Well. This took longer than it really needed to. A full calendar month without an update (and I'm 26 now! ... wow. That, right there, hammers in the fact that it's been over 8 years since I started this fic). Not unprecedented, but I don't like it. I suppose that this is the first case of genuine writer's block I've had in a while. Anyway, I had the chapter sketched out, and a few scenes here and there, but until the last few days, I only had about half of it, at most. Constantly shifting scenes again, and having to get back into the head of certain characters whose heads I'd much rather have left behind did not help. Still, one must do what one must do for the sake of the story.

This chapter… I am moderately proud of. It's also very trio-centric, though relatively Hermione-lite. There is a reason for this, and Hermione will get her chance to shine – though I rather suspect that she won't want it, because the consequences will be… earth-shaking.

SilverLion80: This Merlin is more derived from the tv series, rather than the comics. He's no slouch at the whole 'manipulate from the shadows' thing. While Strange turned it into an art-form, he learned from a master. Unlike Strange, though, it's not his preference. He also doesn't have a daughter. And no, amusing as that would be, Ron is not Kylun. I have different plans for him.

Lucifer666: Patience is a virtue. I advise practising it. I… see. I think you're really reading the wrong type of fic if that's what you want out of it, because I'm sure as hell not doing that.

Neremos7: Muchas gracias, señor (señorita?). Mi Espanol es muy limitado, pero me alegro de que se traduzca tan bien.

"I'm going up there."

Harry's response to the situation was inevitable, as was Hagrid's response to his response.

"'arry, yer can't," the half-giant said anxiously. "It's dangerous up there! Me 'n Sirius –"

"Hagrid," Harry said, tone kind but unyielding as it cut straight across him. "I can almost guarantee that whatever it is, I have faced worse."

"At what cost?" Sirius asked sharply.

Harry shrugged minutely. "One I'm willing to pay," he said simply. "I don't care if it's a portal to Hell itself: two of my friends are up there, and I am not going to leave them." He eyed the fortress. "Besides, whatever power's up there is both strong and… mentally powerful. Not psychic, but on the overlap with magic. Enough to disrupt any psychic communications I've been trying to get out, incidentally. Anyway: that's my field."

He turned to Hagrid, and his expression softened. "Hagrid, I'm not a child any more," he said gently. "I haven't been for a while now. I've learned the hard way how to look after myself. Ron and Hermione are smart and brave, and Hermione might well be nearly as powerful as I am. But they don't have my experience, or my skills, and if this thing is anything like what I think it is, they'll be in serious trouble." He laid a hand on the arm of his oldest friend. "Hagrid, if this is what I think it is, you can't protect them. And you definitely can't stop me. But if you tell me what you know about this place, then I can help them."

"We can help them," Sirius corrected firmly. "I know more about the Forest than you do, Harry, and I doubt this thing can do worse than Azkaban." He looked his godson dead in the eye. "You aren't leaving them? Fine. But I'm not leaving you."

Harry grimaced, but nodded, and he looked back at Hagrid, voice carrying an edge of urgency. "Please, Hagrid. We don't have much time."

Hagrid's kind beetle-black eyes looked sad, full of an obscure pain, before he nodded. "All righ'," he said. "The fortress is old. Really old. It's bin there at least as long as the centaurs 'ave – and from some of th' stories I've bin told, it was old when they firs' came." He looked up at the mist-bound fortress. "Usually, it looks like a ruin, like Hogwarts does ter most Muggles, unless they know it's there. But sometimes, you can catch a glimpse of it through th' trees, lookin' just like it does now. That's when it gets ter work. It's supposed to draw people in; witches an' wizards, centaurs, trolls, Sidhe, an' even Aragog's folk. Anythin' that can think an' gets too close."

"Not animals?" Harry asked.

"Not usually," Hagrid said. "They won' go near it, ghosts neither."

"Sounds like a dementor," Sirius said darkly. "Or a bunch of them."

"Dementors don't attract people," Harry said, though his tone wasn't exactly one of disagreement.

"I wouldna' believed it myself," Hagrid said. "I didn', at firs'. But I've seen one or two too many people go missin' in the Forest, right around here. An' once…" He shivered. "When I was jus' learnin' ter be Gamekeeper, righ' after I got expelled… One nigh', I 'eard screams. I thought someone was in trouble, so I went runnin' up towards the fortress. As I got close, it all turned quiet. I was curious at firs', an' cautious, but soon, it was jus' like I was sleepwalkin'. Ol' Mr Ogg, the Gamekeeper before me, only jus' found me in time an' tol' me about this place." He looked haunted. "I steered clear o' it, after that, an' tried ter all I could: keep people away."

Most people would have been at least unnerved by this. Harry's expression, however, just hardened. "Hagrid," he said. "Please go and get Agent Braddock and Professor Dumbledore. Tell them what you told me, and that me and Sirius are investigating." His eyes began to burn golden-white, voice carrying that deadly echo. "And tell them that if I have to, I'll burn down the Forest to get them back."

OoOoO

Ron stumbled through the mist, now a fog so thick that he could barely have seen his hand in front of his face at midday, let alone close to midnight. He could probably have eaten it with a spoon had he been so minded. He was cursing under his breath, both as a means of controlling his fear, and of siphoning off his frustration and pain as he stubbed his toes or banged an elbow on pieces of rock, hummocks of grass, and inconveniently jutting out pieces of masonry and bronze. As an unexpected bonus, it also distracted from the fact that he was hungry.

However, he was doing so under his breath after what felt like a good ten minutes shouting for Hermione and getting steadily diminishing responses, he'd finally started listening to his instincts. Both they and long experience with Harry were warning him that drawing attention to himself in a situation like this was a bad idea. Instead, he should try and retrace his steps and find a way out. Once he'd done that, he reasoned, he might have better luck finding Hermione – or at the very least, he could give her something to follow, and maybe get someone to help. Someone like Harry.

A momentary surge of bitter anger jabbed at him as Harry's name drifted across his mind. At first, it was at Harry, for getting him into this. In short order, however, it was redirected with a certain amount of embarrassment and self-recrimination towards Ron himself – after all, Harry hadn't exactly asked for Ron to follow him (or for Hermione to follow Ron, come to that).

As his conscious mind dwelt upon this, his subconscious, considerably more alert, spotted something – a shadow in the mist, visible one moment, gone the next. He didn't recognise it; it was vague and indistinct, too fast for Ron to get any impression other than 'approximately human'. He wasn't even sure if it hadn't been some sort of trick of the light. His subconscious, not afflicted with such doubts, made him draw his wand, body settling into a tension that could explode into violence or flight at a moment's notice. He debated remaining silent for a few moments, then opted against it – chances were good that they'd already seen him.

"Who's there?" he demanded, voice sharp, but cracking a little.

There was no response. Instead, the fog seemed to swirl suddenly off to one side, and on instinct, Ron whipped around, pointing his wand at it.

"I know you're there," he said defiantly. "I saw you."

Still there was silence. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Ron saw another shadow, the same shape, blurring across his field of vision. Twisting fast, faster than he had ever moved before, fast enough to have impressed Harry and Professor Cassidy both had they been there to see it, and unleashed a blasting curse. The bolt of magic shot into the fog and vanished, the echoes of Ron's shout and a muted detonation off in the distance several long seconds later being the only evidence of its passage.

Breathing faster now, Ron turned on the spot, wand up and eyes wide, scanning for the slightest evidence of whoever or whatever was stalking him. But there was no sign.

He turned, slower this time, before suddenly spinning around. Nothing.

Finally, he let out a small sigh of relief. Maybe he'd scared them off, or at least made them step back and think. Give it another few minutes, he thought, and he'd resume looking for a way out. For several long, long minutes, he waited, straining every sense he knew he had, and a few he'd never imagined.

