young."
Probably for anyone, but Harry's perspective was a bit skewed since he either worked with the practiced efficiency of the DA or the pathetic self-interest of the ministry.
"A necessary skill to survive my exams."
Harry laughed, delighted. He didn't teach at Hogwarts, exactly. He did, however, run the occasional seminar and had helped design the Defence Against the Dark Arts exams for the last five years.
Harry offered the man the untouched coffee and watched the man's eyebrow raise. "Unopened and untampered with, I promise," Harry said.
"Whose?"
"Mine." Harry let his smile sharpen. "The hot chocolate I'm drinking was Teddy's," Harry nodded his head to where Teddy had set a villain's baseball bat on fire to protect a boy with green hair, "but he's causing a fuss and I'm indulging my sweet tooth. It will serve him right if I fall asleep before sorting out this mess and he has to do it on his own. He promised me a quiet afternoon with no texting and no mayhem. This is mayhem. He lied. Liars do not deserve delicious sugary drinks."
The man stared at him for a long moment, before accepting the drink and giving a sharp smile of his own. "Logical."
Harry opened his mouth to respond and promptly forgot what he was going to say, a frown tugging his lips down instead as a Teddy and the purple-haired kid were levitated out the way of an
exploding plant. "That was a little close."
The man didn't reply but he did straighten slightly, focus shifting more fully to the fight when before it had been balanced between the chaos and Harry. "Not that close."
Not yet, was the unspoken agreement.
"So." Harry tilted his head as he watched a woman with some sort of shadow manipulation-minion quirk send more monsters at Teddy and a bird-headed child with his own fighting shadow. "I'm all for practical learning. But. Backup Plan A: I'll take Villains Red Pants, Tree Head, and Sparky. You grab the kids and punch Shadow-puppet while you're at it. Preferably in a way that breaks their nose."
The man raised another eyebrow and Harry snorted. "Please. I've spent years with incompetent teachers, corrupt ministry officials, and idiots. I can spot someone capable a block away. Not to mention you just claimed a handful of super-powered teens as yours, which, both as a parent of one of those and a sometimes-teacher, I can honestly say either makes you terrifyingly competent or completely insane."
"Again, you seem to have missed the 'both' option."
"Nah, I just don't care as long as it's not only insane. I've dealt with the latter more than I like to admit and am on fucking vacation, damnit."
They watched for a few more moments, Harry's smile much more obvious than his companion's. Harry made a couple of mental notes on Teddy's performance, but the kid had come quite far since earning his provisional licence. Harry also made a few notes on the performance of the other kids, since they were doing very well but team battles were very much Harry's specialty. Also because that seemed like a conversation topic the man would appreciate and also possibly reciprocate.
Oddly enough, Harry was more comfortable with this particular social interaction than he had been with anyone in the Ministry for well over a year. He didn't actually want to walk away just yet, which was little weird and definitely something to bring up with Hermione.
A giant wooden hammer created from Tree Head's fist came down an inch away from the head of a boy with red and white hair. Tree Head did not get another swing, since Harry had apparated into his space and sent a wordless body-bind curse at his torso before he could so much as sprout a single leaf.
As Harry pivoted to face Red Pants, transfiguring said pants into weighted chains as he went, Harry caught sight of his stranger using the long white ribbon-weapon to yank various children out of the path he took to clock Shadow-puppet right in the nose. She went down with an audible thump.
Sparky roared in furry, which turned to a roar of pain when Harry threw his magically still hot drink in the man's face. The man, dropping significantly towards the idiot category on Harry's danger meter, threw his hands up and sent small electric sparks towards his own head, which caught in his very long hair. Really, it was a kindness to bind him head to toe so he couldn't hurt himself with his own over-powered stupidity.
The kids all blinked at the sudden interference but quickly finished taking out the rest of the goons in what was either a mini-gang war or a theatrical family robbery.
Harry just sighed as Teddy came bounding up to his side. "I hope you remember where we got
those drinks, kiddo, because I do not and I'm deeply regretting my decision to waste good chocolate on an idiot."
Harry's stranger, who'd come up on Harry's other side, laughed. Harry didn't think much of that, other than it was a lovely deep sound he wouldn't mind hearing again, but the ten or so other children in the area all halted in their tracks and turned to stare at them.
It might have been unnerving, if Harry hadn't been facing terrorists and three headed dogs before he'd learned to shave.
"Sensei? Who's that?" Asked a girl with brown hair and was floating a foot off the ground until a boy with robotic movements offered her a hand and she remembered to release her quirk.
"My new friend."
Harry grinned, because it had been a long time since he'd made a new friend. He was glad the man agreed that actual competency, snark, and punching villains in the face was an excellent basis for friendship.
The kids apparently did not agree since they were very quiet.
"Uh, that's great, Sensei. But, um, I think Uraraka was looking for a name?"The green haired boy looked up at Harry curiously but looked away when Harry just beamed at him. Must be shy.
"You adopt random friends all the time. I don't see why I can't do the same."
As the kids blinked and several yelled out variations on "Sensei!?"
Teddy tugged on Harry's sleeve. Harry looked down into his son's currently green eyes. "Dad?!" Teddy asked.
"Yes, my lovely little Hufflepuff?"
Teddy crossed his arms. "Dad."
"New. Friend." Harry sang.
"But you don't have friends?" The kids and the man were starring at them. The man with a gleam to his eyes that said he was enjoying this just as much as Harry. A quick hand sign also indicated that he had figured out which English Hero Harry was, which probably partially explained why he was so happy to go along with this and also meant that, technically, he knew Harry's name. Or one of them.
