From Eden

Babe

There's something tragic about you

Something so magic about you

Don't you agree?

Babe

There's something lonesome about you

Something so wholesome about you

Get closer to me

…

From Eden

Chapter One: Something Potter This Way Comes

...

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It had been six months since the Soul Stone brought Hari through the Spirit World and out of a different exit than hers into its own world. Six months since her ‘return’ to Earth. The massive Appartion jump from Vormir to London, England left her drained, forcing her to take a week to fully recover from it. Afterward, she scoured this new world for others like herself, other magicals.  She still wasn’t sure whether it was more terrifying or relieving to be the only one of her kind. 

While in the local library, she browsed the travel section and found a few books detailing locations around the world, with one in particular showcasing locations in the States. Realizing the potential of what she had, she made copies of every book she planned on taking to leave behind then took the originals with herself. Back on her rooftop, she opened one book up to a place in Texas, using the photos to Apparate there. Seeing a newspaper giving the date as being along the same month—May, the end of spring—but several years ahead of her own timeline—not 2001—threw her off perhaps more than the dimensional shift or the lack of magicals. It never occurred to her that there might be a difference in time, though she ruefully admitted to herself it should have been a fairly obvious possibility. She just counted herself lucky she hadn’t been flung decades or centuries forward or backward in time. 

She could, she knew, get back home to her own time and dimension when she truly wished to, if she were willing to Apparate to Vormir again. It would be easiest on her to access the same point in the Spirit World from which she emerged in order to use the Spirit World as an in-between back to where she originally entered it, and therefore her own dimension. In the meantime, she saw no reason not to continue her own vacation—a new adventure now, she supposed—without worry over either being attacked by any remaining Death Eaters or mobbed by overly enthusiastic admirers. If it meant she could escape the crushing weight of expectations that came from being Harveste The Great, The Girl Who Lived and the Woman Who Conquered, then she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. After all, for once, Harveste Nepeta Potter-Black could be ‘just Hari’ as she’d always wanted, could truly disappear into anonymity. 

Unless, of course, in Apparating she appeared in front of some sort of secret agent who looked at her as if she were the golden goose. 

When he attacked her with plans to kidnap her then experiment on her and enslave her—as her knee-jerk scanning of his surface thoughts through Legilimency allowed her to ascertain—she cursed him seventeen ways to hell and wiped his memory of their encounter. 

She had to. 

In searching for any traces of herself, however, she saw something else that made her blood run cold, and the deeper she dug the worse she found. An organization called HYDRA—and her nose wrinkled at the association to Nazis and the vague reminder of Death Eaters—SHIELD, superheroes, a soldier—the Winter Soldier—kept enslaved, used as a weapon. The shock and horror of it flashed through her. Her kind had the Imperius curse but it seemed Muggles had found another way to, as Snape put it, ‘bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses’ until only a tool remained, an attack dog, a tortured soul warped into a deadly threat. Hari grit her teeth, fighting against the impulse to teach the pathetic nazi-esque operative in her clutches the true meaning of pain, of pure anguish. There was no Statute of Secrecy here, no ICW, no MACUSA or British DMLE force to stay her hand. Only her own will prevented her from making him writhe in agony at her feet for every terrible thing he’d done and helped them see to fruition, for what new crimes he'd planned to commit and to help them accomplish. 

With a disdainful sneer usually reserved for Death Eaters, Hari stunned the man, binding him head to toe in magically adjusting ropes while also separately cuffing his hands and feet. Making a snap decision, she grabbed a hold of him before she could change her mind, displacing air as she Disapparated with the unconscious operative and reappeared near one of the so-called SHIELD facilities, where she promptly set up wards ranging from simple Muggle Repellant and Notice-Me-Not to full blown curse-proof wards. From his memories she had a working shortlist of which operatives stationed at this base were honest and which were moles. From her vantage point she could observe their comings and goings. 

Regrettably, she only knew what he knew, could only glean what information the man already held. It was enough to know who to watch for as she staked out the base, a length of time during which she made the man more secure by dosing him with a little Draught of Living Death, though she still left him magically restrained laying inside of a small transfigured seamless cage with no lock he could pick under the enchanted sleep the potion induced. Enough to recognize the redhead she caught glimpses of over the next few days: Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow, former Soviet agent turned SHIELD agent, though she had other names, other identities and aliases. The Widow—a strikingly beautiful, drop-dead-gorgeous woman with a fiery mane so unlike her own spilled blood, a flaming red that reminded her achingly of the Weasleys in some ways despite the differences in shade—was loyal to SHIELD to a fault, more loyal still to her partner Clint Barton aka Hawkeye. She watched the two leave, return, leave again. The few days turned into a week, until finally she made up her mind. 