Nothing.

His breathing finally slowed, and he made to take a step forward. Then, he stopped, realising two things.

First, he'd got so turned around that he no longer had any idea where he'd come from.

Second, he could hear breathing.

Slowly, gulping, he held his breath. The sound of breathing continued; steady, deep breathing, of something large and powerful at rest. And it was coming from right behind him.

He gripped his wand all the tighter and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of his own. Then, he spun, raising his wand, a curse on his lips.

It couldn't have taken more than an instant for him to turn, but that made no difference. His wand hand was instantaneously caught in a cold and crushing grip, one that ground bones together like dry bundled twigs. Another hand reached out almost negligently, yet still almost faster than he could see, taking him by the jaw in a deceptively light grip that nevertheless promised the ability to crush it to powder with a mere flex of finger muscles, or rip it off like a chicken leg with a lazy flick of the wrist.

The figure was notably taller than Ron, and far broader across the shoulders. Even at rest, something about him spoke of coiled, effortless power, as if he could tear the young wizard in half like another man would a sheet of paper. Dressed in black, practical muggle clothing from head to toe, with barely a sliver of skin showing on his entire body, and that on his brow, between dark, reflective goggles and tied back long dark hair, he should have been unidentifiable. Yet by his disguise, his true self, his impossible identity, was revealed.

The Winter Soldier towered over Ron, holding his only means of defence in one hand, and his very life in the other. Slowly, he tilted his head at the terrified teenager, regarding him like a cat might regard a mouse. A mere heartbeat later, Ron hit the nearest bronze wall in a flat trajectory, a hollow boom reverberating through the fortress, deafening him as a whole fireworks display of flashing lights left him blind. As a small part of him realised in utter horror, he'd been thrown – he hadn't even seen the man move.

Head ringing, stomach heaving, mouth filling with blood, he tried to scramble to his feet but found he couldn't keep them. Half lurching upright, he scrabbled around for his wand for what seemed like an eternity, trying to peer through the flashing lights, until he realised it was right there, in his hand. He stared at it uncomprehendingly for another eternity, before his sluggish brain was cudgelled into motion and looked up. The Winter Soldier hadn't moved after throwing Ron what had to be at least twenty feet. Instead, he seemed to be watching Ron, almost like… he was waiting for something.

"What are you waiting for?" Ron demanded. Or rather, that's what he meant to say. Between thought and act, the words were translated into "wuddyawaingfor?"

The Soldier just stared at him.

Slowly, arm trembling, Ron raised his wand and tried to line up both aim and thoughts for a curse. The first attempt yielded nothing more than a shower of sparks. The second yielded something a little more tangible, but barely more than a fizzing blob that drifted at least six feet to the Soldier's left like a dandelion blossom on the breeze. The Soldier watched it pass, then turned back, tilting his head once more in a strangely familiar kind of regard.

It seemed almost amused, Ron thought with a surge of blinding rage that this-this-this thing dared find anything funny, that he couldn't pay it back as it deserved. That surge was promptly replaced with another surge, just as overwhelming. This one, however, was of bile, as his battered body registered its displeasure. The unpleasant splatter was followed by more heaving, coughing, and spitting. And throughout it all, the Soldier just watched.

"Come on then," Ron said eventually, once he'd managed to get his guts under control and stagger to something like an upright position. His voice was weak and unsteady, slurred and punch-drunk, but seething with defiance. "You wan' a fight? 'm right here!"

The Soldier tilted his head first one way, then the other, resembling an owl, or perhaps a cat. Then, he looked up, past Ron. Instinctively, Ron followed his gaze. He'd landed at the foot of a set of stone stairs; worn and crumbling, they led up into the mist. Away from the Soldier. Who, he was acutely aware, could close the twenty foot gap between them within instants – he'd seen Harry move, and, impossibly, the Soldier seemed to be even faster.

As he realised that, he realised something else, too, causing his stomach to drop through the floor. He knew why the Soldier hadn't moved. Now, two conflicting impulses, ancient and elemental, warred within him:

Fight? Or Flight?

Another long moment later, he swore savagely under his breath and scrambled, half-lurching up the stairs as fast as his treacherous body would carry him.

The Soldier watched him go. Then, he set off after him. Not at a run, not even at a jog, but at a measured, predatory stalk.

The hunt was on.

OoOoO

Hermione fumbled and stumbled her way through the mists, body shivering like a reed in the breeze, looking for a wall. Initially, she had been looking for Ron, and she was still keeping both eyes and ears out for him. However, the fact was that calling out for him hadn't worked. If anything, as both had been calling to each other, voices distorted through mist and fog, they had increasingly ended up further and further away from each other.

Therefore, logic dictated that she should try and find a wall. If she found a wall, she reasoned, she could then find a way out. Once she had done that, she could find a way back in, perhaps with some string, and methodically search the fortress for Ron. The string would be to show him, or her (and anyone she managed to get to help her, which if she had her way, would be everyone of her age and over in Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and anyone else she could lay hands on) the way out.

All of this was perfectly reasonable, and should, therefore, have been calming. But it wasn't. Instead, the temperature was dropping like a stone; her breath was misting ever thicker in front of her numbing face, and her hands getting colder and colder. And there was… a feeling. She couldn't say what was causing it precisely. It wasn't like being watched, exactly. There was an element of that, but it was something more. If she was really pushed, she might say that it was like someone else was walking in her shadow, matching her movements almost perfectly.

Almost.

Pushing this away with a shiver that had very little to do with the cold, she concentrated, conjuring the bluebell flames that she'd mastered back in First Year. While fire was Harry's area of mastery, especially when it came to wandless magic, Hermione was no slouch and had been steadily training herself to be able to cast every wanded spell she knew wandlessly.

While this wasn't a small task, given her pre-existing (and steadily expanding) repertoire and other calls on her time, she was making good progress, largely thanks to the advice of Professor Zatara, Ms Maximoff, and Prince Loki. This was one of the first spells she'd managed, wanded or wandless, and even now, cold and both rationally and irrationally afraid, it came easily to her, and a small ball of pale blue flames was soon bobbing along in her hands.

Looking down at it, she felt a good deal more cheerful, despite the pins-and-needles effect of blood rushing back into her hands. This was something tangible, evidence that she could actually control her situation, even if it was only in the smallest of ways.

With a renewed spark of hope and determination, she continued heading forward, until finally stopping as a stone wall loomed out of the mist. A thrill of victory ran through her, one only slightly attenuated by the fact that the mist was so thick that she'd only realised that she was about to walk into a wall when she'd stubbed her toe on it. Ignoring the pain, she juggled the ball of flame and brushed the cold stone with her finger tips, before setting out at a careful sidle along the wall, fingers never leaving the wall.

In time, smooth stone turned to rougher wood, almost like a vein, or a root, growing through the wall of the fortress – no, not through, she decided after a moment's curious examination. It was almost like it had been incorporated into the wall. Or perhaps vice versa. Abandoning her curiosity, she carried on. If she followed the walls, she'd find a way out.

Unfortunately, she was wrong.

After about ten minutes of wall-walking, she slipped, letting out an involuntary shriek as she slid down an icy metallic slope, rolling to a stop with a graceless thump.

"… ow," she muttered, grimacing. The bluebell flames had gone out, which was hardly surprising. This did not make her any more comfortable with the pitch darkness that had replaced it, however. Yet as she sat up, a half-light began to emerge, revealing that the room she was in was not, as she had feared, an impossible trap with no way out.

