Chapter Text
Harry froze on the roof, right where he stood. Just then, a sudden wind slapped his cheeks. His orange-golden ribbon fluttered madly behind him and the snapping sound broke his reverie.
His body letting go of the tension, he slowly and steadily exhaled. His eyes blinked closed. His shoulders slumped under a suddenly heavy weight of centuries-old grudges and regrets. A wave of familiar indifference, acceptance swept him up.
His hands pulled out his wand without him noticing and he absent-mindedly fiddled with it, twirled it around, stroked its elegant light wood. With a pang of regret, Harry wished it were his phoenix wand – but the only one he carried over was the Deathly Hallow.
When Harry opened his eyes, he untangled his mixed emotions best he could.
Seeing Tom Riddle's face was a sudden snag.
But… did Harry have to overreact like this?
This was a whole other world.
He had destroyed the nightmares of his past himself – while gaining all the new ones – and had barely remembered that Voldemort existed. Frankly, compared to the other Dark Lords, or space magi-pirates, or just grassroots home-grown murderhobos, Harry had later realised that the evil madman haunting his youth was even on a tamer side.
Shocking, but there was no bottom to the evil that humans and humanoids could do.
That realisation hadn’t made him suddenly all right with everything the bastard had destroyed, but it had put things into perspective. On a larger scale.
Besides…
He had given full closure to the whole Tom Riddle situation in his own way. A secret hidden between the pages of his long existence, known only to him.
So, there really was no reason for him to stand like this, ready to spring up at any moment and follow the familiar stranger home.
Harry relaxed his stance.
His eyes intently fixed on Tom Riddle’s lookalike until he left his line of sight, his eyebrows scrunched together. All this while, Harry didn’t sense any abnormalities.
Harry didn’t follow the guy. Wouldn’t that be just... crossing the line too much? The stranger didn’t make suspicious moves. He didn’t possess magical artifacts or even a wand (or other foci) – something that would have rendered even Voldemort at his peak next to useless in a long run. He didn’t seem to manifest a magic power.
All the stranger had done was make Harry curious about him. Which… wasn’t exactly a crime, was it.
If Harry shamelessly stalked anyone who intrigued him without any threats or suspicions, wouldn’t he be just a creep?
Harry rationalised it this way:
First, there were statistically quite a few people who looked alike. Harry himself had even had funny bumps into frauds who claimed to be Harry Potter by pure similarity. That’d never failed to get a laugh out of him.
If you count in people from other worlds, that pool would be insurmountably large.
Chasing after him would equal grabbing an innocent person off the streets.
Second, although Harry’s familiarity with his authorities as the Master of Death had much room to deepen, he recognised that just popping up in another world in their original form with their memory and powers wasn’t how reincarnation worked.
A person who truly died wouldn’t be able to keep their body when crossing to another world.
They would most likely lose their powers, too. Harry hadn’t mastered the subject yet, but he knew that most powers related to things like the biology and bloodline of the body they inhabited as well as external factors related to the world, such as leylines or types of energies.
For example, the whole Sky thing.
Harry confirmed with certainty that it hadn’t existed back in his world. True, there could be branches of magic with similar functions, but they were fundamentally different powers.
Most likely, he could only access this kind of power because of his status as a Master of Death. This was the first proper, functioning and inhabited world Harry’d ever visited outside of his own, so he could only guess. And he guessed that his curse, which strove to remove the natural flaws of his body and make him as ‘perfect’ as possible – considered by certain standards – also granted him the power of the world he went to to blend in. Perhaps as part of protective mechanism? Or a way for the Master of Death to find further joys in life, stave off boredom, find something that would engross him enough that he wouldn’t think about dying.
He theorised that if Ron or Hermione arrived here, they would never be able to awaken this world’s type of power.
However, had either of them – or his other family – reincarnated here, they would have the same chances to get it as an average person in his world.
Ultimately, it all came down to the biology – whether the body was a ‘native’ of the world or an outsider.
