"We've just received a distress signal from a Shield research installation in London." Coulson said.
The call for a mission brief had gone out just minutes ago, but it hadn't taken long for the team to drag themselves out of bed. They were used to this life now, the constant travelling from place to place, with nowhere to call home other than their flying base of operations they affectionately referred to as 'the Bus'.
Skye sipped on a soda as Coulson continued. She was the team's newest addition- she'd originally been a part of an informal organization of cyber-activists called the 'Rising Tide'. It sounded cool, but really all she did was drive around in her van and spread conspiracy theories and the occasional leaked classified information online.
This… was much better. It wasn't that she didn't still believe that transparency was important, but she'd done more in these past months than she ever could have done before. Even if Shield was a faceless bureaucracy that had more secrets than she could count- Coulson wasn't, her team wasn't. They were all good people. She'd spent her entire life bouncing around from place to place, never being accepted anywhere. To be fair, she was still bouncing around from place to place, but now she belonged with these people, this team.
Coulson had taken her under his wing when he could have just her arrested, he'd been a steady, resilient presence no matter how weird things got. Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons were brilliant scientists who were both completely oblivious to the fact that they were completely infatuated with each other. It was adorable and annoying. Melinda May was the most badass person Skye had ever known, and would ever know unless she got to meet an Avenger or something. And then there was Grant Ward, he was interesting, Skye had always had a thing for the bad boys, and Grant was checking every single one of her boxes- mysterious but tragic past, a confident, assured personality with a bit of an edge. Oh yeah, and he was hot.
May kicked her shin, and she hadn't exactly held back. Skye wince and shot a glare at her. May just raised an eyebrow back at her, Skye could practically hear her reprimand- stop making eyes at Ward and focus up Agent. "Right." Skye muttered, taking another sip from her drink "Just need more caffeine."
Coulson paid no attention to the byplay. "One of the agents on site broadcasted this video onto all Shield channels." Coulson played a video on the display, it showed a man clinging to the desk the computer rested on, pleading almost incoherently for help.
"HELP! Please, I don't know what's happening. We never should have messed with it. I-I-I-"
"That's it?" Grant asked, frowning.
"We don't have much to go on." Coulson admitted "The official purpose of the Shield facility is… classified."
"Even for you?" Skye said, surprised.
Coulson shrugged "Whatever they were working on, it must be highly sensitive."
"Reckless." Fitz added "Prone to accidents."
"Regardless, our mission is clear. I'll forward the video and base information back to D.C., see if anyone can tell us anything. But in the meantime, we can't afford to wait when lives are in the balance. We need to find out what happened, contain the situation, and rescue Shield personnel if we can." He paused, letting his words sink in.
"London." Simmons uttered "That's a lot of civilians."
"Which makes speed all the more important. May, how far from London are we?"
"We're about 20 minutes out." May said "Be ready."
-----
The knife sliced precisely across the skin of Harry's arm, leaving a thin red trail in its wake.
"Episkey." Harry said "Episkey!" He repeated with more force. The minor injury scabbed over, but didn't disappear entirely. Harry huffed in frustration. He wasn't cutting himself because he hated himself, he just… needed practice, and he needed a lot of practice. It had taken him over a week of constant use for him to get reparo down to second nature. Episkey, wasn't that different from reparo, just repairing living things rather than inanimate objects, but it was much more difficult for him. It made sense that repairing living body parts would be more difficult than a pane of glass, but he didn't have to like it.
A notification from his laptop distracted him. Tony had provided him with a custom made, EMP shielded laptop that outclassed anything on the market, and Harry criminally underutilized it. He used it for work, and to keep up to date on the news and some… more obscure corners of the internet where conspiracy theories tended to propagate, but nothing more than that. He'd considered checking out some digital art programs, but Harry found that he got something out of putting pencil to paper… it was soothing. While his older portraits of his friends still hung on the walls, his newest projects had all been from this world- Natasha, Tony, Steve, Hill.
Speaking of, the notification was an email from Hill, which piqued his attention. She often sent him potential incidents for him to investigate- events that could possibly be caused by magic. Most often it turned out to be fake or otherwise had a mundane explanation, occasionally he'd stumble across something that seemed like the real deal, but he didn't particularly recognize from his world.
What he saw made his heart freeze.
While Hill had noted that the video showed a Shield Agent pleading for help with a nebulous threat, Harry's eyes locked on the right corner of the screen, and the familiar cloaked form steadily growing larger in the camera's view. A Dementor.
"Hill!" He bellowed into his phone as he rushed out of his room "Hill!"
"Harry! Calm down. What is it?" Hill had picked up the phone after a single ring, and had answered without skipping a beat despite Harry's panic.
"Where was that video you just sent me from? When?" He demanded.
"London. Coulson's team received 15 minutes ago." Hill answered "No one our side had a clue, so I decided to-"
Coulson, god. "He's going, isn't he." He grunted as he ran "I'm going to the hanger, have someone there to fly me. Fastest thing you have."
"Alright, I'm getting Romanoff." This, at last, made Harry stop in his tracks.
"No." He said, he said between breaths "It can't be her."
