Chapter 1
As far as the world at large were concerned Steve Rogers Captain America had grown up poor and unremarkable in Brooklyn, NYC. That wasn't completely true though. There had been magic in Steve’s childhood Brooklyn in the early 1920’s and 30’s had had one of the highest concentrations of wizards and witches within America thanks the MACUSA’s headquarters being based in New York and while Steve’s Mother may not have been able to afford Manhattan on her nursing salary at The New York Institute of Magical Maladies Brooklyn was a fairly cheap alternative for poorer magical families. Magic had flowed through the blustery streets of the borough, carefully concealed from the No-Maj of course. Sweet shops had sold fizzy Whizzibees, Pepper Imps and Ice Mice hidden behind the usual No-Maj sweet ship staples of Gobstoppers, Saltwater taffy and Liquorice. It had been a fair time for the average witch or wizard in new York at the time aside from the occasional attack from Grindelwald, Obscurus or a menagerie of magical creatures carried in a suitcase by a hapless English man. Steve had grown up flitting between the magical and mundane worlds his best friend in the world James Buchanan (Bucky) Barnes.
Magic had been taught at home mostly because nobody could afford the magic schools fees on the salaries they brought home. Steve had been lucky and Sarah Rogers had gone to Hogwarts before she moved over to the states and had taught him everything she knew. As a result she had been a popular tutor for the neighbourhood’s wizarding children Hogwarts being the best magical school in the world although Ilvermorny was a close second. Steve’s father had been a No-Maj (or muggle as Sarah called him) much to the horror of most of the neighbours and to Sarah Rogers delighted amusement in their disapproval. The Barnes family however were a pure-blooded family who had come to the states after an ill advised tangling with the Black family back in London.
Steve and Bucky had grown up running between the No-maj and wizarding world. They sold the New York Times and the Daily Prophet at street corners. They pranked their mothers turning teacups into rats, they scuffled with the other boys in alleys in over a box of kittens. They played Quodpot in the magic streets, baseball in the normal world. Bucky had once stolen a bag of acid pops mistaking them for exploding bonbons. They had burned a hole through Steve’s tongue and Mrs Barnes had hit them both with her aging Cleansweep 3 and marched both of them back to Mr McKay’s Sweet Shop for Bucky to apologies and sweep the store everyday after school in order to pay him back.
They once met Mr Scamander the brilliant magi-zoologist and he had let them explore his suitcase one brilliant afternoon while he and his new wife Tina talk to Steve's mother about something going on at the hospital. This has inspired them to get a pet themselves. They then hid a Niffler under Bucky’s bed for 2 weeks before it escaped and tried to eat Bucky’s fathers watch when he got home from a long day at the ministry.
*
When they were 11 they each got a wand. Bucky a 12 inch, fir with two dragon heartstrings and Steve’s received a 14 inch, English oak with unicorn hair. Mrs Rogers had had to save for two years in order to purchase a wand for him. Bucky teased him awfully about having a wand taller than him (then he turned around and socked the boy next to them for laughing at the joke.)
*
Bucky loses his wand every other week by pure carelessness and Steve knocks a chunk out of his during a fight with some no-magi boys over a cat. His wand still works fine but you can see the tiniest splinter of silver unicorn hair within the core if you look at it under the right light.
*
They go to Mr Kowalski's Bakery to eat pastries shaped like Nifflers and to stare in puppy love at his wife Queenie who always knows everything about what they have been doing that week good and bad. They learn and grown, fight and make up, love and lose. Money is tight and is food too. Steve was always sick and no amount of medicine or potions ever really seem to help. They learn how to perform a Patronus which on one dark night after walking their dates (failed date in Steve’s case) home turns out to be really useful. Bucky’s hound and Steve’s badger chasing away the Dementors that almost catch them.
*
Bucky sends him howlers from base camp to yell at him each time that Steve writes to him to tell him that he’s once again failed to sign up after Pearl harbour. A disaster that shakes both the magical and non magical communities.
(A secret he tells no-one is that the howlers are a very minor reasons, why he keeps trying. He wants to fight the good fight more than anything. But the howlers let him hear Bucky’s voice after their longest time ever apart.)
