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Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic, beamed at Nicholas Fury, Director of SHIELD, as they shook hands over a newly ratified Statute of Secrecy. Months of hard negotiation had led to this; a compromise neither were happy with, yet could bear to debate no longer: Shacklebolt, because he had a country to rebuild after the short but viciously violent war that had led them to this room in the first place, and Fury, whose own impatience made him itch to leave. The man did not claim to be a politician, had fought hard not to be involved in these negotiations, but after the third month of Hill raging about disrespect while their institutions bordered on full-out war, he’d had no choice.
A camera flashed, making Fury’s entourage collectively wince. They weren’t used to the press; as Fury put it, “what part of secret do you not understand?!”. Shacklebolt had been firm in his demands, however, so the SHIELD party had donned disguises: Clint wore a moustache and checked shirt; Coulson a wig; and Gavril ‘Harry’ Goncharov, their secret weapon, had his hair dyed blonde while he padded out his limber frame with shoulder and thigh pads, his distinctive eyes covered by both sunglasses and coloured contact lenses. He was uncomfortable, sweating, as he stood by the fire in the underground office, but he’d faced worse.
“That’s enough, thank you, Colin,” the Minister smiled benevolently at the photographer, who grinned in return, the scar marring one side of his face crinkling upwards in delight. Harry frowned behind his glasses. Colin must have been barely twenty, he thought, with a war already behind him. What sort of society used their children as soldiers? God willing, he wouldn’t be forced to endure more.
Colin tottered out, lugging his camera under one arm, led by a bushy-haired girl who looked barely older than the boy himself. In fact, all of Shacklebolt’s retinue seemed absurdly young, from his secretary through to his bodyguard, a ginger lad who still had acne. This, before he considered their ‘Chosen One’.
Magic was ridiculous.
The so-called ‘saviour’ stood just beyond Shacklebolt, having retired to lean against a wall once the pictures were taken. With a lightning-bolt gash on her forehead and several further scars littering her arms and neck, she stood out among her group even as she didn’t try to. Flame-red hair fluttered around her shoulders, dazzlingly green eyes peeking from half-closed lids as she surveyed the room. This was Natasha Romanova, of a thousand monikers. Her file explained that she was a half-blood belonging to the pureblood Romanov house, a long-detached Russian family who had settled in England and made their fortune in various spell-crafting endeavours and most recently a hair product. Her mother, Lily Evans Romanova, had been a ‘Muggleborn’, and where her looks originated.
She was also an orphan, a state with which Harry could sympathise.
From her dossier, though, Harry had expected someone... different. More vivacious. He wasn’t disappointed, exactly, more confused. Dozens of pictures had shown her grinning, sparkling, as she gave to the poor, danced at balls and trained for the Aurory. The woman in front of him, however, was watchful and wary. Wary especially of him, her eyes suspicious each time they met his, her body shifting slightly closer to her Minister protectively whenever he came close. Could she sense the threat implicit in his presence, he wondered?
He took a step nearer to Fury, and by proxy, the Minister. Romanova straightened, her eyes on him. Yes, he thought with a smirk. She could. An illicit thrill ran through him at the thought. A warrior.
He smirked, liking her already.
But then he'd always had terrible taste in women.
“Titillando Maxima!” The hex flew off her tongue and into the man who’d reached out to her, sending him flying back in the alley. He was shrieking before he connected; upon impact, he fell quiet but his body twitched and jerked, his mouth open in hysteria. Natasha frowned at the knife that fell from his hand as he flew.
“Merlin, Natasha, you can’t just hex everyone who looks at you funny!” Hermione chastised, panting, bending over to put her hands on her knees as she recovered from the sprint she’d undertaken to keep up with her. Natasha grimaced – she'd seen the man acting suspiciously and had taken off after him without even a thought for Hermione. Was that bad? It felt bad.
“He had a knife,” she pointed out, the faintest trace of apology in her tone.
Hermione straightened up only to plonk her hands on her hips, and Natasha knew she was in trouble. “He’s a Muggle! You can’t to hex Muggles! It’s one of our most basic laws!”