...Now that Harry thought about it, it would be fascinating to know if there were any advantages that power-type users of one world had over the intruders. Well, with magic, he already knew that there was a deficit of resources in this world, which would kill many branches of the magic he’d known back in his world.
Third, Harry mostly kept up with major news from reading an occasional newspaper and his chats with the village aunties. He had acquaintances he’d asked to keep an eye out for shady movements that couldn’t be explained away. So, he would have known immediately had an existence as noticeable and large as Voldemort in his heyday started moving.
This meant that even IF this man was a reincarnation of Voldemort… Possessing all the memories of the Original ™… he’d been living all this while as a normal person. At most, he would be a normal criminal. Or just delusional. There was a big difference between a delusional megalomaniac and a megalomaniac with actual power, so if Voldemort existed here and belonged to the first category, Harry could leave him be.
If this person ever revealed his world dominion intentions…
Well. Harry was right here now to stop him!
He turned his back to the crowd and leapt upwards, onto the highest point of the roof. Harry’s finger sliced through the air around him to cast a notice-me-not charm.
This encounter aroused old memories in his head. As if pulling out an old memorabilia and dusting it off, Harry dropped to the ground in thought and recollected.
Back to the first time.
The time of his first non-Voldemort-induced death.
-----------------------
Flashback start
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The sight of the familiar train station bathing in white immediately engulfed Harry in dread. Horror. Sub-tones of resignation. Disbelief. Above all – an almost hopeless despair.
He knelt on the train platform. His knees didn’t hurt from the small stones digging into them, but it brought no relief. Right now, pain was good. Pain reminded him he was still alive. In a sense. Hopefully. Most likely.
Harry took in a shuddering breath, his soft inhales thundering in the white-out silence of the train station.
This…
He wasn’t dead again, was he?
Wouldn’t that be too anticlimatic?
The great hero of the second war against Dark Lord Voldemort, the Master of Death, the person to escape death twice, the Man-Who-Lived… didn’t live again? Died in… an average, routine Auror mission? A mission that didn’t even involve hunting for Dark wizards; just falling victim to a badly effed-up enchanted artifact that acted up at a wrong time?..
Surely, fate couldn’t do this to Harry.
Just as his life was picking up, and his family expanded, and he was discovering everything new about himself, and there was no one who wanted to just live more than Harry…
He couldn’t die so miserably.
But the pain he’d felt was also real.
The state his body had been in… it wasn’t something people lived through.
Far from the tactfully intact corpse Avada Kedavra left, Harry had splattered into bits of meat and loose organ tissue. ‘Just out of meat-grinder’ quality. Even his wife wouldn’t piece him back together. Harry doubted anything could, not even magic.
The pain had been fleeting, yet so intense, so gripping, so purely painful that it echoed in every cell of his body still.
His tremors just won’t stop.
Even if he miraculously rose to life a third time, Harry wondered if he would be able to live with this fear of yet another death like this. The option to become a hermit dwelling in safety far from civilisation looked attractive. Safe.
Right now, more than anything, Harry just wished he could be safe. All of his friends, too.
Despite Harry suppressing them, a few tears pushed through his resistance and flowed out. The tips of his fingers trembled but he didn’t raise his hands to wipe them. It didn’t even register in his head that he should. His thoughts still stuck on the same loop.
Perhaps it was the familiarity of the situation. All his instincts welcomed the place, almost as if this stretch of barrenness were home – but Harry’s mind recognised full well it wasn’t.
...Wouldn’t all the tabloids laugh?
I can’t even begin to imagine the sort of bullshit my friends will see in my obituaries.
This thought – the idea that his dying would pull his friends through an emotional meat grinder – impacted Harry to breathe in deeply. Control. Control his thoughts. It was… surely something to work on. Despite having been a young adult for a while already, even Hermione had remarked how his emotions and impulse control still stuck in his teenage phase.
Even if it was hard, Harry repressed the images of his own body exploding into splashes, and gathered his resolve.
Right. He had to find a way out.