She jerked her wrist in the motion to release her wand from her holster, needing pinpoint precision over power as she sent a tracking charm toward both operatives, tagging both their clothes and their gear for good measure. She let them leave base without immediately following, wary of confronting them so near a home field advantage even if she meant them no harm. She took her time packing up her belongings, despite the fact that with magic she still accomplished it within a minute and a half. She scrubbed the area of her presence, removed her Firebolt, and mounted with the man in her arms. Her ever present passengers—the Hallows and now the Soul Stone—seemed to have boosted not just her magical and spiritual power, but also her stamina, her endurance, her spend and her strength. She could haul him up in front of her with an ease she didn’t possess before despite being quite fit from Quidditch. Invisibility rippled over them, then they were flying. 

She followed them at a sedate yet determined pace, never worried about losing them yet reluctant to let them reach their next destination. She wanted to intercept them to drop off the mole first before the two loyal agents  got entangled in another mission. Hari had no patience for subterfuge most of the time. As bold, as brash, as hot-tempered as any Gryffindor, she generally planned while flying by the seat of her pants. Sometimes that meant she barely survived by the skin of her teeth in the past, she could admit. That, however, never stopped her. After all, her house words were ‘where dwell the brave at heart’, and a Gryffindor was never far removed from their sheer nerve and tenacity. Confronting two trained operatives, particularly an enhanced assassin who perhaps stood as the world’s best alongside the world’s best archer, should have perhaps given her pause, but her nature, her purpose, her lack of patience for working from the shadows, wouldn’t allow her to do anything other than speak to them face-to-face. 

She felt exceedingly glad that she still wore her armor underneath her clothes, as her glowing Master of Death markings offered their own annoyance every time someone tried to kill her. Being shot might not hurt, but damn if it wouldn’t be irritating, much less hard to explain to those two when she walked off likely fatal shots as if they were little more than flesh wounds. By this point she’d walked off five Killing Curses (some from assassination attempts), a stabbing, a broken neck, poison, basilisk venom, and any other various number of ills, yet felt reluctant to add being shot to the list. Besides, despite being Deathless it would still bloody hurt to dig a bullet out of her spleen. With that in mind, she approached with caution, gauging the path they’d take so that she could circle around and cut them off so they didn’t have a chance to advance further. 

They had to realize that they had someone on their trail at some point, judging by the lack of surprise on their features when they saw her. A little burst of magic to interfere with the electronics in their vehicle had them pulling into a parking garage, tense, prepared for the other shoe to drop. Hari silenced her shoes and clothes, dismounted, and put her Firebolt back where it belonged. She took a moment to compose herself, then dropped her invisibility without dropping the Disillusionment and Notice-Me-Not she’d cast on the captured mole, finding their weapons immediately trained on her as they slid into stances that meant they’d kill her without question—or rather, try to—if she so much as sneezed in a way that seemed vaguely threatening. Despite the very real chance of violence attempted against her person, something about the situation amused Hari. She must have taken a bludger to the head and not remembered it, she thought idly as she set up Privacy wards with a negligent flick of her pinky.  No need for this to get back to HYDRA. “Is this how you greet people here in the States?”

Romanoff—with a gun in each hand loaded, trained on Hari, and ready to fire—cocked her head to the side, assessing. “It is when they tail us and jam our equipment.”

Barton, no more amused than her, never took his famed eyes—or his arrow—off of her as he added his own two cents. “Usually the only people who sneak up on us aren’t ones we’d consider friendly company.”

Hari rubbed sheepishly at the back of her neck, aware of them tracking the motion with trained precision. “Sorry to frighten you, but I don’t do subtle. I don’t think any Gryffindor is totally capable of it, to be honest.”

Romanoff spoke again, latching onto the information. “A Gryffindor—don’t think I’ve heard that name before. Is that what your organization is called?”

Hari remained calm despite the two of them fanning out slightly so that they each had her in their sights from a different angle. “Hardly. I didn’t come here because I work for someone, I came here because I needed a word with you.”

“And why would that be I wonder?” The second question came from Barton. 