“He might’ve been a wizard,” Natasha responded, a touch defensively, as she wandered over to him, side-stepping the alley detritus with ease. Frisking him, she uncovered another, rustier knife and several bags of drugs.
“Oh, so you know he’s carrying a knife but you don’t know he’s a Muggle? Honestly!” Even with her back to her, Natasha could hear Hermione throw her hands up in exasperation. “You’ll get us all killed one day. How can you be so bloody stupid - you were there for the treaty!”
“A stupid treaty,” Natasha muttered, carefully obliviate-ing the mugger, though she left a healthy dose of fear in his mind where the memory had been. Perhaps it would put him off waylaying innocent women in the future. She doubted it, but Hermione would no doubt hope. “SHIELD doesn’t know anything about magic.”
Hermione scoffed. “They just defeated Loki. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy having the organisation that defeated Loki on our tails, and you know they will be. Fury thinks we’re a threat; he’s chomping at the bit for a chance to get rid of us.”
Done with the Muggle, she dropped him back on the floor, scooped up the knife he’d been planning to use on her and pocketed it before turning and striding back to the street. It was a busy thoroughfare, even at night, but then this was London, and London never stopped for breath. Hermione was on her tail as they moved out into the crowd, then diverted into an alley two streets down where the designated Apparation spot awaited them. “It’s hilarious that you think Loki was even trying,” she muttered to her best friend as they walked, Hermione still bristling. “He’s a God, he wouldn’t go down so easily.”
“Easily?! He destroyed half of New York—what?”
Natasha had stopped, turning on her heels to survey the surrounding buildings with narrowed eyes. Perhaps she was paranoid, but there was an itching feeling on her back...
“We’re being watched,” she informed Hermione, lips barely moving. Taking her hand, she dropped her watchfulness and moved within the wards, pulling Hermione with her.
“Brilliant,” Hermione muttered. “Next stop, Azkaban. Do you think they’ll let me bring books? Sirius was allowed the newspaper, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed Edgar’s Theories of Human Transfiguration...” Her amber eyes met Natasha‘s green, and she winked. “Usual formation?”
“Let’s mix it up.” Natasha used a twitch of her fingers to indicate the building behind her, and a jerk of Hermione’s head noted her agreement. They turned on the spot.
Harry groaned under his breath as he watched Romanova take down the Muggle. This woman was something else entirely. Her wand was never far from her hand, if she had been SHIELD, she would have a great red stamp on her folder reading ‘highly volatile’. Of course, she would also have his job, because he had no doubt she knew exactly what she was doing when she’d hexed the guy – a powerful but minor hex that wouldn’t alert the Ministry’s Statute enforcers. It was sheer bad luck that he’d been here to see it.
Romanova had a history of hexing first, asking questions later. The War had been hard on her, central as she was to the action, and peacetime was looking to be worse; Wizarding papers constantly filed complaints on behalf of their paparazzi for her over-the-top reactions to their presence, one man even coming out with broken bones, but she rose above them each time. “He startled me, Your Honour,” she’d earnestly inform the head of the Wizengamot, and the sixty-year-old, hard-line pureblood who’d been on the opposite side of the war found that a perfectly acceptable excuse, banging his gavel and wiping away the misdemeanours.
The Director was not so lenient. “She’s fucking dangerous,” he’d thundered as he assigned the mission to Harry and Clint. “A fucking mess!”
Harry couldn’t bring himself to disagree with the Director, though he wanted to. Natasha Romanova, he found, was an extremely dangerous person – but she was trained. Careful. The problem was that she wasn’t working for them. She worked for the Ministry of Magic, who Fury saw as an enemy. Indeed, the man saw all magic as the enemy; MACUSA and SHIELD, for example, had been at odds for months, engaged in a cold war on the brink of explosion.
Harry watched as they apparated, sucking several dried leaves into the vortex with them as they went. He knew a fair bit about magic, much as he distrusted the whole thing; Shacklebolt had donated some books to SHIELD along with the rest of what the agents referred to as their ‘dowry’ upon signing their Statute (including three of their worst Death Eaters. Well—they weren’t Death Eaters any longer. Now, they were guinea pigs, their magic being explored and recorded for research purposes by the best scientists on staff) and Harry had always been a reader.