The room itself was round, and entirely bronze. While it was barely eight feet in any direction, it had four corridors, illuminated by dozens of those strange foxfire symbols, glowing on the walls, the floor, even the ceiling, vanishing down the corridors into darkness. That was less comforting, as was the fact that they shifted under gaze. Plus, none of the corridors had a slope, and there was the fact that there was no clear sign of a trapdoor or chute to drop her in here in the first place…

"Don't panic," she said to herself, attempting her usual clinical calm. "There are four corridors. That means four possible ways out. It might be enchanted, but if I fell in here, then, logically, there must be a way out. It's just a matter of time."

Besides, she added inwardly, if she really had to blast her way out, she was pretty sure she could do it. She didn't like chaos magic much, but that wasn't to say that it couldn't be useful.

She stood up, conjuring the bluebell flames again, for warmth, light, and frankly, comfort. Then, she conjured a ball of twine, using a sticking charm to ensure one end stayed stuck in the middle of the floor, before setting off down the first tunnel. It had to lead somewhere, after all.

OoOoO

Harry examined the thick, somehow concentrated mist, eyes narrowed. "Dementors?" he suggested.

"No," Sirius said, absolutely certain. "It's cold, but it's the wrong kind of cold. This feels natural."

Harry made a sound that indicated he didn't totally agree. "It's mostly natural," he said. "But only mostly. It's colder than it should be."

"Dark magic has that effect sometimes," Sirius said. "Still impenetrable?"

"My psychic senses aren't getting anything clear, magical senses neither," Harry said. "They're getting a lot, but it's like static on a radio – I can't pick anything out. Not anything precise, anyway."

"What about imprecise?"

"It's not caused by Dementors, but it's not that different from a Dementor in terms of what it causes," Harry said. "Fear."

"That's boggarts," Sirius pointed out.

Harry half shrugged. "Maybe fear's not the right word, then," he said. "But when I was probing it, it probed back, and it wasn't looking for anything nice."

Sirius took a deep breath. "So if we step in there, we're seeing our worst memories," he said.

"Or our worst fears," Harry said. "And considering my luck, I somehow doubt that we're just going to be seeing them."

Sirius nodded grimly, shifting his stance until he was back to back with Harry. As he did, Harry was a little surprised to find that he was, slightly, the taller of the two. Intellectually, he knew that he'd grown a lot over the last year or so (almost two years, depending how you counted it), one of many changes he'd undergone over the last year. In many ways, it was arguably the least of those changes, and his training had led to rapid adjustment past the usual teenage gangling clumsiness.

Still, part of him idly mused, when he'd first met Sirius, he'd been nearly a foot shorter. Sirius even weighed down by Azkaban, which had frayed his sanity to the point of mental regression (though how much of that had been real and how much had been acting, Harry would probably never know – sometimes, Sirius made Natasha look easy to read), he'd been unmistakeably a tall man. How quickly things changed.

"Don't go offensive," Sirius said quietly. "Not unless you're using something like the Patronus. Even if whatever this is doesn't feed on your emotions or your power, it probably won't work."

"You think?" Harry asked rhetorically.

"I think that this is a bad place," Sirius said, tensing for a moment as the mist shifted suddenly. For a long moment, he was silent, then, forcing himself to sound casual, he added, "And if it was just a matter of throwing about enough power, someone would have noticed and cleaned it up long ago. Besides, this smells of something out of the spirit world, and you know as well as I do how tricky that can be."

"Good point," Harry muttered, eyes darting around, ears pricked. He could hear whispers, words on the breeze and the edge of hearing. "Plus, I could get excited and fry everyone and everything on the hilltop, which would be bad."

"Good point," Sirius echoed, grim amusement in his voice, before letting out a wry chuckle. "I can't say that this was how I was planning our evening stroll to go. Still, at least you aren't bored."

"Definitely better than writing a History of Magic essay or making something up for Divination," Harry agreed with a lightness he didn't feel. "Besides, as far as outings go, this is par for the course for me."

He heard the beginnings of a bark of laughter, before it was sharply cut off. At the same moment, Harry realised he could no longer feel his godfather's shoulders against his upper-back. Once, he would have whirled, frantically looking for the other man, hunting for even a glimpse. Now, after bitter experience, and lessons in both senses and caution, he calmed his breathing and focused on the situation, working rationally through the probabilities.

First, something had taken Sirius. Something fast, so fast that a combat hardened wizard with reflexes trained to deal with apparating opponents hadn't even had time to make some kind of noise of discomfort. Unlikely, but not implausible.

Second, he was in some kind of sensory illusion. That was very likely, given what he'd sensed of this place. But good enough to make it seem as if Sirius had vanished from close contact with the psychic, magical, and physical senses of someone trained by Magneto, Betsy Braddock, the Red Room, the Winter Soldier, and Doctor Strange? In his humble opinion, he thought not. Some illusion was likely, yes, but that wasn't all of it.

Third, someone or something had bent space around them, separating him and Sirius. That… implied some very frightening things about the power in this fortress. But it made a great deal of sense. And it would explain the complete lack of warning.

Yes, that made sense, he decided. Some combination of the second and the third. Perhaps also the first, technically.

While he resolved that, he started reaching out with his senses, carefully scanning around as best he could. He wasn't half as sensitive as the likes of Loki, Wanda, or Maddie, and almost certainly not as sensitive as Strange (like many things about Strange, no one really knew the full extent of his abilities in that regard, but Harry's nose told him that senses were an area that Strange had particularly refined). However, he'd picked up a fair bit, enough to paint a picture of what was around him.

Unfortunately, that picture was mostly mist, mist, and more mist. With concentrations of fog. The mist itself, though… that was another matter.

It was alive.

Well, alive might be the wrong way to put it, he had to admit. He'd felt spirits, even ghosts, like this before. It wasn't a ghost, but it wasn't anything typically living, either. He hadn't felt anything like this before, not exactly. Yet it was familiar. In fact, he was pretty sure that if his psychic senses had been half as refined back then as they were now, he'd have recognised an echo of this in the Disir. Of course, the Disir had coherent minds of their own. They had choice. This… this didn't.

It had intelligence, of a sort. But it was reactive, responding to what it encountered. Yet it felt. Oh, it definitely felt. It felt rage, and fear, and grief, and loss, and pain. All of that had congealed into a pool of cold, vicious and all-embracing malice, a numbing venom that teased around the edges of any sentient being it encountered, looking to alleviate its suffering for even the briefest moment by forcing others to suffer too.

Harry wasn't yet sure whether that would make it any more or less dangerous.

"All right," he said quietly, pushing his worries aside for the moment and applying Gorakhnath's lessons to centre himself as best he could. "What have you got for me?"

"Story of our lives, isn't it?"

Harry twitched. It wasn't the jump it would once have been, but considering what he'd been through, it was no small expression of shock and he cursed himself for it. After all, it wasn't the first time that he'd heard his own voice coming from somewhere other than his own mouth. Of course, he thought as he turned, that voice had also been somewhat deeper with age.

Prepared, he didn't do much more than raise an eyebrow at what he saw: himself.

Well, not exactly himself. This version of him was leaner, bones standing out more sharply against paler skin that was marred by dark shadows under his eyes. His emerald eyes gleamed with a cold, calculating and predatory light, one that suggested its owner was deciding how they could most efficiently use and dispose of the person they were beholding.

His outfit was different to what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't much of a surprise, either: a blood red jacket, so dark it was almost black, a black shirt with the familiar simple phoenix design underneath – except that this one was white, almost too bright to look at, and at the base, a set of talons embraced a five pointed red star, and below those was a set of practical black combat trousers that looked like they could be concealing any number of sins.

Harry looked his double up and down, before quirking a small smile. "You know, if you were going for my nightmares, I think you got a couple of them mixed up," he said mildly. "The look's original, don't get me wrong, but putting the two together like that? It loses some of the impact."

"Well, we've never been one for sticking to the original playbook, now have we?" his double replied with cool amusement.

