Magical Resonance

Reading Time: 8 Minutes

Title: Magical Resonance
Author: Keira Marcos
Series: The Master of Death
Series Order: 3
Fandom: Harry Potter
Relationship: OFC/OMC, OMC/OMC
Genre:  Alternate Universe, Fantasy
Warnings: Discussion-Suicide, Discussion-Murder, Canon-Typical Violence
Word Count: 1,915
Author’s Note: My zero draft is sixteen pages now, it feels pretty good.
Summary: Bulgaria gets abused, Ikea has magical craft supplies, and Harry Potter’s American partner has grown on him like a fungus despite his best intentions.

* * * * *

“I think we’ve finally trauma-bonded. You’re probably stuck with me now.”

Harry huffed and dragged Lucas Pierce to his feet. “This is what I get for letting Director Banner assign me an American partner.”

Maybe leaving Britain had done more than just relieve the stupid amount of stress and manipulation he’d been dealing with. Adulthood had been a fucking miracle, honestly, and he’d never been more relieved in his life than finish Hogwarts and leave his own country behind.

Lucas laughed, licked blood from his lips. “Thanks, by the way. Those guys were the worst.”

The guys in question had come precariously close to killing his partner, and Harry had some pretty concrete rules about ritual murder. Well, any murder, but most specifically ritual murder. They stumbled out of the nearly destroyed stone ritual circle.

“I’m offended as fuck by everything that happened here tonight,” Harry muttered. “That ritual altar is probably a thousand-year-old, and these pricks were treating it like something they bought from Ikea.”

“The magical furniture section in Ikea is great,” Lucas protested. “Though their ritual craft supplies are kind of lackluster.”

“You’ve got to stop getting lured into that store by the meatballs,” Harry lectured, more amused than he wanted to admit. “Also? Also, these losers clearly fucked up the incantation.”

“His Latin pronunciation was ass,” Lucas agreed. “There is no telling what he would’ve accomplished if you hadn’t interfered. Because I’m pretty sure he said descentio instead of daemonium.”

Harry laughed. “Maybe he was trying to send himself to hell.”

“Maybe,” Lucas agreed, then promptly passed out.

Harry hefted his partner closer as they crossed over the boundary and activated his emergency portkey. They landed in the infirmary, and immediately, a pair of healers came running. Harry put Lucas down on a cot where he was directed and took a step back.

“What happened?” Piper Banner questioned, dark eyebrow raising in accusation.

“I don’t know much,” Harry admitted. “He was in Bulgaria, and I was in Rome getting a lecture about how I shouldn’t admit how much I hate my own country of origin. His emergency beacon went off, telling me he was in mortal danger, so I immediately apparated out of the ICW proceeding and hit a ritual circle in Bulgaria so hard that most of it disintegrated by the time I materialized. Lucas was on the altar, but fortunately, my arrival disrupted what looked like a sacrifice. He thinks they were trying to summon a demon.”

She huffed. “Go tell my husband that he must stop hiring Americans! They’re always getting themselves half-sacrificed!”

“Director Banner doesn’t listen to me,” Harry pointed out. “Practically no one listens to me.”

“I listen,” a voice said from behind him, and they both turned to find Thaddeus Banner standing in the doorway of the infirmary. “I just do what I want. You’ll be thrilled to know that you broke the anti-apparition ward on the ICW building. Hiro Ito is furiously impressed.”

Harry waved both hands. “You’re the one who gave me a silly American partner!”

His boss sent him a dark look and walked away, so Harry followed after a glance in Lucas’ direction. In truth, Lucas Pierce was the first partner he’d had since joining the Magical Protectorate that didn’t make his soul itch. Of course, picking out a work partner based on whether or not they make your soul uncomfortable was probably not the kind of metric one should advertise.

“But I’d prefer to keep the American I’ve got rather than get a different American that could be worse,” Harry said as he followed Banner down the hall. “Also, did the ICW want me to come back to Rome and fix their wards?”

“No, they contacted Gringotts. The Horde thanks you for the money,” Thaddeus said dryly, and Harry laughed.

“Is Ito really mad, though? Because I didn’t mean to break their stuff.”

“No, they were told that your partner’s emergency beacon activated, and the people in that room know very well that my operatives don’t activate their beacon for anything less than a direct threat to their life. The Bulgarian Minister of Magic, however, has demanded an apology for your unauthorized apparition into his country.”

“He’s not actually allowed to be mad about that,” Harry muttered. “I’ve got immunity and shite.”

Thaddeus offered him a grin. “I did remind him that operatives of the Magical Protectorate have diplomatic immunity and that you didn’t owe him an apology for doing your legal magical duty. He could still be cursing me out. I just walked away from the floo in the main office and let him keep talking.”

Harry made a face. “I left six bodies, by the way. They died when I disrupted the ritual, or shortly after.” He shrugged. “Though Lucas said the one leading it had terrible diction and probably fucked up the incantation anyways.”

