The last three months of the school year were strangely relaxing. Sure, there were finals, including in two brand new classes Harry had never done finals for before. He still had his dating windows with Padma and Luna to get through. And after they all went down in a few seconds against the Hulk, Dean was pushing everyone he could get to show up extra hard at exercise and combat training.
But nobody was actually trying to kill Harry. There were no portentous mysteries to solve. They were even done with quidditch.
"You're clearly bored. Let's go find a monster for you to fight," Luna instructed him, one sunny day after finals as they were all sitting around out on the grounds. After school was let out way early their second year, he'd kind of forgotten how weird it was that the lower classes got done nearly a month before the end of school, to leave time for upper-years to take their certification exams.
"Aren't you worried about the danger?" he asked his current girlfriend. His stint with Padma had gone well enough, but nothing exceptional had come of it. He had the same issues really dating her as Cho: she wasn't likely to really undersign his thrill-seeking lifestyle. Plus, she didn't seem to want to push for much of a relationship, since his time dating her sister had gone so badly. It would probably cause issues between them if Padma had a ton to talk about over the summer, regarding dating Harry, when he and Parvati were still barely managing to be friends.
Luna shrugged and said, "If I die, I'll haunt you. Might be an interesting afterlife."
"But you'll have died in battle," Neville commented, from where he was sitting with Ginny, his current date. It seemed to be going surprisingly well between them, though he was still kind of hung up on Luna.
"On, no, I plan to die fleeing and pleading for my life, if it comes to it," Luna nodded sagely. "I can't imagine Valhalla would have me in such a circumstance, even if I died violently."
"Anyone else coming?" Harry asked the group.
"You two haven't really gotten a chance to go on a date," Hermione decided, after a quick tacit conference with the rest of the group. "Have fun."
Harry nodded, glad enough to get away. Ron, Hermione, and Lavender were all detached that month, so there was tension the girls were trying to negotiate that he was happy to avoid. They were right, though. All the traders had left Hogsmeade as soon as they could after the marauder attack, so there had been no more visits down to the town. He wondered if they'd even come back the next year.
"It's kind of nice in here, in the actual daylight," Harry observed, as they slipped off into the woods. Nobody took the exhortation that it was out of bounds particularly seriously. "I think the earliest I've been in here before, it was already getting dark. Well, maybe I just remember it as dark since Hagrid and I went for the deepest spot last year."
"Oh, yes, it gets quite dark further in," she nodded. "I expect a vampire could wander there quite comfortably, even in the middle of the day."
"But what would it eat?" Harry wondered. "Unicorns are pretty hard to catch. And I can't imagine regular animals are much of a meal."
"You make a good point," she nodded. "I don't imagine a vampire would have much of a life, without humans to feed on. It must be why they focus on the region where the Rotfang Conspiracy is active."
"I wonder if we have stuff like vampires on earth," Harry mused, gentlemanly offering Luna a hand to step over a particularly large fallen tree. "Every time we think we've learned about everything hidden, we find out about something else. Like the Egyptian gods Ron's brother works with."
"Daddy is quite certain that the universe is even stranger than people like to admit," Luna agreed. "The real question is how so many things live in secret. For most known species, you need dozens to breed successfully without problems. If they were all in one place, it would be harder to hide, though, so they must spread out. How do they find each other to have children, then?"
"Supernatural yentas?" Harry joked.
"I've never heard of that kind of creature?" she cocked her head.
"It's not a creature," Harry corrected. "It's just like, a title in one of the Earth languages. I think it's basically an old lady in a group that plays matchmaker."
"I see! Yes, we have those as well, so you're right that it would stand to reason that intelligent but secretive creatures would have their own network of grandmothers to match them up." She abruptly sat down on a comfy-looking hillock next to a tree and announced, "This seems like a good place to wait for pixies."
"Okay," Harry agreed, sitting down next to her. "Something about the terrain, or…"
"No, I just imagine any place is as good as any other to wait for pixies, and this one looked comfortable."
"Fair enough," he nodded. "So… did you decide what electives you're taking next year?"
She frowned, "Despite Hermione's example, I think I have to take three as well. Divination, husbandry, and runes. And I'm sad I can't take the other two."
"Does Hagrid cover enough of the creatures you're interested in to make husbandry worth it?" he checked. "I couldn't figure how much of that was magical beasts and how much was just actual husbandry. Like running a farm?"
"It's a mix. And I suspect farms on Vanaheim are more interesting than ones on Midgard. Though I suppose I might drop it if I'm wrong. I can always get Hagrid to show me the interesting creatures on Sundays."
"I guess… no arithmancy because of your mom?" he checked. In conversations throughout the last couple of years, they'd worked out that her mother had died in some kind of accident trying to create a new spell or ritual.