"Now's not the time for you guys' little 'will they or wont they' thing." Hill snapped.
"It's not that." He said, how could he explain what Dementors were and did to people? "Trust me."
There was a beat of silence from Hill. "Okay."
-----
"Explain." Hill demanded.
When Harry had made it to the hanger (in a record time of 5 minutes from his apartment on the Shield campus), she'd been at the head of a sleek, black jet that put the quinjets Harry was familiar with to shame. The acceleration from the beast of a plane threw Harry back in his seat and pinned him there for several minutes, while Hill, steely eyed and steady, piloted them out to sea.
He'd had to admit, she'd gone all out, and just on his word. He owed her an explanation.
"It's called a Dementor." He said. She remained silent, knowing that he would elaborate. "It's a…" 'Creature' didn't exactly fit, because it implied that Dementors were somehow natural, or alive. "…monster I know from my world. They're not visible to those who don't have magic, so you wouldn't have seen it on the video."
Hill nodded silently in understanding.
"They're absolutely foul." Harry said "They drain your happy memories, leaving you trapped in the worst moments of your life. Most people are basically paralyzed by them, completely defenseless. Then…" He swallowed reflexively "they suck out your soul."
"They suck out your soul?" Hill echoed in disbelief.
"Do I look like I'm joking?" Harry challenged, meeting her eyes to communicate his sincerity. "Yes. Souls exist. Yes, this thing eats them. I have no idea how this thing got there, but I know why."
"Why?"
"Shield." He said disdainfully "You guys were experimenting with something you shouldn't have been."
Hill frowned, but didn't rise to the bait. "Why not Romanoff?" Hill asked. "I trust you have a good reason."
"I don't know much about Natasha's past, but I know it was… hard." He said, shaking his head "I don't want her going through that again."
"That's… insultingly noble." Hill commented "She'd kick your ass if you told her that."
Harry shrugged "It's not insulting. Dementors don't care how strong or resilient you are, they just take and take. The first time I saw a Dementor, I heard my parents dying, and then I passed out. I wasn't soft, or weak. I'd just been through a lot."
She shook her head. "How old were you?"
"Thirteen." He said with a wry grin "Like I said, rough childhood."
"So, that means you're very susceptible to Dementors, and you're here. So I assume you have a countermeasure."
Harry grimaced. In his haste, he'd never actually seen if he could cast a Patronus wandlessly.
"You do have a countermeasure, don't you?"
-----
The elevator ride was ominous, to say the least. That was mostly because of how long it was. They just kept descending and descending, deeper and deeper into the bowls of the Earth.
"Let's hope they didn't wake a Balrog down there." Fitz joked over the comms.
Skye rolled her eyes, smiling weakly. Fitz and Simmons were tucked safely back at the bus, monitoring everything remotely. She, however, was training to become a field agent, and so she was with Coulson, Ward, and May on the elevator ride to hell.
"Er, guys, isn't it supposed to get hotter the deeper down you go."
Simmons chimed in "Yes, at your current depth, it should be noticeably warmer, which is impressively deep."
"It's getting colder, if anything." May said.
"Interesting." Simmons said, and then she and Fitz rambled on about something scientific. Skye wasn't buying it, though. There wasn't a normal explanation to any of this. Dread grew in her stomach, expanding out like roots from a tree. She looked from Coulson, to Ward, to May, trying to take comfort from their presence, but their grim resolve did little to settle her nerves.
Then, with a series or rough clunks the elevator shuddered to a halt, and the grated doors clattered open. Skye let out a steadying breath, and noticed that it fogged in the air, it was cold. Ahead of them stretch out a long, nondescript tunnel.
"It's very cold." Ward said "Definitely not natural." The three agents unholstered their guns and cautiously advanced, while Skye trailed behind them.
"I don't like this." She breathed, but her teammates crept forward, and she had to do the same.
They rounded a corner, and the tunnel opened up into what looked like an ad-hoc control room. A desk with a series of computers lay on one side, boxed supplies along the other. "This is where the distress message came from." May noted, recognizing the background "Nothing of note-" She paused. Skye's eyes were drawn to where May's were focused, and it was then that she saw the body.
It was a corpse, but it looked like it had been completely desiccated, or mummified. "What could do this?" The dread kicked up a notch, rising into her throat like bile. Along with it came something else, something far more insidious.
"Oh my god, it's alive." Coulson breathed. As Skye looked closer, she noticed with horror that he was right, just the barest movement of the body's chest, but it was there. It was still breathing.
"How is that possible?"
Skye felt alone. She was suddenly taken back to her childhood. For so long she'd tried desperately to get foster family after foster family to like her. It never worked out. She remembered the night the social worker came when she was nine, when she was told that it was over, and she had to go. She sobbed softly to herself that night, unable to sleep until she collapsed from exhaustion. Then she went further back, farther than she could even remember. A man… shouting. You won't take her! Shouting, fighting, gunshots, screaming, blood.
She was so immersed in her memories that she didn't even know that she had collapsed on the floor, and she was only dimly aware of being lifted up into the air, and invisible, deathly cold, bony hand clasped around her throat. Tears streamed down her face, icing over in the chill, all she could feel was loneliness and abandonment.