Surely, there must be one.
A few heartbeats later, as he observed the uncannily white – but not as blindingly white as in his past visit – train station, before he could get his bearings, screams and shrieks pierced the air.
Harry flinched. His stress levels spiked further.
Shrieking, wailing, bawling, howling – the sounds alternated, but the strength and volume of the cries did not.
Harry spun around and lowered his gaze reluctantly. Before laying his eyes on the other, he already knew who – what – would let out those sounds.
Although Professor Dumbledore had disappeared from the train station, another entity had not. Harry wanted to forget that fact – yet couldn’t; not when that fact glowered so hatefully right into Harry’s eyes.
Harry wondered just how much this- creature? Entity? Wizard? Remembered and understood.
He recalled the Headmaster mentioning that this was an imprint without full cognitive abilities, and perhaps this was the only thing that kept Harry from pouring out all his anger, all his pain, all his grievance onto his mortal enemy who appeared in front of him out of the blue.
Harry picked himself up and, halting every few steps, closed in.
The bundle of an ugly deformed baby stared up at his towering form. Harry should have felt powerful, but he didn’t.
After a few moments of this stare-down, suddenly, unbidden, all his feelings of sheer unfairness poured out. Harry’s lips trembled open before he started speaking, each word slicing through the silence all around them, filling it with too much sheer feeling so that even the deserted vast station suddenly felt stifling.
“Everyone is living a great life now that you are gone,” Harry started quietly.
His words were soft, kind. If anything of Voldemort was conscious, this kindness and warmth would pain him all the more. And right now, amid the uncertainty about his future, Harry wanted to give some of his own pain back to someone who deserved it.
Focusing on that diverted his attention from his own concerns.
“The Ministry’s corrupt practices are being identified and rooted out actively, with Light witches and wizards taking charge. Most of your followers have already faced trial and rot away in Azkaban. Hogwarts is getting rebuilt, safer and greater than ever.” Harry’s smile on his lips deepened; his eyes didn’t smile. “Our school is beautiful and welcoming more students than ever, with no signs of your destruction left on it at all.”
Ever since Harry started speaking, the baby’s shrieks ceased. Perhaps it, too, wished for a distraction, no matter which form it came in.
“When I go to Diagon Alley, it’s so bright and everyone smiles. It feels nice and free, you know? Without you. People don’t speak your name, but not because of fear. It’s because of how little you matter anymore. In a few decades, you’ll be just a page in some obscure history book only someone like Hermione reads before her bedtime – do you like that?”
Harry crouched down in front of the baby, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
“It’s such a short amount of time for a wizard… Isn’t it funny how you obsessed so much over immortality only to end up getting an even shorter lifespan than the average? Even some muggles will outlive you.”
Big red eyes watched Harry without moving or blinking.
Then, the baby’s mouth opened and-
“AAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
-it let out a wrathful cry so loud it seemed it would shake the space around them. But it didn’t. It had no such power anymore, and never would again.
Harry snorted mirthlessly and continued, “Do you know what else? Most of your followers sold you out and found loopholes to completely denounce you. Tsk. Bloody snakes. But, y’know, so few of them ended up willing to stand by you in your defeat? Quite different from how it was for everyone at Hogwarts when I was thought to die, right? And I wasn’t even that popular… But still had more faithful friends than you in the end. All your politicking was wasted, hah.”
And so he continued in this vein.
Harry didn’t speak of grief. This wasn’t the place.
He didn’t bring up any problems the world was facing. None of his worries or fears.
He didn’t speak of those who did, in fact, still remember Lord Voldemort and his short-lived reign of terror. Of those whose memories would never be erased just like their beloved would never rise from graves.
Instead, he spoke of all the memories of good his mind dredged up. All their successes. All the happiness and sheer love that surrounded him, flawed or not. Even Harry’s face lightened as he went on, peace settling over him despite the situation.
Acceptance crept in.
Sure, he’d died gruesomely this time. But how could he forget everything he lived for?