"No. I'd quite like to someday understand what she was working on. I'm afraid I just don't have the head for maths. I'm more verbally intelligent, like Daddy."
"It's a shame there's not really a writing course here, other than what we do for essays," Harry said. "You'd probably get a kick out of creative writing or journalism classes."
"Yes. Perhaps I'll attend higher education on Midgard. By the time we're old enough, it's not like we'll be a secret to them anymore."
He nodded, "With them already knowing about Thor, it's only a matter of time. I would try to break it to Tony this summer, but my aunt's still freaking out about what he's going to do when he finds out. I'll have to work on convincing her."
"It's not like you can lecture anyone else on secret-keeping, though?" she raised an eyebrow.
He laughed. "You got me. Though I guess Parvati is right that it would be nice to not have to lie about all of this to basically everyone I know on Earth."
"You should have just created a persona of whimsy and persistent fantasy. That way, you can tell people anything, and they'll choose whether or not to believe you." She said it deadpan, as if challenging him to call her on it.
"And if they always choose to believe you?" he pushed back.
"Well, then, Harry Potts, you just have to be more inventive. By the way, I hope you've given thought to what to do if you encountered the shadow nix again." She pointed.
He followed her hand to see that, indeed, she was not making up that there was a one-eyed, midnight-skinned beast lurking in the shadows not far from them. "Aw, man! I was sure they would have caught it by now. Get the tree in between you and it, and give me what cover fire you can," he instructed her. He drew his own wand and stood.
As Luna took cover as directed, the nix decided that maybe it would pursue them after all. Perhaps it still remembered that Harry had once had a delicious Starkphone to feed it. It trundled into view, and Harry was able to get a better look at the creature, but its skin was still so black as to read almost as negative space even in the light. Its oblong eye crackled blue as it hunched over like one of the hellhounds from Ghostbusters and prepared to pounce.
"Lot of references to that movie for me this year," Harry said to himself. "I wonder if someone's going to ask me if I'm a god this summer."
Fortunately, transfiguration didn't usually require much in the way of incantation, so while he was thinking about 80s sci-fi comedies, he was also taking a page from Sirius' book. As he flicked his wand, spikes of earth shot up to keep the beast from charging him. His weren't as wide or tall as the ones Sirius had used against the Mindless Ones, but they were big enough that the nix couldn't just crash through them.
As he was flicking his wand to summon the spiked bollards across the forest floor, he was moving and thinking of what to do next. The shadow nix bellowed and decided to try to leap over the Harry-height spikes.
"Baldur's Blinding Brilliance!" Harry cast, teal light from his wand rapidly turning into a pure and overwhelming spotlight that he shone directly into the thing's one eye. It shrieked, possibly as much from the heat produced when a vantablack skin absorbed a few thousand lumens. It tried to abort its leap as it flailed in pain, and Harry was already moving past where it crashed into the dirt and got hung up on a tree root.
Luna started using her wand to fling a few early-year spells at it, and tittered as they bounced off. "It really is quite magic resistant! You're doing a good job, Harry. Keep it up!"
"Thanks," he told her, stepping back as the creature shook its head to try to clear the blindness and reorient. The spotlight had hurt it, and it seemed to want to stick to the shadows so… maybe it was like the vampires Luna had mentioned living in the dimly lit woods. "Sorry, trees," Harry said, throwing out a long energy whip and putting extra cutting energy down it. They'd finally learned from Seamus to make the whip leak energy so it burned the things it wrapped around. Seamus still hadn't learned how to tone his power down so things he whipped didn't catch fire.
Harry had mostly judged the direction of the sun correctly, and his whip seared off large branches that were currently shading the light. In moments, huge shafts of sunlight were pouring into the clearing, further hedging the directions the nix could go, especially as tree limbs crashed near it. He didn't quite hit it with the light, but he could put a pool of light in between him and the beast. He smacked it with the whip, for all that it didn't do much directly, and tried to goad it into diving after him.
It almost worked, but it had either recovered its vision quickly or had an innate sense of its own danger. It instead turned away from the sun shafts toward where Luna was hiding. "Luna! Run into the light!" Harry yelled.
"Haunt you!" Luna promised, suddenly not having a good time as the nix made a brutal dive for her as she left cover and started to sprint for the shafts of illumination.
It very nearly got her, except Harry managed to tone the energy down in his whip as he wrapped it around Luna and dragged her a yard forward and out of the way. He fell on his butt with the effort, and she barely avoided eating dirt as she got yanked into a sunbeam. "Sorry! Also, ow!" he told her.
The nix's leap had carried it further than it expected, and it was struggling to stand as well, since it had rolled near one of the Harry's conjured spikes. From the ground, the Boy-Who-Lived waved his wand to try to get the spikes to fold down like fingers and trap the creature, which mostly worked, but it was able to groan and struggle enough to get them to snap off (they were just transfigured dirt, after all). Luna had at least used the time to roll to her feet and run over, helping Harry up.