"We've never been one for the royal we, either," Harry said dryly. "Should I chalk that up to you being a bit rusty or my excellent psychic shields?"

His double's expression didn't change, nor did his tone. But there was, very briefly, a flicker of annoyance in the eyes. "We as in the both of us," he said

Harry smirked. "Just checking," he said. "The both of us, is it?"

"Oh yes," his double said. "I'm you, in every way that matters, just a little more… bizarre."

"Neatly describes the situation," Harry said mildly. "So what's it going to be now? Are we going to have this out physically, or mentally? I mean, you've got the power to manifest. The will? Now there's a question." He tilted his head, studying the other Harry. "A lot of minds went into making up you, didn't they? A lot of fear, grief, pain… and rage, of course."

He glanced around at the mists, as if seeing the Fortress they concealed. "They thing about castles is that they're very good for keeping things in, as well as out. Especially if they're almost certainly warded to do exactly that. So if, say, a lot of people happened to die here a long time ago, and they were alone, and scared, and enraged at their enemies, at any allies who might have failed to save them, at the fact they were trapped and dying…" He looked at his double, something curiously like pity in his eyes. "They might have ended up something like you."

"Or something like you," his double replied, circling Harry, who turned slowly with him. "Not the surface, I mean. Not the brave, the oh so very noble and heroic mask that you wear; the wounded warrior, battered and bruised in body and soul, but never failing to get up and stand for what is right." He stopped, and smiled a smile full of teeth. "I'm talking about what's underneath."

"The Dark Phoenix?" Harry asked wryly. "Or the Red Son?"

"Oh, let's not deceive ourselves," his double said, smirking. "We both know that you had darkness aplenty long before you became either."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "I've never lied about that," he said.

"No," his double agreed, smirk widening. "You haven't. Because you thought that if you could admit to it, you could master it, that you could deny its hold over you. But it is part of you, right down to the bone."

Between from one step and the other, he shifted, and Harry was now looking at his eleven year old self, clad in robes he was still adjusting to, wearing battered glasses and wielding a wand he barely knew how to use, while an uncharacteristically cruel smile danced on his face. "It's been with you from the beginning," he said, voice higher, before stepping again.

"And it'll be with you to the end," the Dark Phoenix said, the light and heat of a banked furnace pouring from eyes and between opened lips.

Another step, and a figure that Harry vaguely recognised was looking at him. He was clad in armour so dark it was impossible to tell in the strange light of the mists whether it was darkest green or true black, with strange and swirling golden symbols upon it, with dark mail and brown leather beneath, all covered by a cloak of forest green pinned with an eye-catching golden brooch.

Indeterminately light-coloured eyes gleamed maliciously as they looked out of a dark helm, crested with a golden dragon, while a longsword with a strip of gold protruding from the hilt was held nonchalantly in one hand. This one radiated power, wilder and more fey than any Harry had encountered until tonight. And yet… he'd seen this before. A vision, perhaps?

He raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I'll bite," he said. "What are you going for here?"

"Let's go with revenge," a strange voice said, metallic and echoing with dark amusement.

"Right. See, I don't even know who that's even supposed to be."

A chuckled echoed out of the armour, reverberating through the helm. "You will," he said.

Then, he stepped again, and suddenly, Harry was looking at a tall, slender figure, whose boyishly handsome face marred by pale, waxy skin, gleaming red eyes, and a cold smile.

"Some things, Harry," Voldemort said, twirling his wand. "Are just meant to be."

"Voldemort flirting with me," Harry remarked mildly, ruthlessly crushing a surge of fury. "Never thought I'd see that. Kind of wish I hadn't. Probably not having the effect you're going for, though."

"Isn't it?" the Voldemort double asked, eyes gleaming knowingly. "I suppose, though, that the nightmares of your childhood have been replaced."

Another step, and this time, a different form, a shift in voice to one that made every hair on Harry's neck stand up, his heart stopping for a long second.

"They don't stir you as they once did," Yelena Belova, the Red Room's Black Widow, said with lazy lasciviousness, before smiling wickedly. "But that can be solved."

OoOoO

Ron, panting, dived through another doorway, kicking it shut behind him, and immediately began looking for another exit. Preferably, to somewhere higher, a vantage point. Then he could at least get his bearings, buy himself some time, and maybe, just maybe, spot Hermione.

It had started well, or as well as it could, the stairs taking him into a tower, rising towards the clear skies. But every level he'd gone up, he'd found himself further away from the tantalising sight of the stars in the night sky. When he tried to go down, to see if it would take him back up, he found himself even further down, with only the faintest glimpse of starlight to accompany him. He'd paced back and forth for a while, trying to work out an alternative option, tension and fear building within him as his strategic mind tried to sort out this problem, to discover a way up, a way out.

Once the atmosphere around him had risen to a fever pitch, he'd heard more footsteps, and for a moment, he'd hoped they were Hermione's. But calling her name had got no response, save for the steady, heavy tread to increase its pace ever so slightly. As the footsteps got closer, he began to detect what could just possibly have been the very slightest grind and whine of gears and mechanisms on the very edge of hearing, combined with deep, steady breathing coming down the stairs.

Once it had got within a single floor of him, his nerve had cracked and he'd bolted, skipping down the stairs into deeper darkness, stumbling and slamming into walls before scrambling on, cursing himself for a coward and a fool within three levels. He should have taken the fight in the open, not been herded down here like a sheep. Wherever here was, he added to himself, as he realised that he'd reached the bottom of the stairs, the very bowels of this horrible place.

As he did, he stopped to listen, straining his ears. There were no footsteps, nor a whine of machinery. He relaxed ever so slightly, and glanced around. Not much of a clue, since everything was pitch-black.

"Lumos," he muttered, and was instantly rewarded with the sight of what seemed like a small arena, walled with that same strange bronze as above, bronze that came to life with those shifting foxfire symbols in apparent response. There were two corridors leading off it; one he'd just entered from, and another on the other side, shrouded in darkness. That, Ron assumed, was where he'd be going next.

Heaving a sigh, both to express his irritation and try and calm himself, he strode forward. Halfway across, he froze, and whipped around on instinct, responding to a glimpse of something silvery in the corner of his eye. Yet even as he stared intently into the darkness, raising his wand higher, doing his best to make the spell stronger, there was nothing there – just more strange, bronze walls.

He turned back the way he'd been going and froze. For a long moment, he said nothing, mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out. Eventually, one word emerged in a strangled, broken, desperate whisper.

"Dad?"

OoOoO

Hermione looked around again, touching each surface that she could reach, and huffed a breath of frustration. Each time she thought she might encounter something pliable, something that shifted for just a moment under her scrutiny and efforts, the pliability vanished like it had never been there.

So instead, once again she met unyielding bronze, and a strange humming sensation – enchantments, and active ones, much more active than whatever had been up above. Maybe they'd been better preserved down here? Despite it all, she thought as she looked down, examining the floor, had to admit that she was curious.

It was at that point that she noticed something about the reflection beneath her. Something… odd.

Frowning, she crouched down, holding the flames closer to the bronze, her reflection naturally mirroring her movements and puzzled frown. For several long minutes she stared at her reflection, and her reflection stared back, neither showing any sign of enlightenment about what was off.

Then she realised what was wrong, something both subtle and obvious.

She was holding her flames in her right hand. And so was her reflection.

She stumbled backwards, breathing fast, slipping up and landing on her backside, flames dying once again. But the room didn't dim, with the foxfire runes burning all the brighter as she summoned up crackling red chaos magic, casting about frantically for an enemy.

Unfortunately, she didn't look down.