All the beloved faces and places fleeted through his mind.
As for regrets and failures… Of course, Harry had a fare share . He only embellished the good for Voldemort’s remnant to hear. S peaking of them here would only bring his enemy sadistic joy, so Harry didn’t.
He spoke, and spoke, and spoke, and spoke. Time stood still in the deserted station, and Voldemort’s remnant’s ear-bursting shrieks never died out, but Harry’s voice didn’t stumble even once.
“You can’t hurt anyone anymore,” he finally finished when his mouth ran dry. “Not my friends… not me.”
The baby-like abomination fell silent.
Something lifted in Harry’s heart, too. As if he’d always needed those words spoken aloud to realise this truth.
The grin playing across his lips got more genuine.
A pause hung like a note between himself and this relic of his past that he was trying hard to bury.
On a sudden whim, a whimsy, Harry added, “Well, that was fun.” And a part of him did feel relieved now. Unburdened. “Let’s do it in a century again, I guess?”
Harry hadn’t taken himself for the type to gloat over a defeated enemy, especially not with sneering mugs of Dudley, Malfoy, and their ilk springing to his mind at the thought. But he strongly felt that a guy who killed his parents and so many more could be a valid exception to his usual ethics.
Just as he wondered how great it would be if his old Headmaster showed up again for Harry to have another therapeutic session and for the old man to show him the way out, the air around him shifted and blurred. As if his glasses prescription suddenly worsened.
Before Harry so much as twitched, a pull beneath his navel arrested his attention. And then-
And then the train station faded away.
Voldemort’s remnants’ last screams echoed through the blurring world but with time they, too, faded into silence.
End of flashback
Gusts of wind, stronger now that it was night-time, whipped about Harry’s figure. He sighed as the memory played out in his head. He reflected on himself.
Gosh, wasn’t he so dramatic back then?
At that time, it had really seemed as if the world was ending and he was stuck with his mortal enemy in his last hours.
Of course, everything worked out instead.
Current Harry cringed at the second-hand embarrassment over the past Harry’s semi-hysterical, ‘woe-is-me’ mental anguish. Current Harry genuinely, with all his heart, wished he’d met his end back then.
... B ut the past him hadn’t thought this way at all. The past him had teared up upon awakening to a stranger’s concerned face looming over him and to the discovery that his body was completely intact, even his old scars from Hogwarts days having vanished .
He hadn’t spoken to Hermione, Ron, Ginny, or anyone else about this for a long time before opening up. He hadn’t wanted to frighten them with that same awareness of his life’s fragility that he himself gained at the time.
They had only been surprised at how overprotective he suddenly became of all his loved ones.
Immersed in nostalgia, a desire struck him to have a final hour’s walk around the city. Breathe in some night air. Enjoy the beautiful city-scape so unlike the Beijing in his last mental imprints from his world.
Harry’s intuition alerted him that very soon, it was time to leave this region. Leave China. Maybe even leave Asia.
Of course, not for good. But it would be nice to change up things a bit. And now, after this conference, he gained enough info to pick and choose a different destination. The only remaining thing to wrap up today would be to hunt down that waiter guy using the magical trace from the artifact that Harry had preserved, and then he would either do a follow-up hunt or just go back to the cabin, to Fon.
With this, Harry apparated to an unremarkable little alley he’d noted before. A half-abandoned one, unlikely to have people but still close enough to the centre of the city for a relaxing nighttime promenade.
Crack.
Harry should have known better than to hope for a peaceful end to this adventure.
When Harry saw him, imaginary boss music thundered in his ears. Something epic but retro, something like a ‘dark’ cover version of a 20th century film noir soundtrack.
Viscera coated the old plaster walls and the littered pavement. Rusty smell of blood fiercely battered Harry’s sense of smell, overpowering even the strong tang of tobacco and spilt alcohol. A door of a shabby house, torn open, hung on its hinges. A dismembered leg prevented it from closing shut. Not that closing would have done much to improve the scenery.