“Because there’s something you should know about—a snake in the grass, so to speak.”

She could see she had their attention, their eyes demanding answers she had no reason to conceal. 

“Oh?” Barton hummed. 

“Enlighten us, then,” Romanoff prompted. 

“I wanted to get you two alone because I know you’re still loyal—loyal to SHIELD, loyal to the rest of the Avengers, loyal to each other.” 

How interesting, how curious that the two agents could manage to look at each other without once taking their gaze or their weapons off of Hari herself. There were Aurors not that well trained. The War gifted Hari no such luxury as to be as unaware of her surroundings, her opponents, her immediate threats. She shifted just so, enough to keep both agents in her sights, though she kept her stance relaxed despite their hard looks and promise of swift action should she make a single wrong move. She saw no reason to be delicate about it all. 

“HYDRA never died.”

Despite their training, their carefully, artfully controlled expressions, she could see the way the words shocked them. She pressed on before they could interject. 

“They only appeared to be defeated, but they’ve been alive and well all along, hiding inside of SHIELD and biding their time until they felt ready to strike. Some dodgy old bloke named Zola helped set it all up from the inside, secretly rebuilt HYDRA in the marrow of SHIELD’s bones.” 

She could see the weight the news had on the two agents, the tense lines of their bodies, the grim resignation in their features as they accepted that truth. Admittedly, who would lie about such a thing? There would be no motivation to make up such an accusation. Insanity, perhaps, but nothing more nor nothing less. 

“And how do you know this?”

Hari took her eyes off of Barton to lock gazes with Romanoff. “Because when I arrived on your shores from across the pond—” and hadn’t that metaphor taken on a new nuance now that she’d traversed dimensions “—one of their moles saw me Apparate and tried to kidnap me for experimentation or potential use as a weapon enslaved through means they have of utterly controlling even unwilling participants. I dealt with him, then I searched through his memories.” She didn’t fail to notice the strange effect that admittance had on Barton, who now looked like he wanted nothing more than an excuse to pepper her with arrows. “I only meant to erase any traces of myself lingering in his subconscious, but instead I saw things that reminded me too much of people I worked too bloody hard to defeat back home. The connection to Nazis and their ilk made up my mind as much as their experimentations and enslavement of others.” She scoffed to show her displeasure, her nose wrinkled in distaste. 

“You’re enhanced, then,” Romanoff assessed, “or a mutant of some kind.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or something else, maybe something like Thor.”

“I’m more concerned about the fact that she can mess with someone’s head,” Barron admitted openly.

Hari winced. Maybe she shouldn’t have shared that bit, but really, how could she avoid how she knew? “I only did it so he couldn’t take memories of me back to his comrades to hunt me down like some wild animal. I won’t take your memories of me. You need them. You need to remember. You need to know about HYDRA, laying in wait inside of SHIELD, using it for cover while they started wars, carried out assassination, stuck their filthy little fingers into every pie imaginable.”

“Small comfort,” Barton huffed. 

“Still. The more pressing concern,” Romanoff mused aloud, “is whether or not you have proof. The accusations you’re making will wake up a sleeping giant one way or another.” 

Hari twitched her pinky again, shielding herself a moment later as an arrow and two bullets soared her way, deflected by the golden glow of a diluted Protego Maxima. She hardly wanted to blind them all. That…that she probably should have expected, in hindsight. Well—what Hermione didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, nor would it induce another lecture about her distinct lack of self-preservation that far exceeded normal Gryffindor standards.

 “I’m not here to attack you. I was only making sure you could see him.” 

She kicked at the Muggle equivalent of a Death Eater with ill disguised hatred and revulsion. The motion drew the attention of Barton and Romanoff to the bound, unconscious figure at her feet. 

Romanoff’s head tipped to the other side.  “Agent Carmichael?”  

Barton eyed the man coldly as realization hit him. “Fuck me sideways, Carmichael’s the mole. I almost told him about—” Seeming to remember his surroundings, Barton kept himself from completing that sentence. His mouth set in an even grimmer line than when she first dropped the bomb about HYDRA. “What—what did you do to him?”

Romanoff’s eyes—sparkling jade green, gorgeous, not the fucking objective, Hari—flicked almost lazily between Hari and Carmichael. “He looks almost like he’s in a coma.”

Hari fidgeted. “In a sense. You could think of it as a medically induced coma. I gave him something that puts him in a death-like sleep indefinitely, and he’ll only wake up if I give him the antidote, something I can do right here.”