Moments later, the foxfire runes burning with a bright, almost gleeful light, and the floor was rippling, casting strange shadows as it settled like a pond returning to equilibrium following a thrown stone. Soon, the only disturbance was the fading echoes of a scream.

OoOoO

Normally, Harry's movements when danger beckoned were compared to a predator's stalk. Now, though, he resembled nothing so much as a mouse frozen before a snake, terror simultaneously urging flight and locking muscles as if they were in hydraulic clamps as the echo – the utterly, impossibly, obscenely realistic echo – of Yelena Belova advanced on him.

Oh, every feature was accurate, down to the last millimetre, but that wasn't what disturbed, or even what he recognised first. No, it was that look she'd had, of hunger, obsession, and incipient madness, while confidence warred with insecurity. Sometimes – and only sometimes – it was replaced with a cold and cruel satisfaction, when she had got what she wanted.

When she had got him.

His rational brain was screaming at him that this wasn't the woman who haunted his nightmares, that this was just another trick, that he should just snap out of it. His hindbrain was screaming in hatred, demanding he burn this entire fucking hilltop to the ground, if not to the Earth's core. And the rest of him was caught in spiderwebs of unreasoning terror, as his senses picked out bits and pieces that made it all seem so much more real: the scent of skin, all cold gun-metal and the salty sweat of anticipation. The sound of her uniform as her insouciant, lazy stroll made it creak and rustle. The sight of her, all ice blue eyes and exultation in the power she wielded.

She could have been there in moments, but instead, she chose to draw it out, letting him see her coming.

"My Red Son," she purred. "Look how you've grown."

Harry swallowed, eyes wide and heart hammering, and said nothing as she circled him like a hunter assessing a wolf at bay. Suddenly, yet slowly, languidly, she stepped in close, close enough for him to feel her breath on his skin.

Icy cold finger-tips brushed his face, and he shivered. An almost inaudible chuckle of satisfaction followed, one that Harry did not so much hear as feel.

"You still know your place," she said. "So much you have tried to bury. You think that you have moved on, that I am just one of the fading scars of your past wounds. You think that you are safe in the arms and hearts of those you claim to love." Suddenly, fingers crooked into claws, nails digging in deeper than should have been possible, forcing him to look down into her eyes, dancing with mad, sadistic glee. "But at heart, mily moy, you will always belong to me," she said.

Harry tried to grit out a denial as his skin crawled in revulsion and horror. All that came out was an incoherent snarl, but it conveyed the message all the same, enough to receive a response in the form of mocking laughter.

"Oh, you think otherwise?" she said, then leaned in. "You did before. Don't you remember?"

Harry twitched, but said nothing, bound by ties that he both raged against and could not define, much less break.

"Yes," she said. "I thought you would. It ended the same way it was always going to. The same way it always will. You are not what you were, my dear Red Son, no matter how much you deny it. You are my creature now. All that remains is to remind you of it. You will fight it, of course. Rage against it. Despise it. But in the end, you will always accept it. Because it is the truth, and the truth… is inevitable. Where to start, I wonder?" She wore a mock thoughtful expression for a moment, before smiling. "Two of your friends are here tonight," she murmured. "Two that I have never met. I will not share you, mily moy, but I can be persuaded to… tolerate one of them. Which one do you think I would like best?" She waved a hand idly. "You would have to dispose of the other first, but –"

Whatever she had been about to say next was cut off in a gurgle as Harry snatched her up by the throat. Eyes blazing gold as tears poured from, face contorted in a rictus of fury as both power and the scent of wood-smoke poured off him in waves, he met her gaze.

"How about we start with you!" he screamed hatefully, before slamming her downwards in an earth-shaking impact, simultaneous with a thunderous detonation of flame and telekinetic force that rattled the fortress. "You evil, hideous, foul… thing!"

He trailed off, a hundred epithets and curses, each fit to turn the air blue, lining up on his tongue, each jostling to be first as he kneeled in the crater, surrounded by ash, cracked earth, and scorched fragments of bone. In the end, though, after one stifled moment of incoherence, they all dissolved into a wracking howl of pain and rage which echoed its way up into the heavens.

For several minutes after, there was nothing. Just the sounds of cooling earth and thickening mist, interspersed with a deep, gulping, tear-filled breaths.

Then, there was a sound, repeated and rhythmic. It was applause.

"There it is," Harry's own voice said. His double was back, emerging from the mist, as unruffled as before. "Just what I wanted to find, and find it I did. That rage; at stupidity, at mindless, petty cruelty, and at the limits you place on yourself, that tie you up and leave you vulnerable. That hatred; for bullies and abusers most of all. And you aren't the only victim whose loss you bemoan, are you?"

Harry looked up, slowly, and painfully, but said nothing, his burning gaze speaking volumes. His double, ignorant or careless of its meaning, let out a false sigh of sadness and shook his head.

"Poor Luna. All alone as she was hounded out of her Tower in the middle of the night. All alone as she searched the castle for her things. All alone as she died, lying on cold stones, choking on her own blood."

He smirked.

"And that after you'd gone to such trouble to show her housemates the consequences of their actions, too. The message just didn't sink in, did it? You wanted to rectify it, you would have, but dear old daddy intervened. All the lessons on responsibility from Professor Xavier, Professor Cassidy, and the luscious Lady Braddock – really, who would have thought someone that young and supposedly rebellious would be such a stick in the mud? – and every single one of them crumpled like parchment."

Harry's jaw clenched, and he said nothing.

"Then there was Dudley," his double purred maliciously. "Your cousin. Your blood-kin. And you murdered him."

"There wasn't anything of 'him' to murder," Harry said coldly, getting to his feet. The tear tracks remained, but the tears themselves were long gone, frozen like ice.

"Really? Weren't you the one who said that the only thing becoming a vampire changed was his diet?" his double smirked. "I certainly wasn't." He leaned in. "Even when he was still human, when you fought in the Red Room, you made him suffer for what he did to you. When you swatted him away, you didn't know he would survive. You crushed him, you taunted him, and you left him for dead. Where was the famed forgiveness then, I wonder? You had him at your mercy, you know that you could have put him under. To be sure, lugging him around wouldn't have been easy, but it wouldn't have been that hard."

"He didn't want help, or mercy," Harry said quietly.

"Ah," his double said, drawing it out, smile widening into a jack-o-lantern's grin. "I see. So rationally, he, someone you'd known, someone who hadn't been that bad once upon a time, wasn't worth even really trying to save when it wouldn't really have slowed you down. But at the same time, it was rational to risk everything, twice, on the chance that a lifelong psychic predator, a loyal hunting hound, might break her leash if you batted your pretty green eyes at her?"

"I was right," Harry said, voice carefully even. "Though I don't think it was my 'pretty green eyes' that did it."

"It was hers that did it for you, though, wasn't it?" his counterpart teased maliciously. "I mean, some of the thoughts in here…"

He reached up to tap Harry's skull. There was a blur, and Harry's hand shot out, crushing fingers in a vice-like grip, but as soon as they did, the fingers and the person they were attached to dissolved into mist. Harry stared at it hard for a second. A close observer might have noted another slight twitch, this one around his mouth.

"Touchy," Harry's counterpart said from a stone bench about ten feet behind him. He was now perched on a stone bench. "Now, what was I saying?" he went on. "Oh, yes, those thoughts…" He swilled the word around for a moment like he was tasting a fine wine, before tilting his head and smirking as Harry turned to look at him. This smirk looked disturbingly like Doctor Strange. "My, my, my," he said gleefully. "I think I might blush."

"Don't hold back on my account," Harry said coldly, tone and demeanour failing to conceal a flush in his own cheeks.