From the darkness of the abandoned restaurant and out into the alley, a few more people parts dotted the ground like a macabre trail. Splatters of what was obviously blood darkened to black in the shadows.
The only lamp post had its glass broken and didn't function anymore. The only actual source of light in the alley was the moon high up in the overcast sky and the white neon light of an old restaurant sign that blinked every few seconds.
The flashing and faint white light lent the scene even more of that ‘old black-and-white film’ feel. The kind that Aunt Petunia had liked to watch if she wanted to impress her classier friends, the kind where the main hero would be a spy or a government agent and who, when you thought about it, sure was a protagonist but certainly no hero.
Those thoughts wafted in Harry’s head as he stared at the figure that lingered in the middle of this carnage.
Relaxed. Languid – lazy, almost.
Black suit. Black fedora hat. Black curly sideburns.
Pale face. Pale fingers loosely wrapped around a shotgun.
The shotgun that, moments after Harry appeared, flashed right into his direction as the man spun around.
Gunshot sound echoed off the alley walls.
...I’m good with dying, but aren’t three murder attempts in three days a bit over the quota! Can I file a complaint somewhere?!
Feeling wronged, Harry still instinctively put up a semi-transparent barrier. The bullet ricocheted right off.
With Harry’s enhanced vision, he clearly saw the man’s black eyes widen with momentary disbelief. A moment later surprise overwrote Harry’s own features as he heard a stifled gasp and sensed a presence just behind him – a presence he got familiar with!
“A-amazing,” the female voice breathed out and Harry turned around.
True to his hearing, he saw Angiola Estraneo supporting herself against the wall, panting and with her light hair in disarray. He read relief in her eyes.
“That was nothing,” Harry said and shrugged. His face softened as he looked at the young girl. “I’m here now, so don’t be afraid. I can protect you.”
The blonde’s lower lip trembled and she choked down a sob before nodding. Harry nodded proudly when he saw that she managed to keep her tears at bay and collected herself. He almost put his hand on her head to pat her, but held himself back just in time; she was neither his pupil nor a Fon.
“Thank you so much,” Angiola Estraneo whispered. A feeble smile stretched across her lips. “I really owe you one.”
Her hand tremblingly wrinkled the lapel of her jacket, knuckles white.
“Helping you costs me nothing. And you helped me before – what you said when we first met was a pretty important clue, and I never quite thanked you appropriately for it... even though the info you gave me must have been classified.”
As they conversed briefly, an intense gaze bored through the back of Harry’s neck. Harry’s eyebrow ticked.
Right, that guy was still there, too.
...Oh well, with Protego right around them and Harry’s reliable meat shield body they could at least finish up the talk.
“Giving you clues is still nothing compared to you saving my life,” Angiola Estraneo rebuffed immediately before she anxiously looked around Harry’s back onto the man behind him, and shivered. Apparently, she was bothered by the film-noir man’s forbidding stare. “Our family always repays its debts. And not just the revenge ones. But- Ehem, I-I hardly think this is the place for prolonged conversation?”
Harry nodded. All those blood splatters, gruesome body parts, metallic tang of blood and the probable artist of this crime scene standing right behind him did ruin the nighttime vista.
“I was just hoping to come somewhere out-of-the-way, but who’d have thought I would get right in someone’s way instead,” he continued dryly as he surveyed this mess.
Really, is this the only quiet shady alley in all Beijing?! Do I have to book my time slot when I come?!
“You are not in the way,” the film-noir man with the strange curly sideburns suddenly said. Irritation and bemusement at being ignored so much was painted across his face. He seemed tired of alternating between staring at Harry and staring at the barrier in front of him when neither budged under his stare. “You are my way, caro Cielo.”
What? Cie-
Harry choked on air. If he were drinking, he would have spat it out.
Damn, heck no. What was it with him and these amorous pickup masters from this world?!
Was the idea of meeting under the stars at a crime scene so romantic?!
After a full century of married life, could it be that he’d been doing romance wrong?!