Harry packed up his gear, carefully wiping down the area as he went. He shouldn’t still be watching Romanova, he knew that. He was attached. That sense of connection had stuck with him through their first meeting to the second, to the third and so on until his assignment had gone from keeping a close eye on a potentially dangerous target (and racking up her Statute breaches) to watching a woman he was fiercely attracted to go about her daily life. And, yes, the creepiness of that was beginning to weigh on him. He wasn’t sure he could stop, though, not if stopping meant someone else got the job, someone less enamoured, of a mind to be harsh with her and report all such activities to Fury. There would be a warrant out on her within the week, the might of the Ministry would rise up to protect her, SHIELD would respond...
Turning a political shadow war into full combat. Nobody wanted that.
He was mentally editing the report as he wandered through the warehouse, which was why the sound didn’t register for a few seconds. A crackling, dry brush. No breathing, no footsteps, just that sound.
He spun as a blur of red flew out of the darkness, brushing his hand as it passed. His fingers numbed immediately, forcing him to drop his bag, but he was already diving for the shadows of the far wall closest to his attacker. Another shot burst against the wall behind where he’d stood and he swore under his breath.
“Show yourself!” he commanded, pulling a stun-gun from his holster and aiming. He knew stunners when he saw them. “I’m armed!”
“We are both armed,” came Romanova’s calm voice, lilting, amused. “Put down the gun, Agent Goncharov. I wish to talk.”
He tensed, his arm unwilling to move. He sensed a trap. “Put down your wand, Ms. Romanova, and we’ll talk.”
“Gladly,” she replied, if possible, the amusement getting stronger. "Lumos!” A clattering sound, and a long, thin shape rolled through the door, a bright white light emitting from one end. The beam lit into his eyes, he blinked, and something hit him from behind.
“Fuck!” he groaned, then dropped.
“You don’t want to do this.”
They were the first words the Agent had spoken since he’d woken up, and Natasha was somewhat surprised to hear them. Until now, they’d simply been staring at each other: him, bound to a chair; she, waiting for him to speak.
“SHIELD sent you,” she said, eyeing him speculatively. It was a rhetorical question. She knew they had. Ever since the Statute was signed they’d been overstepping their boundaries, searching for something, anything they could find to condemn Wizarding society. Oh, they didn’t want to destroy it; they simply wanted sole control over it, and saw her as a way to get that.
Get rid of the saviour, install someone they like in her place. And she knew who that would be; since Draco - poor, easily influenced Draco with the connections, money and power - married their Captain America, he’d ‘reformed’, been all over the papers with his good deeds, fighting for reform in the Wizengamot, and most importantly, firmly in bed with Director Fury and his ilk.
Who’s the blood traitor now?
She’d stop them, of course. She hadn’t shed blood, sweat and tears to keep Wizarding Britain free only to let some barely-regulated CIA knock-off take control. Even if it meant disposing of every agent they sent her way.
It was a pity, Natasha thought. She had to admit he was an attractive man. Lean but not thin, his training showed in the firmness of his shoulders and thighs. His face, too, was not awful, with green eyes nearly as bright as her own set above nicely sculpted cheekbones and a square jaw that jutted out defiantly.
An overall lovely face that she refused to think anything more of because, not only was she too busy to get mixed up with a man, but he was the enemy to boot.
“Yes,” Agent Goncharov admitted, his eyes burning into her with something not entirely professional. She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering if his plan was to seduce her. If so, it was badly thought out; they’d never been alone together before, and there was no guarantee they ever would be again. “And you’re... pretty up close.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Let’s not play games, Agent.”
He winced. “Sorry. I’m shit with women, always have been. You want smooth, go kidnap Bakshi.”