*
There is nothing that Steve can do to make the original Captain America costume look any less stupid. Magic or otherwise. Bucky laughs himself silly when he sees it for the first time on a poster. It is only Howard Stark who manages to make the eye catching uniform functional and non embarrassing once Steve finally gets into the field. The man does not have an ounce of magical talent in his body but his mind more than makes up for it.
*
“Did someone cast an engorgement charm on you? I thought you were smaller.” Bucky asks him groggily as he drags Bucky’s limp body off the table HYDRA had strapped him too.
“I joined the army” Steve tells him grumpily.
*
Losing Bucky was the worse feeling that he had ever had in his life. Worse even than losing his mother worse than any illness he had ever had. “I swore to be with Bucky until the end” he says morosely to Peggy in the bar wishing he was drunk even after drinking all of Bucky’s fire whisky and all the normal whiskey that the bar had to offer. “It should have killed me the moment he hit the ground.” He downs more of the bottle “I don’t know how I’m going to carry on without him.”
He can feel the unbreakable vow tugging in his chest urging him on somewhere, he does not know where.
“Then maybe it’s not the end of your line” Peggy tells him gently tugging the whiskey out of his numb hands.
*
He flies the Valkyrie, the unbreakable vow tugs at him to turn it toward the ice. It’s the best place to put it, no people around for the deadly payload onboard to hurt. Bucky fell into ice; maybe by meeting the same fate he can be with Bucky again.
*
SHEILD couldn’t figure out why Captain America had a stick of wood in his pocket when they defrosted him.
*
HYDRA couldn’t figure out how why the same stick kept appearing in the pocket of The Asset (the returning charm Mrs Barnes put on it because Bucky kept losing it still working after all those years.)
*
Steve (eventually) gets his trunk back from the Smithsonian. He thanks them quietly and takes it home to his apartment in the tower (Tony insists that he stays there while he “gets back on his feet.”) nobody had been able to open it due to Steve having the only key on him when he fell. That and Magic!
Tony and Pepper help him to sort through old musty paper, cloths that are now either too small or thread bare with age and other small keepsakes. A hair brush, sketch books, old school books, his father’s pocket watch and a crumpled old picture of Bucky. It is his official recruitment one, he looks so young and proud in his smart uniform. When she see Steve sniffing Pepper drags Tony out by his ear, despite the man crowing loudly over the size of one of Steve's old sweaters.
When they are gone Steve pulls himself together and closes the trunks lid. When he opens it again it’s much larger and full of all his magic stuff. His mothers old pewter cauldron, several packets of various potion ingredients (all far too old to use), his smart black hat that his mother made him wear when they went to Horizontal alley, his old spell books complete with doodles and comments from him and Bucky. He smiles as he reads through them, mostly they argue over whether or not the Brooklyn beaters will win the Quodpot championship before the Dodgers win the baseball league, seemingly changing their points of view every other page. Bucky’s small cramped handwriting so familiar that Steve could read whatever he had written in his voice. As he goes through the pages a slip of paper falls out. It’s a wizarding photograph. He watches the younger versions of himself and Bucky, tussle and sling their arms over each other within its black and white confines.
It’s all too much so Steve distracts himself by transfiguring Tony’s tools into rubber chickens (which is endlessly entertaining) while his friend concentrates on whatever scientific wonder he is working on.
*
Steve believes in Magic, he believes in God. He has seen monsters both magical and mundane. Science has transformed him more than magic ever has and that's saying something Bucky once turned his lower half into a fish’s (by accident). And he fought a man whose face came off as well as dragons.
He never imagined aliens.
*
He wonders why his pocket Sneakascope that he got as a souvenir in Germany keeps lighting up and spinning every time he is around the STRIKE team.
*
“I can’t fight you, you’re my friend”
“You are my mission”
“I’m your friend, I swore and unbreakable vow I would be with you ‘till the end of the line.”
*
There was less magic in the modern world Voldermort (no Steve was not afraid to say his name) had driven the magical world further underground. The two attempted coup d'état by Voldemort and his Death Eaters had killed a lot of prominent wizards and witches including Dumbledore who Steve had met once at the Leaky Cauldron in London during the war. Steve hadn’t known how to feel about that. The Dumbledore he had met had been kind, sad with a deep ingrained in grief but optimistic for the future and just starting to teach transfiguration at Hogwarts. The man in his biography and a chocolate frog card had been old really really old, accomplished and vaguely terrifying. A man who had fought to many wars. Much like himself actually. The resulting loss of strong leaders had sent the magic world back to the shadows to lick its wounds.