"I mean, I can't really blame you," his double said, so lightly that the unwary would have missed the twist of malice. "You did get quite a look at her in a nightie – a very short, very thin nightie – when she projected herself into your mind that night, didn't you? That's a vision that'll haunt anyone's dreams. She was looking for comfort, and while you just talked, don't tell me that part of you wasn't thinking about the alternatives."

"If it was, it was so small I didn't even notice it," Harry said, voice cool rather than cold. "I was distracted, I'll grant you that, but really?" One side of his mouth turned up in a mirthless half-smile. "Up until then, you were doing so well."

His double's expression flickered, anger sparking again, but more brightly this time. Then, it was gone in a moment, replaced by a smile of his own. As with all his expressions before, it carried a cruel edge, turning what could easily have been straightforward teasing into something nastier, designed to insinuate itself under the skin. And for all Harry's level responses, it wasn't entirely without success.

"That as may be," he said, again with that false lightness. "You bury these things deep, after all, and hope that they stay that way. And all those noble and knightly declarations of affection to your supposed lady love, anger's not the only thing you've been keeping bottled up, now is it? I've hardly touched the tip of the iceberg with your rage, but if that's an iceberg, then the rest is an ocean. And when it finds its way out…" The smile widened, showing teeth. "Daken, Gravemoss, Dudley, Lukin, Belova, Reynolds… the list goes on. All people who happened to be around when your desire for vengeance leaked out. You gave them the sort of intimacy that lovers can only dream of."

Harry glared, but said nothing, teeth gritted.

"Your dear lady Carol merely entwines briefly with your mind, rarely delving beneath the very surface, and only has your fingers brush over her body, while they, your bitterest enemies, have your greatest care and attention. The fullness of your mind poured into theirs as you tear them apart, your deepest intimacy as you rip them to shreds with fist and thought… they don't just see the surface of the ocean, they are embraced by it as it drowns them and swallows them whole. And when it does, that ocean sings."

He chuckled. "All while your dearest love barely skims the surface. Her treatment is almost perfunctory by comparison, an afterthought. Rarely has the word 'bloodlust' been a more appropriate description."

He tapped his chin. "And all of it is so remarkably… cold," he said. "You present yourself as someone passionate, fiery in both friendship and fury, but underneath, well. The Red Son was just a shadow of what you really are. He was a machine. You, on the other hand… it's one thing to have oil in your veins, and another entirely to have nothing but ice. You kill without turning a hair, you pour horrors into ruined minds at will, and you tease out knowledge and trust from all you encounter to make them dance on your strings. Even your oldest and truest friends, people who've put their lives on the line for you time and time again, are as much your puppets as your worst enemies. You've got so good at it that you don't even need to think any more, or tell one word of a lie. And you have them all fooled. You tell them that you're lying, and they trust every word you say."

He tilted his head, smirking again. "You know, Harry, I've come across a lot of monsters over the years. But none of them – absolutely none of them – has ever been so good at pretending to be anything else," he said, smooth and malicious. "But all acts must come to an end, and all actors must know that no matter how deeply buried they are in a role. You're angry, of course, and why wouldn't you be?" His eyes glinted with wicked amusement. "The truth is painful."

He leaned forward, before flowing into mist again, re-forming by Harry's right ear, making him freeze in place. "But it's still the truth, Harry," he said softly. "And that's why you're angry. Because I'm an imprint of you, a footprint on the fabric of reality. And as you know what I am, I know what you are. What I've told you is nothing more than what you know yourself to be, deep down inside." Hands slipped up the back of his head, sliding leisurely through his hair. "Aren't you tired of lying to yourself? Of bottling it all up, locking the truth of yourself away, and pretending to be less – not more, less – than what you are? You've opened doors in your head before, Harry. What's one more?"

Harry was silent for a long moment. Then, his shoulders shook. Once. Twice. Then a third, heralding a bubbling river of mocking laughter, one his double shied away from, for the first time looking uncertain.

"You've finally opened the door to madness, then," he said, recovering. "Interesting choice."

Harry didn't even blur: one moment, he was facing forward and laughing, the next he was facing his double, wrist in a grip that, this time, seemed unbreakable. He saw his double's uncertainty and smiled. It was a different smile to the one his double had worn, one that said its owner knew something the other didn't, a smile that 'I've got you right where I want you'. It was, in short, a Doctor Strange smile.

"I've walked through that door before," he said. "Then I walked back again. It wasn't all that interesting, after all."

Harry's smile sharpened as his double attempted to pull away from his grip – he might as well have tried to pull away from a planet.

"You know, you were right," he said conversationally. "You are basically my footprint on the world – or on whatever kind of spiritual entity you are. You took my form and a lot of other things besides. I'm not sure whether to be impressed with your power, or annoyed with myself." He looked thoughtful. "You were right about the darkness, too, to an extent," he continued. "I won't lie, some of the things you said… and did… they rattled me more than I'd like."

He twisted his wrist, forcing his double downwards, expression writing a story of incredulous pain.

"But you made a mistake. You may have got all kinds of secrets when you poured yourself into my mould, but that came at a cost. A big one."

"Enlighten me," his double gritted out, form shimmering and contorting, utterly belying its apparently human shape as it tried to slither free. But Harry's grip did not relent, his eyes flaring gold as he locked his reflection in place.

"First of all, you only got half the picture," Harry said. "About me, mostly, but about people in general. You saw, but you didn't understand. You see the darkness in me – and it's there alright, I've never denied that – and you think I'm a monster that's just lying to himself about what he is. But you don't understand: I am who, and what, I choose to be. It's not all that complicated, you know: I could be a monster. I choose not to."

"Because it's so easy," his double mocked.

"Simple and easy aren't the same," Harry said mildly, shrugging. "Some days, it's harder than others." He hunkered down to looked his double in the eye. "You saw my worst days, the very darkest moments, and you assumed that they were what defined me. No, that they were all that defined me. And if you're what I think you are, I can understand why – you, all of what makes you up, died slowly and painfully, alone and afraid. You died horribly, being created out of the very worst moment in your lives. Of course you think that that's what defines someone. It's not your fault that you're wrong."

He sighed.

"Now, second of all, you took a few forms, but mostly you just spent all that energy focusing on me, so intent on becoming something like me that you didn't realise what it meant. You learned a lot of my weaknesses, and it looks like you got some of my strengths, too. Yet again, you saw, but you didn't understand. You see, here's the thing: you got those weaknesses too."

As this settled into his double's mind, a faint glow of heat appeared around his hand, accompanied by a sound of sizzling flesh and a suppressed howl of pain. "Physical form, for one thing," he said, and smiled amiably as his double shot him a hate-filled glare. "More importantly, though, if I have a flaw, it's that I talk too much, especially when I think I have the advantage. Which is more often than you'd think, given that I tend to bluff on a bad hand."

He stood, yanking his double to his knees, before hurling him to the ground.

"See, there's a reason I didn't really respond to what you were droning on about," he said. "All that time, I was figuring out what... frequency, I suppose, you were operating on. Getting a sense of you. Part of it's because I wanted to get hold of you, like now. But mostly, I figured that if you were doing this to me, you'd be doing something very similar to Ron, Hermione, and probably Sirius, too. Therefore, if I could find bundles of power like you, operating on more or less the same frequency, then I could find them. Which I have. Thanks for that."

A smile, cold and hard, flickered across his face, there and gone like lightning. "Now," he said. "Since I've listened to enough of you to fill me up with bullshit, it's only fair that I return the favour."

Harry's eyes flared, and his double's mouth was forced open. Then, slowly, pointedly, he drew his wand.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure how this is going to play out – what comes next, I mean," he said conversationally, as he pushed it between the double's open jaws. "I think your Belova stunt cost you a bit, though, and I think that this will cost a fair bit more. What I am pretty sure of, though, is that this is going to hurt." He bared his teeth. "And I'm certain that I'm going to enjoy it. Do you know what it is? I'll give you a hint."