Natasha glared at him, he stared back without guile. But then, he was a spy, and she doubted he’d have gotten so far if the likes of her could read him.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, trying for a pleasant tone. “Just to watch? Is that what gets you off?” He didn’t react; she pursed her lips. “I know Fury wants to take me down. Will you get a cushty promotion if you deliver me, do you think?” Admit it, she cursed in her head. One admission, and she could take him to Kingsley. The crime they needed to get SHIELD off their turf...
He grinned, incongruously bright against the backdrop of the cluttered rooms he’d chosen to base himself in. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Oh?” Natasha fervently thanked the Gods that she hadn’t let Hermione in the room for this embarrassment of an interrogation. “Do you, now?”
His smile was unexpectedly cherubic, loosening something inside her as she felt a flush warm her cheeks. “Oh, no. We’re not doing this. I like you too much to be impartial. When I look at you, when I hear you talk—no. Stop looking at me like that, or I’ll spill all of my secrets.”
The way she looked at him? When he looked at her like... Like she was edible, but too precious to eat. She shifted uncomfortably, but that only drew his attention downwards, and his eyes took the opportunity to meander across her body, looking their fill, each pass heating her blood.
Perhaps she wasn’t so impervious to seduction after all. What an inconvenient time to learn that.
She’d released him, of course. How could she not? He refused to talk, his defensiveness manifesting in more flattery, and when he’d walked out, he’d done so with a blasé “see you soon” tossed over his shoulder.
Ridiculous.
Or, not so much, as she found out over the next few months as tensions rose between the Ministry and SHIELD. The Avengers were all over the papers doing good deeds and public opinion was constantly swinging on the subject. While the average Joe on the street didn’t know of the war that was brewing, they were certainly having a large part in barrelling it forward.
Kingsley was constantly in meetings with MACUSA, who had begun fighting SHIELD in earnest, warding their world to Hades and back while the public was advised to withdraw into their conclaves permanently. Other magical governments were getting antsy, looking to Britain to take the lead; Canada and India had ousted SHIELD altogether, while China and Germany had closed off communications with both SHIELD and MACUSA. Krum, visiting the weekend before, had told Hermione that he wasn’t allowed to play Quidditch in America any longer for the political situation had become too tense.
Natasha had an increasingly busy schedule of photo-ops, meetings with the Minister and the Wizengamot, events so dull they made her want to scratch her own eyes out, in aid of worthy causes the public was losing interest in. And maybe that was unwise, for it made it that much easier for them to find her.
For him to find her.
“You know I can feel you watching me,” she growled, spinning on her heel to glare at him.
He looked chastened when he stepped from the shadows, like a child caught stealing cake. “Hi.”
She scowled. “Fury really bloody wants me, doesn’t he? No—don’t answer that. I know.”
He twitched a shoulder apologetically and she viciously stamped down on the affection it triggered inside her. This was the problem: despite how she resented his presence, how dangerous she knew it was, every meeting between them only made her like him more. Very much against her will.
“You need to stop being so overt,” he told her, for the fiftieth time. “Putting aside the illegal hexes and use of magic in Muggle areas—don’t get me started on all the scrambling wards you have on Godric’s Hollow, they really get him angry—your sheer visibility is a problem. People stop and bow to you in the street. Non-magical streets. It draws attention.”
Natasha huffed resentfully. “You think I asked for that?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Harry shrugged. “There’s only so much I can do to help.” Strangely, she thought he was actually trying to help, too. Irritating man.
He took a step forward; she stood her ground, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t need your help. I’m doing what I have to do, for my people. If they want to lock me away for that, let them.”
He gave a grimace that might have been intended as a smile. “Yeah, I can’t do that.”
Suddenly, he was directly before her, and she couldn’t breathe. It seemed like it had all been leading up to this, the months of meetings, short and sweet, never coming closer than a few steps apart. He was constantly there, lecturing her in a misguided attempt to protect her from his bosses, teasing her about her life, but never touching her, and if she’d been trying to fool herself that the heat she’d felt that first time they’d spoken was a fluke, he’d facilitated that.
But, now, she felt him—his body warm, only inches away, and she had no interest in such an entanglement but she couldn’t deny that she had an interest in him.