Nope. He wasn’t even deigning that with a response.
Harry decidedly ignored the man and patted Angiola Estraneo on her shoulder, casting non-verbal calming and warming spells along the way; while the girl kept her features calm and placid, her back wouldn’t stop shaking; her face pallid like the moon above.
“Forget about this whole thing and go back to your friends and bodyguards,” he told her. He didn’t ask how she even ended up here all alone since it wasn’t his business.
“But… what about you? I haven’t finished my training…. but I can still help you fight!”
Harry’s heart warmed a little. It would have been easy for the blonde girl to just nod and run right away, but her willingness to stay really showed a sincere and grateful heart.
Honestly, he was quite curious if she would use that mysterious Sky power if she fought. But… If Harry made a young, non-enemy girl seriously fight in a life-and-death situation right under his nose, wouldn’t his centuries of experience as an elder become a total joke?
After a few more exchanges and reassurances, Angiola Estraneo exhaled, nodded, said a few more words, emphasised that she would write and find a way to repay Harry, turned around and disappeared into the labyrinth of shadow-streaked alleys.
The film-noir man didn’t follow her with his gaze.
To Harry, it didn’t seem like he cared all that much. All this time, he focused his deep black eyes on the wizard alone.
Had Harry been younger, he would have definitely blushed under all this attention. He was glad they met at his current age; meeting this kind of attentiveness from a stranger when he was an attention-frightened fourteen-year old would have spelled the end of him. This interaction would have raised all the small hairs on his neck’s nape.
After Angiola Estraneo’s steps faded even from Harry’s enhanced hearing, he dispelled Protego and gave a slight warning.
“Well. I won’t keep you from…” Harry swept the whole ghastly scene with a look and grimaced. “Doing whatever it was you were doing. Don’t mind me. Don’t mind random teenage girls around here either. Especially not any teenage girls I know.”
It’s not like the film-noir man would be aware if Harry knew someone or not. Nor did Harry have any ideas about the reasons behind whatever was happening with muggle criminals. He was just hoping to deter the man from causing trouble to people he was personally friendly with, and was selfish enough to not care whether they deserved the trouble or did not.
With the Protego gone, the man with the curly sideburns walked closer. He cautiously stretched the tip of his gun to where the shield had shimmered earlier. Then his hand.
Fascination and interest lurked in his dark eyes. He scrutinised Harry with even more wonder.
Deeming it safe apparently, he stepped up to where the Protego shield had fallen.
Here, he was so close he towered over Harry.
The wizard blinked.
No, but how? What’s with these ridiculous heights?
Harry was taller than the average male. Was everyone in this world a giant?...No, Angiola just now was a cute petite girl. Liu Ming was also shorter.
Now that they were close, Harry also caught a hint of the other’s smell under the metallic hint of blood. The other man looked like he would wear luxurious cologne, something velvety and heavy, just because his presence itself was so heavy it seemed impossible to ignore unless he wished it otherwise.
But in actuality, there was barely anything. At most, just some generic shower gel smell that Harry could only associate with cleanliness but which told nothing about personal tastes or habits.
Harry raised his eyes to meet the other’s gaze.
Just as Harry was noting down the details about the other man, the other man was observing the wizard just as much- no, with far more zeal.
“Rest assured,” the man said to break the silence. He looked like he wanted to size up and analyse Harry even more, but also just as badly did he wish to interact. “She isn’t my target; just someone unfortunate who walked in on somewhere she shouldn’t have. Disposing of her isn’t a necessity.”
“Did you try to shoot a bullet into the poor girl just for fun, then?”
“Absolutely not, caro Cielo! I don’t like hurting pretty signorinas like her... but neither do I like leaving loose ends. Life consists of choices.” He tipped forward his fedora.
His voice was as languid as his posture. As if he didn’t care much. Despite this, Harry detected a curious gleam of thrill, of excitement in the noir-film man’s black eyes. The thrill was all the more pronounced since it was such a deep colour, void-like – almost inhuman. Or maybe inhumane.