She met their calculating stares head on as she slowly, carefully, with broadcasted movements, reached into her pocket for the small vial of Wiggenweld Potion. She knelt by Carmichael, propped him up in one arm as she popped the cork of the vial with the other. She tilted his head back, allowing the potion to dribble between his lips into his mouth. She worked his throat to get his body to swallow so he wouldn’t choke. When she felt him stirring, she let him drop from her arms, standing to brush herself off while wearing an expression of someone who’d just touched something slimy. He coughed, jerking as he became fully aware of his surroundings. His eyes snapped open, landing on her. As soon as his eyes found hers, she dove into his mind, restoring the memory of her, of their first encounter, the way Hermione described doing for her parents. 

She knew the second he recalled her, watched as he paled drastically when he caught sight of the audience they had. “So, Carmichael—I’m told they call you that.” She’d never been as sneaky as she could have been, didn’t have a devious or deceptive bone in her body, but she knew how to be intimidating. “Care to explain to your colleagues who you’re really working for?” Hari smiled the smile that now set her enemies in the Wizarding World on edge. “You can tell them the easy way, or I can make you. You know I can.”

His jaw set, clenching, and he spat at her feet. “Fuck you.”

Hari sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

She summoned the bottle of Veritaserum, flashing it to both him and the two agents still hovering around her poised to strike. “Three drops on your tongue and you’ll be spilling your guts about things you hid from your mum when you were thirteen.”

The intensity with which Romanoff and Barton examined her set her on edge. She ignored it in favor of once more kneeling down by Carmichael. “I’m not drinking that,” he growled. 

“You think you have a choice?”

He sneered at her with hastily gathered bravado that fled the moment he realized he couldn’t move his limbs. “That’s called a Full Body Bind Curse,” Hari told him cheerfully. “Every single one of your muscles is currently paralyzed—well, besides the ones that let you breath.” 

She squeezed the dropper, sucking up enough for three drops. She held it over his mouth, letting them splash ominously onto his exposed tongue. She watched as the droplets trickled into the back of his mouth to his throat, too far to spit them out. With a wave of her hand she sat him up and released him from the Full Body Bind. She, Romanoff, and Barton had a clear view as the change came over Carmichael, as his eyes grew glassy and unfocused, his previous anxiety brushed aside by an unnerving calm and eerie compliance, like the smooth surface of a lake with completely still water.

 “You can ask him anything now, but you might want to establish a baseline.”

She looked at them, watched them watch her even as they glanced at each other. Unsurprisingly, Romanoff stepped forward. 

“I’ll start.” She clicked the safety on her guns and holstered them as she stalked forward, though Hari got the impression the woman herself was even more deadly of a weapon than the ones she carried. “State your full name and age.”

In the creepy monotone that always accompanied someone under Veritaserum, Carmichael answered her. “Lester Carmichael, thirty-four.”

“Where are you from, Lester?”

“Quantico Virginia.”

“How did you and Agent Barton first meet?”

“On a mission to recover a diplomat’s kidnapped daughter.”

“How did Agent Nichols get the scar on her knee?”

“She fell out of a tree when she was eight.”

“Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

“Nine times with six women.”

Hari felt a sneer of her own forming.  Romanoff turned halfway to Barton. “Anything to add?”

“No.”

She nodded, returning her attention to Carmichael, who still stared at her placidly. “Is it true that HYDRA is still active?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck,” Barton hissed. Romanoff gave off an air of being far less ruffled by the confirmation. 

“When did you become a double agent for them?”

For the first time, a bit of emotion colored Carmichael’s words. “I’ve always been loyal to HYDRA, to our mission, to our vision. I was with them when SHIELD recruited me. SHIELD is full of fools.”

“What is your current mission?” 

“To get close to Agents Barton and Romanoff in order to have an in with the Avengers and find their weaknesses. Barton seems like a softer target than Romanoff. She’s too jaded, but Barton still sees the best in people, even monsters like Romanoff.”

A full-on growl left Barton as he stepped forward. “Natasha is no fucking monster, you piece of shit.” 

Hari had no doubt he would have kicked the bound traitor himself had Romanoff not not held him back by barring his way with her arm. Her cool composure gave nothing away, though Hari somehow doubted the remark hurt her feelings. Still, something carried her cautiously closer. “As…unfortunate as his rude comments are, Agent Barton, he can’t help it. It’s the influence of the Veritaserum. Right now, and until it wears off in, I’d say forty-five minutes, he’ll be concerned with telling the truth and only the truth. You can ask him anything you like and he’ll answer honestly if he knows.”