“I don’t need your protection,” she said, because it was true. She was the Girl-Who-Lived, and she’d never needed protection before.
“You need this,” he assured her, and kissed her.
Burning, burning heat where their lips touched, all thought of fight vanishing under the sheer rightness of this sensation, his mouth conforming to hers, his tongue lapping at the seam. He asked for entry and she granted it; he groaned, hands fisting in her shirt.
She took control because that was her way, pushing him back against the wall of the alley and feasting on him, her hands straying over his chest, through his hair, soft between her fingers.
“Natasha,” he moaned when her lips touched his neck, and she knew that the past months had merely been a prologue to this, them, together; stars colliding, and she was lost; so dreadfully, delightfully, doomed.
Harry hadn’t expected it to turn out this way but he had no complaints, not when he got to enjoy this; Natasha, attached to him, biting and scratching being everything he’d ever wanted and more. Hours could pass with them together and it could feel both like days and seconds, the bond between them thickening, strengthening, and what he’d felt watching her from afar became nothing, nothing compared to the love he found when they were together.
He neglected his Avengers duty, which was fine by SHIELD as he sent them regular reports, detailed reports, on the Ministry. He insulated himself, occasionally meeting with Clint to catch up, but his partner was understanding and loyal and if he noticed that for Harry, the line between work and play was blurring, he never said anything, and Harry trusted him to be discrete.
Natasha, Natasha, Natasha.
Was it wrong that his life now seemed to revolve around the stolen moments they had together, the routine they’d carved out as their world collapsed around them? Peripherally, he understood that SHIELD was tense, their patience stretched, and the Ministry had begun to make moves against them, secure in their position on the world stage. He knew that Natasha and he continued to work against each other, her actions becoming more erratic each day as the Minister forced her out more and more as a figurehead of the anti-SHIELD movement just as she had led the Light in her War. He made up for the information he was loathe to give on Natasha by spilling all he knew about her associates, and she did the same for her Ministry, noting every stray word he spoke to be regurgitated in front of their war council, used against them.
They dug themselves into a moral trench and barely noticed they were doing it.
Perhaps, if he’d been paying attention to more than what was in front of him, more than the silken slide of her flesh against his and the relief, the pleasure, he found in her arms, then he could have seen it coming; prevented it.
But he didn’t. Nor did she.
“I’m not doing this,” Natasha gasped, pulling away from his lips. They followed, silencing her for a moment more, until he came up for breath and she was able to say, “this is dangerous.”
“I like danger,” Harry murmured against her neck, breathing in her scent. God, but it made him dizzy to be this close to her, a dream come true. For how long had he dreamed of this? Too long. Far too long.
“We are at war. More than that-” he muffled her words with another long, drugging kiss, and she looked faintly bewildered when he let up, a sight that brought a satisfied smirk to his lips.
“Must we do this each time?” he asked, pulling her further up on the bed, sliding between her thighs, and she squirmed beneath him in demand.
“Why, are you getting bored?” she demanded, then cut off on a gasp as he endeavoured to show her exactly how not-bored he was.
Things came to a head when he was called in for a meeting. He was distracted, thinking of Natasha in his bed, her hair fanned across the pillows, her body lush and satiated. She wouldn’t be there for long; there was always something more to do, someone else to help, but the thought that she might be waiting for him sustained him through the escorted walk, and distracted him up until his Director said those damning words.
“You’re suspended, effective immediately, Agent Goncharov.”
Fury’s face was hard, Coulson beside him, blank as ever. Harry blinked, a chill washing over him, snapping him to attention as the last remnants of his time with Natasha slipped away. “Excuse me?”
The Director’s large hand was splayed on the desktop, the tremor of his smallest finger the only giveaway to how very, very angry he was. “You have been compromised, your actions inexcusable.” He continued on, but his words became tinny and indistinguishable, a hot flush counteracting the numbness Harry felt. This was his job. His life. They were just going to take it away? No warning, no care, just... nothing?
Harry gaped, and Fury’s eye twitched. “Did you have something to say. Agent Goncharov?”