“He was supposed to be interviewing a wizard who’d witnessed a dark ritual in the forest near his house,” Thaddeus said.

“Stands to reason they were hoping to get their hands on me for the ritual, and the whole report was a setup,” Harry pointed out, and Banner sighed. “There are those, in necromancy circles, who think sacrificing me would please Death immensely since that whole survived-the-killing-curse thing.”

Thaddeus raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever been tempted to let someone try?”

“No,” Harry said and grimaced when his boss raised an eyebrow. “Well, once. But I realized that I’d probably just get an epic amount of judgmental silence from practically everyone for a whole decade, so I decided to just arrest everyone involved.”

“Going back to Britain will be stressful for you.”

“More stressful for them,” Harry said. “Plenty of people were thrilled to see me go since I never once allowed them to bank on the unreasonable fame I was saddled with as an infant. Practically everyone I met had expectations that I never had any intention of meeting.” He stood and checked his watch. “I’m going to get my after-mission physical and take a nap in the bunks.”

Thaddeus nodded and waved him away as he sat down on his desk.

Harry went back to the infirmary, hovered uselessly near Lucas’ cot for a while until one of the healers prodded him toward an examination cubicle. “He’s okay, Nattie?”

“War Mage Pierce will make a full recovery,” Nattie Chambers said. “Any issues to report?”

“Just a little tired, but I did chain apparate 1900 kilometers across international borders in the space of about ten seconds,” Harry confessed and shrugged when she glared at him. “I’m basically fine.”

“You’re basically an idiot,” she retorted tartly.

“You’re so mean,” he said in amusement, but stayed on the examination table while she did a diagnostic spell and wrote a scathing report about his reckless behavior.

“And don’t smile at me, I’m not falling for it.”

“You never do,” Harry muttered and slouched back on the table when she just glared at him and went off to get his file, which was really a ledger book. Each operative had their own, so at least he wasn’t standing out in that respect.

He shifted around a bit so he could pull his journal out of his bracelet and brace it on one leg. He pulled a pen from a pocket on the journal and made a series of notes about the meeting he’d been attending in Rome and the situation in Bulgaria. Lucas would certainly be writing most of that report, and Harry fully intended on telling him so.

“You need rest,” Nattie announced. “Grab a cot so I can keep an eye on you since you apparated straight into a ritual circle like a dumb ass with zero information.”

“Americans are so rude,” Harry muttered, and she laughed.

He left the examination room, dropped down on a cot close to Lucas, since he should keep an eye on his American. He supposed everyone in the Protectorate had one, no matter how appalling it was, and he might as well make sure Lucas stayed in one piece until the man’s husband showed up to get him.

“Piper, did you contact Otto?”

“Yes, of course, I did,” she said dryly. “Master Bauer is getting a portkey and will return soon. Which I’m sure the entire country of Australia will thank me for. He was apparently collecting venomous creatures for study.”

Harry nodded because he figured Australia was a decent place to do that efficiently.

“You cool?”

He turned toward Lucas and found his partner staring at him. “Yeah, except my creepy American partner is staring at me.”

“Well, you’re not a bad place to look.” Lucas rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “Piper told me that you’ve agreed to go to Britain.”

“Yeah, but it’s not an official mission for the Protectorate.”

“That’s going to be a clusterfuck of the first order.” He paused. “Want me to come with?”

“No, there’s no need to give anyone a point of leverage against me right off the bat, but be prepared to come rescue that whole country from me if they do something stupid,” Harry muttered, and Lucas laughed. “When they do something stupid.”

“Wow, Potter,” Lucas said with a sigh. “You’re the smartest idiot I’ve ever met.”

Otto Bauer entered at that point, shot them both a look of pure exasperation, and Harry activated his privacy curtain to avoid the judgment. Because he might have to put up with his American partner, but that didn’t mean he had to get a German-shaped lecture on top of it in the form of Lucas’ husband.

“Don’t look at me like that, Otto, I’m not the one who almost got ritually sacrificed!”

“This time!” Otto retorted even as the curtain slotted into place, muting the entire area around Harry’s cot.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment and took a deep breath. If he were at home, he’d be wrapped up in his invisibility cloak, but he’d made a point to never sleep that way when he was in the Protectorate’s headquarters. Magic moved around him, and a warm hand touched his cheek, then his forehead briefly.

“I’m fine,” he murmured, and the magic grew heavy for a moment, then drifted away.

The blanket at the end of the cot flipped up and dropped over him with a little swish of magic. Harry laughed a little, took a moment to remove his boots, and tucked them under the edge of the cot. When he’d been a child, after he’d found out about the sacrifice of Sirius Black, he’d thought the magical influence around him was his godfather. But experience had taught him better as the Hallows had educated him in ways that no one else would ever truly understand.

“Go to sleep, lad. You’ll need it if we’re really going to back to fucking Britain,” Thanatos said for only him to hear.

Harry rolled over on his side and drifted off to sleep content in the embrace of his patron’s magic.

The End