The man was looking forward to Harry’s actions and reactions, as if he would base his next words based on them.
Harry hummed.
“Well, let’s hope you make the right choices next time and finish it at this. I have quite the tight schedule and I wasn’t quite counting on spending my time here. It's just those moments, you know? When I was supposed to have a walk and catch some sleep, but almost caught a bullet to my head instead.”
“I’m also very puzzled over how that happened.” The man’s voice lowered; displeasure seeped through it. “You appeared here in a second, mio Cielo. Your presence wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity beforehand. If I had known you would be here in advance, of course, I would have never let you see an ugly scene like this.”
His long leg lightly kicked a strewn arm deeper into the alley’s end. Disdain fleeted across his face.
Harry smiled.
“Hey, you could just make a mistake and miss the fact that I was here. Never thought of it?”
“Impossible. I’m confident in my skills.” A smirk spread across the man’s lips. “In all my skills, if you’d like to know that.”
“...There is such a thing as over-confidence, you know. And for the record, no, I’d not like to know that.”
“You can’t call it over-confidence if my skills are just that good.”
“You are really not doing that whole ‘being humble’ dance and song, huh.”
“I see no point in false modesty. It’s just there to make others feel better about their incompetence.” The taller man shrugged with one shoulder.
“And Morgana forbid would you make someone feel better about themselves,” Harry muttered dryly.
“’Morgana’?… But no, if someone wants to feel better, they should just do better. I’m paid to end lives, not improve them.” The suited man, who very casually confirmed his side job as a hitman or assassin, paused. “But if it’s you, I can try telling whatever lies you want to hear, if this is the form of courtship you enjoy.”
“...You are really pulling all the tricks in the book here, Mister.” Harry stared up at the man in exasperation. And when did they get so close that their breaths mingled? “Shouldn’t you be ashamed?”
“Shame? What is that?”
“…”
“Being shameful, shy, or timid would get you nothing in my line of work. I’m on my way to being World’s Greatest because I face my desires head-on – and stop at nothing to fulfil them.” He smirked cockily at Harry, his eyes gleaming.
Harry immediately knew, with an exasperated and “I’m done” sort of disbelief, that he also made part of those desires now.
...Would this be a common occurrence now, with the whole Sky situation? Should he just jump worlds?
Harry mentally shook his head. Hogwarts didn’t raise a quitter! Besides, after having spent some time with Fon, this kind of interest didn’t bother him too much as long as he didn’t find the other person annoying or was swamped by attention from a crowd at once.
“By the way,” the suited man spoke up, breaking Harry out of his reverie. “My name is Renato. Remember it well because you are one of the very, very few to know it.”
“Do I even deserve to know such an exclusive name?” Harry asked with a snort.
“There is no one who deserves it more,” Renato spoke with a strange solemnity, unlike his grinning, cocky cheer earlier. His gaze almost physically pressed upon Harry.
Suddenly, Renato raised his hand in a gesture so fast Harry couldn’t even blink – and clenched the ends of Harry’s orange-gold ribbon that played about in the wind. Slowly, he rubbed it between his fingers, a faraway look on his face. Harry let him.
When the hitman raised the ribbon to his lips while watching him quietly, Harry let him.
When the hitman closed his eyes and pressed a very light kiss against the fabric, Harry also let him.
Since his childhood with the Dursleys, Harry had never had much of a concept of personal space, so he wasn’t too bothered when people breached it to a certain extent. Even strangers. He was far more curious to see where this was going than to stop it.
“I was sceptical about the rumours, but seeing you in person transcended even the wildest of them,” the hitman murmured against the ribbon’s fabric almost inaudibly, making Harry’s ears prick up as the wizard wondered just what rumours were there about him. He was still pretty low-key in this world, after all. “I cannot wait until you are formally introduced into everything so we can have an open conversation. After that, I will be busy shooting up all other bastards vying for my proper place.”
Harry didn’t point out that, frankly, he wasn’t thinking of giving the hitman any place so far.