Harry pushed back his own laugh to raise an eyebrow at Teddy.
"I mean," the boy blushed, "not friends who aren't war-buddy-pseudo-family-friends?"
Harry waved a hand and gestured to the man. "Evidence to the contrary, Cub o'mine."
Teddy scowled. The scowl was almost as impressive as the one worn by the police officers that preceded a tired but amused man in a trench coat.
"Eraserhead," the man said as the police officers started dispersing to retrieved the various fallen criminals. "Hell class."
"Tsukauchi." Harry's stranger, Eraserhead apparently, nodded while the kids gave various greetings.
Tsukauchi turned to look at Harry and Teddy, giving them a thorough once over before sighing and running a hand through his hair. He turned to Harry."You're a trouble maker, aren't you?"
"Depends on who you ask," Harry replied.
"No, it doesn't," said Harry's delightfully helpful godson who actually started counting on his fingers. "Because they'd all say the same thing. Your friends, my cousins, the various grandparents, the staff at Hogwarts, your students from both the Aur- feds and Hogwarts, Ministry workers, the lady who walks her dog by our house-"
"You know how I feel about dogs that remind me of Fluffy," Harry cut Teddy off. "Yes," said Teddy dryly, " I do. They deserve extra love for each extra head."
Harry nodded because Mrs. Forthernbran's dog may only have two heads because of a potion experiment gone wrong but they were both sweethearts. It wasn't Harry's fault the dog thought the same of Harry and demanded attention even if the dog had to run across the street to get it.
"And I'll be nice to the Ministry the moment they show a sustained habit of competency."
Eraserhead snorted and Harry looked up to notice Tsukauchi pinching the bridge of his nose.
"A new troublemaker and a mess. Excellent."
"Careful, Tsukauchi," Eraserhead drawled as he sipped from the coffee Harry had handed him and the man hadn't dropped. Somehow. "Wouldn't want to offend Phoenix, now, would you?"
"Since when did you care about offending other heroes Eras-" Tsukauchi cut himself off as the green-haired kid squeaked and latched onto his previously floating friend. The squeaky kid and the Detective shared a moment of extended eye contact before Tsukauchi turned back to Harry.
"Phoenix, the Number Two English hero?" Tsukauchi asked, resigned enough that he knew the answer.
"Maybe?" Replied Harry.
"Yes. Dad, did you forget your rank again?" Teddy's hair had turned black instead of blue and started developing the Potter curl.
"No?"
"Dad."
"It's not like I've attended one of those ceremony things in the last five years."
Teddy thew up his hands in disgust and teenage dramatics. Harry patted his hair.
The frog-like girl placed her chin in her hand. "Wouldn't being a Number Two make Sensei less likely to like him though?"
Eraserhead scowled at her, which did exactly nothing, as most of the other kids nodded and even Tsukauchi looked like she'd made a valid point. Harry honestly thought this made Eraserhead more likeable himself. Many Top Ten heroes were pricks, at least in England. Not all of them, of
course, but like, many.
"No!" Yelled the green-haired kid, whom Harry was now calling Green Bean. "Phoenix is Number Two largely because he's the face of his agency and the work they do. Which includes a lot of training other heroes. But also half his agency is Underground and refuses to show their faces. There's also substantiative rumours that Phoenix himself has a second identity that isn't known for ease of moment and to support his people. They're known for crazy hero and staff retention and survival rates. And they do, like, so much charity work? There's a hospital, and a school fund, and several orphanages..."
Green Bean's voice petered out as he noticed everyone staring at him.
Harry whistled, drawing attention back to himself.
"Midoriya's a bit of a fan boy," the kid's floating friend explained with a smile and a hair ruffle.
"That's dead useful," Harry told Green Bean Midoriya. "You must be terrifying at information gathering."
The kid straightened up from staring at his shoes and beamed at Harry, his starry-eyed look gaining a personal touch that had Harry realizing he'd just said something very right. The tired gratefulness in Eraserhead's eyes confirmed this.
"Right," said Tsukauchi, though he didn't seem to know where to go from there.
Harry took pity on the man. "Good thing about me being a high-ranking Pro is that I'm more than familiar with paperwork. And so is Ted, as my apprentice. Point us to the nearest paper and pen and we'll get this sorted for you."
"You do your paperwork." Tsukauchi mimicked Midoriya's awe quite well.
"And so do my brats. Onwards. You know the way to the Precinct by now." Eraserhead glared at the grumbling and groaning but there wasn't any true protest. Not even from Teddy, who was pulled along by the floater and a babbling Midoriya.
"So," Said Harry as he trailed along after Eraserhead at the back of their ragtag group. "Does being a Number Two mean I'm removed from friend status?
"Do you like cats as well as dogs with multiple heads?" Eraserhead asked as he tossed his cup into a trashcan on the other side of the street.
"My best friend has a beast of a cat that almost caught a terrorist. I adopted one of his kittens and named it Crookshanks the Second, Bane of All Rats. My niece was heavily bribed to send me pictures of his squashed little face every day that I'm on vacation."
"Then no. As long as you show me those photos."
"Deal. I'm sure we'll have plenty of time at the station." Harry paused. "We're shoving off all the paperwork onto the kids as training, right?"
"It's the logical option." Eraserhead looked at Harry out of the corner of his eye and Harry looked back. "Aizawa Shouta."
"Potter Harry. It's nice to meet you." He was almost surprised with how honest he was being.
"Hm," said Aizawa with the slightest smile. "Maybe."