"This may work out as a stalemate," Luna said, sensing at the beast was about to flee back into the darkness now that they'd proven a very difficult meal.
"And how many other kids' cell phones is it going to eat if we let it get away?" Harry asked, leaning down, pointing his wand at the ground behind the nix, and yanking like he was trying to win a tug of war. The dirt at the beast's back resisted for a moment, and then came loose in a tremendous mass, rolling forward like a wave and smacking the creature in the rear, washing it toward the sunlight.
It helplessly grabbed another transfigured spike to try to hang on, but that just came with it in the churning torrent of earth as the nix was plopped into the sunbeam the kids had placed in between them and it. It wailed in pain as its skin began to heat precipitously, limbs akimbo and trying to gain purchase on the loose earth left by the wave. With another twitch of his wand, Harry focused on setting the dirt as hard as rock. The creature almost seemed to smoke, as its ebon skin took the full force of the afternoon sunlight.
"Harry!" Luna was upset. "You've proved your point. Let it go. Please!"
He glanced down at the girl, who, he realized, probably had it almost as bad as Hagrid for thinking that wildlife was cute. "I was just trying to trap it anyway," he acknowledged, a little lamely. "Don't go after any more students!" he yelled, as he released his transfiguration, worried about what he'd do if it didn't actually give up.
He wasn't sure if the thing understood him, but it did seem to snuffle in acknowledgement as it rolled away from the sunlight, dirt falling away from it as it bounded off into the shadows.
"You know it tries to kill unicorns, right?" Harry checked, once it was well away. "And it tried to eat us."
"I know," she nodded, wiping away a tear that had started to form. "And you were very gallant. But it's just a wild animal. I'd have been just as sad if you had to hurt a wolf or a bear."
"Small favors I haven't had to fight any of those yet," he nodded.
"I'm not mad at you, by the way. And I'm going to kiss you now," she nodded, immediately following through. It was nice. She broke it off after a long moment and said, "I think I'm still going to date Neville next year. But you're my second choice!"
"Uh. Thanks?"
"Most of us just wanted to see what dating you was like. Nobody really expected to keep you," she agreed. "Let's head back. I saw a shadow nix, so your dating obligation has been fulfilled."
Bemused, Harry just followed the fey girl back toward the school grounds.
It turned out, said discussion about dating choices was waiting for the last day of school. Parvati presided over the study group in a secluded part of the library and announced, "The experiment is complete. I don't know if it was a success. But we're all still friends, right?" she checked. Everyone nodded, so she pressed on, "Seamus has been sworn to secrecy. I know." She gave Harry a nod, acknowledging the hypocrisy. "But I don't want anyone to know whether they were a second or third choice. Or not a choice at all. Anyway, write your choices in order on these ballots. They already have your name at the top. Then Seamus will go off and compare and see who chose whom. It's like speed dating!"
"What if he makes weird matches just to mess with us?" Dean checked.
"Ye've uncovered me master plan!" Seamus chortled. "But I think ye'd notice pretty fast. Nah. I promise t'do it honestly."
Harry hunched over his ballot like he was writing names, but was really writing, "I'm so over all of this." He passed it to Seamus, who smirked at him. Everyone else agonized over the notes and then turned them in.
"Tough calls here," Seamus eventually summed up. "Ron an' Lav. Nev an' Luna. Dean an' Padma." He gave it a pause and suggested, "Gin, Hermione, and Parv, still time for ye three t'experiment." The girls just rolled their eyes at him. "Harry's still a free agent. An' he'll ne'er know how highly ranked he was." He used his wand to burn the ballots up so nobody else could read them.
He nearly set the library on fire, and only Hermione's hasty spell stopped it.
The three sets that did get paired seemed pretty thrilled, at least, though all three still-single girls looked at Harry wistfully. He doubted he'd been any of their first choices, unless Ginny had written him in just in case he'd had second thoughts since they dated. He was the most surprised by Dean and Padma, but they'd been together on the last rotation and seemed to get along pretty well.
"You didn't put in for Ron?" Harry asked Hermione, when he happened to wind up alone with her in the common room in the fury of everyone piling up their luggage to take to the train. She'd seemed to enjoy her time dating the boy, and he knew that Ron had long held a crush on her.
She shook her head, "Lavender and I have a deal that she gets to try with him first. I'm fine with it. Honestly."
Harry nodded. "Well, maybe you'll meet someone else and that drama bomb won't ever go off."
"What are you going to do, all out of study group mates?" she checked.
"There's still Hufflepuff and Slytherin to check with," he shrugged, acknowledging that he'd written off all of the girls his own age in Gryffindor, and the ones he was most likely to be interested in in Ravenclaw. "Maybe I'll just find some girl in LA or New York and have brief flings over the summers."