It meant that it was harder to look for Bucky as not only was he was looking with Sam or one of the other Avengers none of them knew about magic but there was no one in the magical community to help easily. So at night he would search through the local magical communities around the world.
(Mr Potter, Head of the Auror's in the UK had promised to keep his people’s eyes peeled for Bucky).
"How does he keep moving around so quickly without using any sort of transport ” Sam asked pulling his hair out as Bucky hopped from Zurich to the Bahamas within a day without using any means of transport that they were able to track. Steve had to duck his head to hide a smile and then give Sam the slip to check the local apparenting points for signs of Bucky.
*
Steve turns around in that little apartment in Romania, he is aware of that the No-Maj police on their way but Bucky stands behind him hand in his pocket.
“How much do you remember?” Steve asks eyeing the pocket warily it might contain a knife or a gun or his wand. No matter how many HYDRA bases Steve knocked over he had never had been able to find Bucky’s wand.
“Nothing” Bucky replies eyeing Steve’s earpiece nervously but he pulls out his wand from his pocket and wordlessly lights a flame that is the same colour as Steve’s eyes in his metal hand.
*
Sometimes between a mission and going back into cryo the asset would be sent to a cold dark cell to await a procedure.
Sometimes he would find a stick in his pocket. He would just hold it the wood warm under his figure tips and it comforts him in his world of darkness, metal bars and cold tiles he pretends that he can feel the warmth of the sun that made the wood grow.
Rarely, only when he had been out of cryo a long-time he would point the stick at the floor and whisper words he didn’t know he knew to produce a beautiful warm bright blue flame.He would huddle up next to it, stare at it, and admire his little creation. He would soak up its warmth, whisper to it and treat it like a pet. He would feed titbits of material, even his own hair to reward it for its warmth. Even though the flame didn’t need anything to burn and vanished without a trace whenever somebody came to get him.
The only reason he doesn’t kill the man on the bridge is because his eyes are the same colour as the flame.
*
When the little man with delusions of grandeur puts The Winter Soldier in a cage all of his belongings apart from the pink shirt and jeans he is wearing are removed. The items are then recorded and put into evidence, for either a trial or to be reclaimed by Steve Rogers after Barnes execution (the latter being more likely). They catalogue a thin stick that was in the Soldier’s pocket. It is analysed by them but it turn out it’s just an old piece of wood (Pine to be precise with some unidentifiable organic material ). All of the items are then put in a secure storage container however when The Winter Soldier escapes the weird stick is gone when they check his belongings for any clues they might supply to find him. But he didn't go anywhere near the evidence locker.
*
Sam watches bemused as Steve hefts Bucky’s unconscious body onto the seat next to the vice and clamps its teeth down over the metal arm. He gets even more confused when Steve removes thin stick that is about the same length as a ruler from Bucky’s pocket and hands it to him. “Keep hold of it” Steve tells him distractedly “if you let go it will only turn up in his pocket.”
It does too, when Sam puts it down to dial up Scott Lang he puts it down for one second. When he’s finished dialling he reaches for it, only to find it missing. He spots it as he turns around held loosely in Bucky’s metal hand. How the man managed to cross the room and back again is a mystery to Sam.
*
When Rodney falls Steve pulls himself together with and casts his favourite levitation charm. It doesn’t do much, but it’s enough that Rodney only cracks a few vertebrae instead of smashing to pieces on the ground.
It’s only a shame that they couldn’t have done more.
*
When Tony Stark is trying to kill Steve right in front of him, his arm shorn of almost to the shoulder, it’s very hard for Bucky not to use the worse of the unforgivable curses. The only reason he doesn’t is because he cannot. His soul tarnished enough from his years as the Winter Soldier but as it is still too clean and good for him to Damn it with one of those curses. James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes has never wanted to kill. The killing curse is deceptively simple and easy to cast, unlike the cruciatus curse which requires hatred and intent to cause harm. The killing curse only requires the intent to destroy but in doing so the casters soul is split apart. He doesn’t want to use it. He can not use it against a man who he has already wronged. He can not become even more solid killing an innocent soul once more against a man who rightly deserves vengeance against Bucky Barnes.