Then she heard someone yell "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
And then she saw light.
-----
Casting a patronus had been easier than he could have hoped. After months of relying on emotion and memories to fuel his magic, it was easy to turn around and do the same on a charm that was originally meant to work that way.
He was grateful for this, and for Hill for getting him a supersonic jet, and for his thinking to use 'point me' to locate Coulson, and for his recklessness in dropping down the mine shaft in a controlled fall. He'd almost been too late. The dementor was lifting an agent into the air when he'd staggered into the room, moments away from stealing her soul. Fuck. That.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Prongs burst into being right in front of his palm and charged headlong into the dementor, light flooding out like waves in its wake. The wraith let out a sharp, ear piercing shriek when it was struck, dropping the agent, who landed limply on the ground. Light flared up brilliantly where the patronus struck the Dementor, leaving spots in Harry's eyes.
Every move the Dementor made, his patronus mirrored, blocking any avenue of advance. Thankfully, it seemed to be alone, and at bay. He needed to get everyone out of here safely. The room was now fully illuminated, revealing three other agents, a white man and an Asian woman- they were stirring weakly, not yet in a condition to retreat. Harry ordered his patronus to continue pushing the Dementor back, further into an attached chamber. Meanwhile, he knelt down next to the agent he had saved, and who hadn't yet given any signs of life "Hey there, are you alright?" He cupped her cheek - she was cold, but she was alive. She groaned softly, blinking blearily up at him. "It's okay, I've got this." Then he was off.
His plan at this point was to trap this abomination down here and hope that no one would ever be stupid enough to come back. His train of thought, however, was utterly derailed when he saw what was in the next room.
The Veil.
There was no mistaking it, the Veil had been burned into his mind from a thousand nightmares of his godfather falling through that ethereal curtain. He didn't need the Dementor's help to clearly remember that night. He'd remember it anywhere- even in another universe. He was so gobsmacked that he almost forgot about the Dementor, and at first didn't notice the equipment around it, or the withered husk of a shield agent a few paces away. The Dementor tried to duck and weave around his patronus, but the stag played a perfect defense, cutting it off and forcing it back at every pace. It left Harry's mind free to process what he was seeing.
Oh.
Shock gave way to rage. Those bastard, those inhuman, evil, bastards. Shield had been experimenting on the Veil, with people. They'd made a Dementor by pulling someone back through the Veil. Any questions about how or why the Veil was here were driven back by the revelation and the torrent of dissonant emotions it provoked.
Is that what Dementors were? Just the corpses of people who'd been pulled back from the Veil, cursed to hunger for the soul they lost? Not just another magical creature, but the product of human greed and hubris.
He looked up at the creature, and for once felt pity for it. Then he looked back at the Veil, and he wondered…
"Prongs." He said unnecessarily "Send it back." Sensing his intent rather than hearing his words, his patronus sprung to life- lunging forward with another cascading wave of light. The Dementor was flung backwards keening, and tumbled back through the archway. Harry waiting a few seconds, and then a few more.
He felt nothing from the Dementor, and nothing stirred from the archway. It was over. Prongs cantered over to him and bowed its head, Harry lifting his hand to pet the apparition before it dissolved into the air, leaving just a few motes of light that slowly flickered out.
He used lumos to cast a dim light across the room, and looked back down at the shell of a Shield agent. He had suffered a fate worse than death. Perhaps he should put what was left of the man out of its misery, but he wouldn't. After what that man had taken part in… he deserved it.
He was furious. He hadn't been this angry since the night, so long ago now, that Dumbledore had told him of the prophecy. He'd destroyed the old man's office. He wanted to destroy a lot more than that now. He wanted to burn Shield to the ground. This was worse than Fury trying to recreate Hydra weapons behind their backs. It was worse than Shield keeping information away from him. It was even worse than the attempts on his own life. This was unspeakably cruel, it was evil. He wouldn't stand for this, he wouldn't.
"Oh my god." Just as he was working himself into a proper rage, he was pulled back to reality. There were people, people who'd had nothing to do with what happened here, people who needed his help.
"Is everyone alright?"
"W-what happened." The woman he saved uttered. "I felt so- so-"
He knelt down to her, his heart growing tender "Its okay, its gone now."
"I thought you were on another continent." Coulson said, he'd lifted himself up, but his voice was still strained.
"I was. I knew what it was as soon as I saw the video. Hill flew me here." Harry said "Can everyone walk?"
"I'm not sure." The agent he'd saved said. The other male agent looked just as affected as she was.
"Its okay. There's no shame in it. Its not about how strong or capable you are. That thing weakens people by taking away all their happy memories, until they're left with nothing but their worst experiences. If you're feeling worse off, it just means you've had a rough life, nothing else." Both agents seemed assured by his words. "However, I'd still like to get us out of here."
"Agreed." Coulson said. While Harry helped the agent he now knew as Skye, Coulson and May assisted Ward. They filed into the elevator- which now had a hole blasted into the ceiling courtesy of Harry- and it began a long, jerky ascent.
"Don't worry, I sent Hill out to get chocolate."
That got him a few looks. "Trust me, it helps."