He had an inkling that if he said something stupid like that, he would be stuck in an argument here for a whole lot longer… and Harry had places to be, stray (domesticated?) Fons to feed.
Harry stepped back from Renato.
The ribbon, tied loosely, fell off his ponytail and remained hanging from the hitman’s hands. Its ends fluttered in the light breeze. The yellow gold thread made the ribbon shine even in the alleyway shadows. Contrasting with the deep darkness, it looked as if Renato held a vivid glowing lifeline in his hands.
“Well, it’s been a nice meeting- scratch that, our meeting circumstances are total rubbish, but I did like having a chat with you,” Harry said after a soft silence. “We’ll meet if we meet. I’m going now-”
“Where.”
Renato’s mood switched completely. He tilted his head and the pitch-black fedora shaded his eyes. His hand clenched tighter around the orange in his hand.
Harry smiled.
“That’s not for you to know.”
After all, Harry knew nothing about Renato. And while this didn’t bother him at all, nor was he scared off by the man’s assassination job, he couldn’t be sure if the other was related to the mysterious waiter that had attacked him at the conference. Harry wasn’t willing to give out any hints in advance for his enemy to use.
The aura around the hitman thickened, oppressive and glum.
“...Mio Cielo. This incident just now and your lack of fright even after you were almost wounded by me shows that you cannot take care of yourself well. What if you are going to walk right into another incident like this? What if you won’t be able to use your Esper abilities in time to defend against an attack?”
“It’s all right.” A slow smile spread across Harry’s lips, not much of a cheerful one. “I’m much sturdier than I look. Much, much more than how you think I am.”
“No,” Renato said firmly. His voice grew cold for the first time. “This isn’t even about courtship, this is about your safety. I refuse to lose the only Sky I have acknowledged. I’m going with you.”
Harry sighed and resisted the urge to let out a few curses. He felt like an unwilling Cinderella trying to run away from a sticky prince charming at midnight.
He could engage in a conversation, have a long talk about whether it was okay for a random stranger guy to glue himself to Harry’s side out of the blue after almost sending him to the afterlife, as well as whether Harry’s own attitude to completely disregard danger was good for his mental health…
But no.
Harry was a man of action, not of conversation.
Renato wanted to follow him?
Well, let’s see if he was physically able to!
“Maybe our next meeting will be longer,” Harry said without much conviction of ever meeting Renato again. “For this one, it’s really time to end it.”
Without giving Renato time to defend himself – although Harry could already see the other man calculating his next moves in his gaze – he whipped out his wand lightning-fast and cast a nonverbal spell on the ribbon.
In the next second, the ribbon came alive.
It slithered up Renato’s fingers until one end of it glided through the air and found the broken lamppost by his side. It wrapped around it. The other end tied the man’s hands together like handcuffs.
The hitman’s eyes widened. He struggled to get his hands free but they wouldn’t yield. Now, the ribbon became stronger than steel, completely unbreakable. Harry only imbued into it a function that would release the man if there was danger nearby.
Otherwise, Renato would be released in about an hour.
Harry conveyed this fact to the other man.
“When you are free, I won’t be in Beijing anymore,” Harry murmured. He wasn’t in the mood for a walk now anyway. “Don’t waste your time chasing after me. If we are lucky, we might meet again.”
Then, as Harry looked at Renato who glowered at him with a face of a man who had much to say and not a lot of it good, the wizard laughed.
“Well,” Harry continued with some mirth. “I guess now you might not consider it much luck if we meet again after this handcuffing experience. But still, it was a pretty fun night. Take care, Mr Hitman!”
Harry suddenly had a random thought like ‘I hope the suave Mr Hitman won’t need to use the bathroom in this hour’, so he missed the look on the other’s face and the words he said as Harry apparated away.
When Harry re-opened his eyes, he was in another place entirely. The previous interaction completely out of his head, he focused only on his self-imposed mission.
He was hunting down that damn magic waiter no matter what it took him!