“We should get a list.” It was Natasha, relentless, unfazed, all focused determination. “Have him list off names of other moles, HYDRA base locations, any ongoing missions he’s personally aware of right now.”

Hari nodded, stroking her scar thoughtfully. “I can help if you need. I have ways to extract his memories so they can be viewed externally, and I’m willing to dose him with Veritaserum again if necessary. Or I could just Confund him, make it so he thinks you’re comrades in HYDRA and he can trust you.”

She didn’t know when they decided she wasn’t an immediate physical threat, but Barton no longer had his arrow aimed at her heart, and neither of them had the killing intent oozing from their pores trained on her. Not anymore, anyway, though they still kept a weather eye on her, particularly when she moved her hands. They could, she was sure, draw on her again with the speed only matched by Hit Wizards and war veterans who’d survived countless duels against Death Eaters or Grindelwald’s own faithful servants. 

The pair of Avengers shared another one of those glances filled with silent communication. “We can get the initial lists within your timeframe. After that, we’ll confer with our Director.”

Hari nodded. “Right then. I’ll work on making a way for you to contact me while you finish up with that toerag.” 

With that, Hari turned her back to them, intending to use it as a show of trust but inadvertently also sending the message that she saw neither of them as a threat to her, something they both took note of before diving into a full interrogation with a, for the first time ever, totally compliant and truthful subject. Hari, meanwhile, fished out two stray fifty pence pieces she’d found in the pocket of one of her hoodies recently. Even as she’d offered to provide them with a means of summoning her, an idea had formed. She knew which charms Hermione used on the coins they gave DA members to communicate new meeting dates and times instantaneously. She also knew, from discussions with her father, godfather, and old professor-turned-friend, some of the charms used on the Marauders’ Map. With knowledge of both in mind, she charmed the coins to detail not just a meeting date and time, but a brief message as well, charged it with enough magic to change even in the hands of a Muggle through intent alone. 

Next, she Summoned an old shaving mirror of Ron’s she had, alongside a compact mirror gifted to her by Andromeda. With a flick she drew her wand, tracing the appropriate rune-work, sigils, and spells in quick succession onto the backs of the mirror, intricate designs that needed needlepoint precision, all while a part of her mind kept aware of her surroundings, tracking the location and position of the two loyal agents and one traitor. It all took her less than ten minutes, muttering incantations underneath her breath to accompany her intentions, dead set on not screwing up a part of it. She was perfectly capable of casting wandlessly and nonverbally, but some magic required a delicate hand to guide it. Unlike things like wards, which could be suitably complex but capable of withstanding someone just pouring magic into them then weaving together the layers after the fact, or things like a Patronus Charm or the Cruciatus Curse, which ran on emotional fuel. 

Once completed, she returned her attention to the agents, Barton neatly writing out everything Carmichael said while Romanoff stood guard. What was likely a recording device sat between them and Carmichael, who still showed no signs of surfacing from his Veritaserum induced confession. Hari drifted closer, careful not to be in striking range. When Romanoff seemed satisfied with the intel she’d obtained—for the moment, anyway—she switched off the recording device. “That was informative.” Her jade eyes shifted to Hari. “Much easier than usual.” 

Hari gathered that it was Natasha’s way of thanking her.  In response, she merely levitated the shaving mirror and one of the fifty pence pieces toward them, letting the items hang in the air between them. “If you want to meet me but can’t speak, hold the coin in your hand and think of a time, date, and location, and if you can make it short and sweet, a message. If you want to speak to me, hold the mirror and say Harveste Potter. It’ll ring on my end. I’m the only one who can hear it and I’ll keep it on me at all times. Unless I’m in trouble, I should be able to answer immediately.”

She bit her lip so she wouldn’t giggle at the expressions Barton and Romanoff wore as Barton hesitantly plucked the fifty pence out of the air and Romanoff the mirror. 

“I’ll be seeing you, then,” Hari told them as they studied their respective item. “After I go liberate a few people.”

Both of them snapped their attention back to her, but she’d already turned on her heel and Apparated to one of the rooftops she scouted out along the way there. 

Time to plan an escape for one Winter Soldier and a few mutant kids.