"Don't be too much like Tony Stark," she insisted. Changing the subject, she asked, "Any progress on the Pettigrew trial?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Aunt Pepper and I have been sending Hedwig to some lawyers over here that Sirius knows." Sirius was still being cagey about where he was located, just in case Harry's mail got intercepted, but they'd worked out how to get Hedwig to follow his owl and learn the route so they could stay in touch. "Looks like we're coming back through the Market in a few weeks for the trial."
"Good. I'd heard most of the big trials and government decisions take place in the summer anyway so Headmaster Dumbledore can preside over them."
"Well, I think he sometimes goes in the spring, too, though maybe he stopped doing that with everything that's been going wrong here," Harry remembered Dumbledore's absence his first year. "I guess that's one way to limit how much your government does," he figured. "Can only do any serious business for a few months a year because you need a guy that runs a school in a place you can't teleport to."
Their conversation was cut short as several people came crashing down the stairs with their trunks, and then it was the inevitable sweep toward the train. Since only three sets of friends had coupled up, the car arrangement was a little easier than the last few trips. Lavender, Ron, Dean, Padma, Luna, and Neville in the "makeout compartment," and Harry in with Parvati, Seamus, Hermione, and Ginny.
Which kind of made Harry's compartment the "romantic tension" compartment, but he wasn't going to bring it up if anyone else didn't. At least he was pretty sure that Seamus had never actually been into him. Probably. Regardless, it was a fun enough trip, for all that he was stuck in with the folks that had been left off of the game of relationship musical chairs.
They mostly talked about movies (including describing them for Ginny).
The hugs at the platform were a lot more brotherly than they'd been the last few times, and Harry was pretty glad to see that stress in his life at least reduced. Well, he still wasn't over his hormones telling him that he needed a girlfriend, but he was glad that the drama hadn't, overall, been that bad to get everyone to agree with him that he should date outside of the friend group. Dean hadn't escaped, of course, but he seemed happy to have been caught as he walked out of the portal into Charing Cross station hand-in-hand with Padma.
"Seems busier than usual for this time of day," Hermione observed, as they slipped out of the hidden doorway to Vanaheim and into the large tube station.
"Tony," Harry sighed, spotting the glint of gold and red as Iron Man held court out in front of the building. "You guys better head on if you don't want your lives blown up."
"Maybe it'd be fun t'bask in yer reflected fame, fer a wee while," Seamus grinned, but waved and broke off from the pack.
"I don't think daddy wants us to be on magazine covers with Harry," Parvati figured.
Dean apologized to Padma, "I'm riding back to New York with him."
"Just be sure to write," she replied, giving him one more kiss before heading off with her sister to make their way to the London sanctum in a way that didn't pass the crowd.
Hermione just shrugged and stuck with them, "They already know who I am, after Christmas."
"Maverick!" Tony's voice was amplified by the suit as he spotted the three heading out. "And cohorts! Sorry folks, gotta jet."
Harry waved half-heartedly to the fans who were realizing that Iron Man must have been picking Harry and his friends up. "There's my dad's car," Hermione said, hugging both boys quickly and then rolling her trunk off before the crowd could close in.
"Full armor?" he asked Tony, as they rolled up.
"Happy insisted if I was going to be in public," Tony shrugged, the servos whirring with the action. "Hey, isn't this just a subway station? We can pick you up from wherever the real train drops off, you know."
"Express train," Harry lied. "They don't want us getting mobbed at the transfer." He gestured at the mob, as if that would explain everything.
"Ah, right, bunch of baby lords and ladies in your school," Tony nodded. Harry at some point had mentioned he went to school with Justin Finch-Fletchley who, it turned out, was somewhere in the royal line of succession.
Since Tony had started walking toward the drop-off area, the fans had mostly broken off. Happy got out of the high-end sedan of the week and helped him and Dean get their trunks in the back. "You riding with?"
"Meet you back at the airport," Tony nodded, taking off on his own power once they were safely in the car.
"Does that get easier?" Dean asked, taking shotgun so Harry could sit in the back with Pepper.
"No," she allowed. "Though he used to have a harder time getting away when he was out in public. Tell me about your spring!"
As the car pulled away from the station, a bald Honduran-American man in glasses watched them leave. Once they were out of sight, he moved to a more secluded spot on the sidewalk and reported into a cell phone, "Yeah, they must have come in from platform five or six. Lot of kids coming from that way, but I didn't spot them until they were out. Let's run a search on the trains that just arrived at those platforms. Of course, if Romanoff is right, they probably have some kind of secret outlet, and coming out here is just to throw off tails. If Coulson is right… well that would be interesting. We should get someone here to try to follow them when they go back to school in the fall." He nodded listening to the response from the other end, glanced around to make extra-sure no one was watching or listening, and then signed off by whispering, "Hail Hydra."