He leaned in, and whispered two words.

"Expecto Patronum."

OoOoO

"Nicely done."

Harry looked up, seeing Sirius stroll towards him. He had no doubts that it was Sirius. Not only could he feel Sirius' mind in a way that even this thing couldn't replicate, the mist had fled from him. That, as it happened, was intensely satisfying, almost as much as casting that Patronus charm. He'd used a memory of him, Ron, and Hermione, together and having fun on the train at the start of Third Year. In other words, before… well, before his life had changed. While that had largely been for the better, the choice of memory felt appropriate.

"You saw?" he asked.

"The last bit of it," Sirius said. "I'd been trying to follow your scent it sent me round in circles, but I've had a bit of experience at dealing with that. I spotted you when you'd pinned something that looked a lot like you down, just before you hit it with what looked like the mother of all Patronuses."

Harry flushed a little. "I suppose I did overdo it a bit," he admitted.

Sirius chuckled. "A bit," he said, looking around. "Not that I'm complaining – the view's definitely better now."

The area around them was clear, for about forty feet in all directions – including upwards. That meant the mist far enough to vanish into corners and cracks and doorways if he showed it any particular attention, but still present. Still lurking. And still powerful. As Harry was very much aware, he'd wounded the beast, not killed it – if whatever this thing was could even be killed.

"What was it like before, then?" he asked, trying a little too hard to be casual. Sirius' expression said that he wasn't fooled.

"Probably much the same as you," he said readily. "Old fears, old nightmares. Dementors, Voldemort, your parents – that didn't last, considering – and the rat, of course. Even my brother made an appearance, as a harbinger of doom, which I suppose shows that this place at least got something right."

"You seem remarkably unbothered, considering," Harry said after a moment.

Sirius' relaxed countenance faded, leaving a much grimmer expression behind. "I spent twelve years experiencing this every single day, unlike in Azkaban, I can actually fight back." He barked a grim laugh. "If anything, it's actually kind of cathartic."

Harry winced, and nodded, a new respect for his godfather blooming. Twelve years of something like that, if less… personal, unable to fight back, or even really defend himself? Harry wasn't sure what would have happened to him, but it wouldn't have been pleasant. And yet here Sirius was, hale and more or less hearty, as if it rolled off him like water off a duck's back.

But… that wasn't the whole story. He could also see the wand in Sirius' hands, and the white knuckles of his grip. Having experience with something was not the same as being fine with repeating it.

"I've been through one or two things like this too," he said eventually. "And I can make this thing hurt."

The subtext was clear, 'and Ron and Hermione aren't half so 'fortunate' as either of us.'

"Sounds like a good starting point, then," Sirius said readily.

OoOoO

"Dad?" Ron repeated, disbelief warring with grief, hope, and utter confusion.

The silvery transparent figure of Arthur Weasley smiled at him. "Hello, Ron," he said.

"I… you're here?"

"I am," Arthur said. "You're probably wondering why I didn't come visit you before."

Ron swallowed and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"I couldn't," Arthur said. "HYDRA… had some very clever traps. Even some that worked on a ghost. They even had a necromancer. Not that anyone bothered looking for them after the necromancer was apparently destroyed," he added bitterly, before smiling warmly. "But I'm back now. I've been watching you and all the others."

"They've seen you?" Ron asked, blinking.

"No," Arthur said, a tinge of impatience in his voice. "Definitely not. Not yet."

"Why?" Ron demanded, both baffled and increasingly angry.

"Because I wanted to see what you've all done," Arthur said.

"Done?"

"About my murder…"

"I'm training, dad, I promise, I'm learning how to fight, how to hunt HYDRA," Ron said, words pouring out like a geyser, eager and desperate for his father's approval, even when he should have known better.

"… and my murderer," the thing that looked very much like the ghost of Arthur Weasley finished, as if Ron had not spoken.

"Your murderer? He's dead," Ron said, confused. But there was a niggling doubt at the back of his mind, and there had been for a while, ever since that dragon had whispered in his metaphorical ear. He believed that Harry had meant what he'd said, but, well… it stood to reason, didn't it? HYDRA had been very good at escaping, and the Winter Soldier had been their best. Not only that, but the people who'd made him, the Red Room hadn't been too shabby at that either. Ron still don't know very much about them, because Harry at first hadn't remembered very much – or wouldn't admit to remembering very much – and once he did, he'd got very quiet whenever the subject was brought up. This was something that Hermione would then berate him for, before refusing to say anything more, if she even knew anything more to begin with.

The adults around him were even less helpful. Professor McGonagall had told him in tones that brooked no disobedience that the Red Room was not a subject he needed to know about and not one he would be discussing around Harry, was it, Mr Weasley? Professor Cassidy had sketched out a very vague profile, suggested that they were worse than HYDRA, and then very bluntly said that if Ron was going to hunt the devil and all his unholy legions, he should at least have the sense to avoid chasing the sharks in the deep blue sea. Sergeant Barnes, meanwhile, had simply said that they were being dealt with by the appropriate authorities, which had left Ron confused for five minutes, before he realised that it meant absolutely nothing, and that was exactly what it was meant to mean.

"Is he?" the spirit asked, raising a glowing eyebrow.

Ron opened his mouth, then looked around, eyes widening. He'd assumed it was an illusion, something conjured up out of his nightmares, but what if…

"He's here for you, Ron. You're the only one who's been looking, the one who's been seeking to avenge me… the only one who even seems to care."

"That's not true!" Ron snapped. "Mum, everyone, they all miss you, they'd do anything to get him –" He stopped, and his eyes narrowed. "Hang on. Dad wouldn't say that. And ghosts don't hide from family, not usually, not for this long." He glared, tears of mingled grief in his eyes, hands shaking with rage, making the light from his wand flicker and strobe. "You're a fake."

The ghost cocked its head and smiled. It was not a smile that belonged on the amiably distracted face of Arthur Weasley. For starters, it had too many teeth.

"There," it said softly, tones jarring against a dead man's normally kind voice as much as the smile had against his features. "Not a bad mind after all. You got there eventually. But will you work the next little riddle out in time?"

Behind him and ahead of him, both entrances, both exits, faded away, smooth bronze replacing them. Then, as they did, symbols began to appear all around the arena, more and brighter than all the stars in the sky, casting strange shadows, one of which shifted under Ron's gaze, before flickering out.

"You've looked," the ghost's voice said. "But do you see?"

And Ron saw the Winter Soldier.

Fury and frustration seething within him, he reacted, leaping back to put distance the two of them as he hurled an impediment jinx at the monster before him. But the Soldier, moving like greased lightning, dropped under the curse into a roll, springing to his feet and accelerating towards Ron, now moving in deadly earnest.

Ron, panic now driving him as much as rage, moved as fast as he could, firing off another spell, a curse as nasty as he could think of, one that would have burned like the most potent of acids if it had touched flesh. The Soldier bobbed and weaved, but this one came closer, too, whistling past the Soldier by no more than a couple of inches.

The third spell was one that Ron would normally never have even considered, even with his drive to delve into more dangerous skills and magic. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and they came at his call, a sizzling bolt of lightning as broad as his father's old car that struck the Soldier squarely in the chest, sending him flying, convulsing all the way. Ron let out an involuntary whoop, one that wasted an invaluable moment as immediately – impossibly – after the Soldier had landed, he was up again, apparently ignoring the smell of burning cloth.

Indeed, all he did was look at Ron curiously, then absently brush down the front of his combat gear, as if flicking away dirt. Then, slowly and ceremoniously, he was a hand and beckoned.