Besides he might hit Steve.
*
Wanda wanders in to the room where Steve now spends his evenings. T’Challa is a kind and gracious host and the wounds to her heart caused by all the fighting over the accords has started to heal. Steve however is still in pain; she can hear his agony every time she is near him. The only time he is at any peace is when he is in the cryogenics room where his friend Bucky is frozen. It is not often that she catches him in there; they all try to give him privacy and she does not like the mausoleum like room. But tonight he is reading something out loud to the tube containing frozen supersoldier.
“The three witches and the knight set off down the hill together, arm in arm, and all four lead long and happy lives, and none of them every suspected that the Fountains waters carried no enchantment at all.” She peeks round the door, Steve is sitting on the floor next to the cryo chamber leaning once shoulder against it. Barnes, as always, looks comfortable and almost at peace within the chamber. Steve himself looks uncomfortable knees tucked up almost underneath his chin. In his left hand he clutches a small thin blue book, his shoulders shake slightly from the cold and Wanda graciously ignores the spots of water on his knees when she plops herself down next to him.
“What were you reading?” she asks “I’ve never heard that story before.”
Steve’s shoulders shake with either laughter or tears, she’s not sure. “You wouldn’t have” he tells her “Our mothers used to tell us this as a bedtime stories. The fountain of fair fortune was Bucky’s favourite.”
She gets Steve to read her his favourite delighting over his gruesome description of the Wizards hopping pot.
*
It takes a long time for things to return to any sense of normality, for Tony to forgive Steve, and for the accords to be repealed. It takes a man called Dr Strange, an alien invasion by a chap called Thanos and the return of Loki to get Steve and Tony to stop butting heads and both of them are finally able to put their animosity behind them.
*
One of the more amusing side effects of Bucky’s time as a brainwashed super-assassin is that on occasion he forgets that most people do not know about magic. This is particularly apparent when Steve walks into the common room to find Bucky arguing with Sam over garden gnomes.
Bucky is brandishing his ancient copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at Sam; Steve can see from the doorway the diagram of the gnarled creature that is about as attractive as a hobnailed boot. “This is a gnome” he is growling at Sam.
Even though the rest of the people in the room look a little scared by his insistence, namely Clint and a annoyed looking Tony still hasn't quite forgiven Bucky. Sam, however, is undaunted and personally Steve thinks that Bucky Baiting is one of Sam’s favorite hobbies. “No this is a gnome” Sam brandishes his Iphone set on a picture of a cutesy garden gnome complete with rotund stomach, red hat posed whimsically and leaning on a wheelbarrow.
Bucky looks desperately Steve “Steve please tell him that that thing,” he spits venomously at the phone “is not what a gnome looks like and that he really does not want them in his garden.”
Dismay tugs at Steve, he does not want to reveal magic to the others nor does he want to lie to Bucky. Eventually he settles on saying helplessly “he’s right Sam you really do not want gnomes in your garden.”
“It’s an ornament” Sam hisses.
“Nasty vicious little monsters” Bucky mutters to himself. Bucky should know he once got bitten by a gnome in occupied France. Denier had laughed at him and all of the Howling Commandos had spent a very satisfying afternoon spinning around in circles and throwing the gnomes over the wall of their current burnt out farm house that they had chosen to squat in. There had been prizes of cigarettes to whoever threw the gnome the furthest. (Steve naturally had done very well out of this contest.)
“Oh for crying out loud!” Tony shouts at them “Stop arguing over imaginary creatures.” He points his gauntlet at Bucky “let the man have whatever garden stuff he wants.”
Bucky puffs up like a Knezzal in a rainstone. In much the same way that Tony has never really forgiven Bucky for the death of his parents Bucky has never forgiven him for hurting Steve. Steve elbows him, warning him to calm down and they sit back down. Together they flick to Hippogriff. Steve’s admiring the artwork of the beast when Bucky pipes up “I suppose if you have one of those things the real gnomes might think that some brownies have moved in instead.”
The resulting argument ends with a metal fist in Sam's face, a small fire and Steve has to sit on Bucky to stop him going to the nearest woodland to find a bowtruckle.