How did they know, was first on his mind, but he even as he opened his mouth to ask he noticed how Coulson was staring directly ahead, how Clint wasn’t even there. “Agent Barton is on leave,” Fury snapped, as if he knew what Harry was thinking, and he tried not to flinch. Clint would never betray him, but he would confide in Coulson, pillow talk, and Coulson was relentlessly professional in all things.
Even love.
“Director...” he began, and then froze, as another thought rolled through him. They’d summoned him from his flat. His flat, where Natasha—
“What have you done to her?”
Coulson blinked. “We have every right to apprehend a fugitive, Agent—"
He ran.
He’d been gone for only a minute when they came, yet it never occurred to her that he might be involved. She’d been abducted before; several times before the age of eleven, and she knew that betrayal was often the leading cause.
Still, she kept faith.
She was taken from his bed, barely dressed and fighting so hard they shot her, twice, snapping her wand right before her eyes. Natasha tried not to panic, one did not need a wand to do magic, after all; or so she thought, until they cuffed her, the magic-dampener in the metal seeping into her soul, building a wall around her core.
Steel shuddered against her temple as she walked. Natasha prayed silently that Harry was okay, that he was well. Surely they wouldn’t hurt one of their own? The man across from her; he was scarred, grinning, and she wanted to beat him, to rip at him with her bare hands until he told her that Harry was alright, but the gun was restraint as much as the cuffs and she could do nothing but search their faces for a sign, any sign, though none were forthcoming.
Guns were such a cheat.
Blood leaked from a wound in her stomach as they led her out to their jet, but she scratched and kicked at the man who tried to treat her until he gave up. It was a long trip, with a gun to her head and a knife digging into her heart as she brooded, but eventually they landed, and she was processed, resolutely silent.
She was walking, being led across the hangar with hands locked behind her back, when she saw him.
Drawn, pale, but stoic, he stood beside Coulson as they watched her procession. She searched his eyes, straining her neck to see what she wanted – the love she’d thought he bore for her – yet only found a gaping emptiness. Coulson said something, nothing, and laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder, but Harry shoved it off, eyes stuck on her as she made her walk.
“C’mon, luv,” one of her captors grunted, entirely oblivious to the tumult within. Something had cracked, seeing Harry so, like the fog of the past few months had lifted, her hopes and dreams shattering like February ice. It was her faith, she realised, as it dissolved, taking trust with it despite how she attempted to hold onto it with both hands.
A blessing, she thought as the numbness began. What did she need feelings for, anyway? Love was overrated. It was better this way. No illusions. Nothing but righteous rage, and that rage would set her free
“You can’t change this,” Coulson said, behind him, as the doors slid shut on Natasha’s form. Harry let his eyes fall closed. He didn’t want to see his handler just then, didn’t want to let the full weight of this betrayal drop, not yet. He couldn’t handle it, not so soon after...
“Harry,” Coulson continued, this time injecting a drop of paternal warmth into his voice.
“Don’t do that,” Harry whispered to the wall. “Don’t act like you care. Not—Not after this.”
“We only do what’s necessary to protect our people.” Harry felt a hand touch his back, and he flinched. When Coulson spoke again, his voice was harder. “We do good work; you know that. SHIELD is necessary. You’re a big part of that.”
“I don’t think I can be, not after this.”
The hand on his back travelled upwards, hooking his shoulder and pulling him around until he was looking into Coulson’s colourless eyes. “You love her, but do you love her enough to condemn a world? It’s not propaganda, Harry – you believed in it, once. You believed in us. Has that changed so much?”
His eyes strayed to the door pointedly.
“You have a choice to make,” Coulson continued, stepping back with a frown. “I know—your old work is impossible now, but... I’m forming a team of my own. We’ll ultimately answer to the Director, but I’ve got enough leeway after all these years to make it independent. Join us. Just you, me, a couple of scientists and a pilot, far away from here.”
Work. Work was his life. Had been, for a long time before Natasha. Would be all he had left, now. Could he let it go so easily?
He let his eyes close once more.