Ron obliged him, hurling curse after curse at a rate he could not possibly have normally sustained, until sweat was pouring down his face. This time, though, none of them hit, as the Winter Soldier ducked and dived, always moving the precise minimum required to evade every spell. Even when Ron stopped to catch his breath, he didn't seem interested in pressing his advantage, waiting patiently, standing on ground that was by turns cracked, dust, molten, and bubbling.

Then, very deliberately, he beckoned again.

This time, when Ron again obliged him, he attacked, moving in a snake-like blur, faster than Ron could really track. Before, he'd grabbed Ron's wand hand and crushed it sufficiently to render him helpless. Now, though, he squeezed. Ron's world went white with pain as he sank to his knees, followed by a very sudden and very definite crack.

His body instinctively hunched up against the pain of a broken bone – a familiar pain, to be frank, from his first year – but it didn't come. Instead, after the blinding pain, there was a dimness. And Ron slowly realised with dumbfounded horror where it came from, his eyes dragged inexorably to a sad, jagged little stump, before dropping down to the other piece, now lying dull and useless like any other stick in the forest.

His wand was broken.

His wand was broken.

His wand was broken.

And Ron's world went red.

With a scream of fury, he surged upwards, past pain and fear, scrabbling at the Soldier's goggles with his free hand to get at the eyes beneath. The Soldier seemed to jerk back, but still holding Ron, meaning that Ron came with him. He hurled Ron away, hard enough to crack ribs, but it was too late – the young wizard's nails had hooked into the goggles and raked down the mask too, tearing them off. As Ron managed to get up onto his knees, right hand a mass of bruising, left with ragged nails, breathing fast and shallow to desperately try and fill lungs that only seemed to want to expand so far and little further, he realised that he could hear footsteps.

And a voice spoke. It was familiar, Ron thought vaguely.

"A decent mind, and a decent fight. More than I ever really expected from you. More than you ever really expected from you, I expect. Limited, but much better than expected. Surprising, really." A light chuckle. "Still, Ron, what's life for but surprising us, eh?"

Ron gasped, clenching his fists, regaining his wits. As he did, he wondered who the hell was talking. It couldn't be the Winter Soldier, real or fake – considering what he'd done, then and now, it hardly mattered as far as Ron was concerned.

"You've spent so long looking for me," the voice continued. "Even when you didn't think I was still there. But no matter how hard you looked, you never realised. You never understood how something could be hidden in a plain sight, how the most effective lies are made entirely out of truth."

Then, before he managed to get up, he was hauled to his feet by the front of his robes, pinned effortlessly several feet off the ground against the cold bronze walls, strange symbols crawling under his back, tingling and making his skin crawl.

Painfully, he looked into the face of the Winter Soldier.

And he saw his best friend smiling back, as sharp, cold, and human as a bronze dagger.

"You see, my poor, dear, dim friend," Harry Thorson said, patient kindness of his tone contrasting with the metal hand wrapping around Ron's throat with the ease of a cat trapping a mouse under its paw, taking his weight. Then, slowly, lazily, he began to squeeze, ignoring Ron's kicking and thrashing like the slightest breeze. "I was right in front of you all along."

Slowly, Ron's vision began to tunnel as he desperately clawed at the metal arm, at the fingers, trying to loosen the vice to get even a sip of air. But none was forthcoming.

All was darkness.

And then came the light.

OoOoO

To say Harry was angry was understating things. Furious would be a better word. Enraged, likewise. Both, though, rather undersold the situation and his mood. On reflection, a more apt word was probably one that befitted the way his temper tended to manifest.

Incandescent.

So when he smashed his way through several hundred tons of granite and bronze enchanted to act as a magical fallout shelter like it was porcelain and damp cardboard, it did not help his blood pressure to see an unholy mixture of himself and Bucky strangling a weakly struggling Ron Ron, whose face was rapidly going purple.

As it was, he didn't waste any time on quips, banter, or threats. Instead, he just reached out, and with increasing ease, grabbed the construct of the mist and tore it away from Ron. In his grip, it floundered, frightened, dissolving into the amorphous mist it had been, attempting to seep into the bronze floor. Harry did not give it that chance, crying havoc in a rage-filled voice that was lost in flames. In an instant, it was over, both flames and mist gone.

Immediately after, he darted to Ron's side, finding Sirius already there, conjuring water for Ron to drink.

"'arry?" Ron croaked, bloodshot eyes slowly focusing on him. "'s really you?"

"It's really me," Harry tacked on. When Ron still looked suspicious, he added, "You once walked in on me and Carol in her room at Avengers Mansion wearing maybe less than we should, because Doctor Strange let you think that it was my room and I was waiting for you. Carol nearly strangled you. Proof enough? Because from my experience, the monster running around here doesn't just go for any memories that are just embarrassing, and even that wasn't too traumatic."

Ron snorted. "It's you," he croaked out, before his gaze swivelled to Sirius. "Mr Black?

"Call me Sirius, Mr Weasley," Sirius said, shooting the boy a smile.

"You all right?" Harry asked.

"'m fine," Ron insisted.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Been worse," Ron amended.

Harry raised the other eyebrow.

"Chess set."

Harry lowered the eyebrows. He had to concede that one. At least Ron was conscious this time, and now, he was looking for something, eyes eventually settling on it and tearing up. Harry followed his gaze, and sighed, beckoning with a gesture. "Oh hell," he said quietly, as the pieces of Ron's wand flew to his hand, and Sirius swore. While Harry didn't use his wand all that much these days, if anything he was even more careful with it, more conscious of its fragility. It was a part of him. Ron had already lost one wand, and that had not done his self-esteem any good – and that had been one he'd inherited, and not even second-hand. This one had been very much his. Emphasis on the 'had' part. "I'm sorry, Ron. I'm so sorry."

Sirius, who had also spent far too long separated from his wand, also winced, giving Ron a sympathetic pat. "Maybe it can be fixed," he said consolingly.

Harry's eyes widened at the thought, before narrowing. "Maybe," he said. "If anyone knows, it'll be Strange, and if he does, he will tell you. Or I'll want to know why."

Ron's face didn't exactly light up, but there was a definite spark of hope.

Sirius glanced up at Harry in approval, and saw Harry's next line of thought. "Nothing permanent," he said, answering the unanswered question. "You'd know better than me about any mental attack, but physically, it's bumps, bruises, and a few cracked ribs. I've done what I can for those, and he could walk out of here if he needed to."

"If needs be, I'll carry him out," Harry said grimly, running his mind over Ron. He was shaken, but a few mental gashes aside, he was fine – they'd hurt, but they'd heal up fine. "Hermione too. Then I'm going to wipe this fucking place off the face of the Earth. And I'm going to do it slowly."

Sirius shot him a slightly concerned look, before nodding. "You can find Hermione?" he asked.

Harry nodded.

"Then get her," he said. "I'll take Ron out. As soon as we're outside the Fortress, I'll apparate him down to Hogsmeade – MI13 will be able to take care of him." He met Harry's gaze. "I'll take care of him."

Harry nodded again, this time gratefully, lifting the three of them out with a gesture, immediately casting his senses around, impatiently hunting for Hermione.

"Send a message to Dumbledore," he said. "And get Betsy – Lady Braddock – down here. I don't want even the tiniest piece of this thing getting away, not after what it's done.

As he spoke, the mist was rapidly vanishing, no longer content to maintain a wary distance. Instead, it was flowing away towards the very heart of the Fortress. Harry, lost in his focus on Hermione, didn't notice that, or the affirmative from Sirius.

In hindsight, he would come to regret that.

I know. I'm evil. But I've been left on a few cliffhangers recently, and I was having difficulty getting this chapter out, so I decided to end it where it felt appropriate. As I said, if you're wondering why this chapter was Hermione-lite, well. I think that this last part will provide clues enough.