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Nikolai was not smiling the next day as he gaped at the targets at the other side of the shooting range in the castle's basement. The room had been prepared long since, but it was only in the past week where they had enough guns to make it useful. What he was gaping at were two targets in particular, ranged at the limits of his gauss rifle's range. His shot had hit the targets shoulder. His opponent's shot had taken her target in the head.
"H-how…" he stammered looking over at Dani. "How did you…? You never, you said you had never shot a rifle before!"
"I said I never shot a sniper rifle before." Dani said, standing up and blowing ostentatiously over the barrel of the gun for a moment. "I've shot rifles before. I used to go every summer with my grandfather out into the desert and we would routinely hunt for our food. The idea of going hungry every night unless you make your shot tends to hone your abilities quite nicely."
Nikolai glared at her little then smirked tilting his head back towards the targets. "Best two out of three?"
Several hours later, they had ended up having twenty rounds, each round denoted by a target slightly further away than the previous one. Dani lost the last two rounds by a matter of centimeters. They would still have been kill shots, but they weren't quite good enough to beat Nikolai in this contest. His smile of triumph however disappeared when he returned to the tower to grab a change of clothing. Once he passed the doorway, there was a sudden tingling sensation, which caused him to frown. He didn't realize what happened however, until he showed up for the evening meal.
The rest of the castle's denizens took one look at him and broke into various degrees of laughter. "Donald Duck!" Shouted Anechka, her hair standing on end in shock then springing every which way as she began to laugh.
Harry had set up a small trap to transform anyone who entered the room Nikolai shared with Piotr and the other older teen males for now. The spell was designed to coat the person with an illusion they themselves would not be able to see for a few hours of random Disney characters. It had been hard to adjust the randomization effect, but well worth it, Harry thought as he smiled behind a glass of orange juice.
Piotr and Sam were also laughing at their friend's plight, but stopped abruptly when Harry addressed them. "I don't know what you two are laughing about, you were both in on getting the house elves to adopt that uniform of theirs after all. No one pranks a marauder without getting the same in return. Look forward to it."
Both teens gulped, looking at one another as they wondered what sort of humiliation Harry had in store for them. Nikolai however wasn't about to just cave in and let Harry do this to him, and was already planning his own prank in return.
OOOOOOO
Jean split her time over the following days working with her new projects and working with Danielle in the afternoons. After a few days she made significant headway, and had what she called a hover boot design ready to be built. Flight was impossible with this technology. The hover boards simply could not get that high into the air for that to be a viable option. But hover boots could raise the maneuverability of the wearer tremendously. They were also not as power intensive as the teleporter on Wyatt's suit. Danielle had opted to volunteer to try them out, and Jean was happy to oblige her.
OOOOOOO
Danielle and Jean stood in the RoR, with Jean using a small clipboard to take notes. "Okay Dani, try to move from side to side. Think of it like, like rollerblading or something."
The young Cheyenne girl nodded her head, then moved her legs in a way which, in a set of skates, would have sent her forward. It worked somewhat, the force between her and the ground pushing her forward, but it was hard to keep her feet at first. After a moment, she fell forward, falling on her face. She pushed herself to her feet gamely however, practicing until she got a handle on it.
To one side, Paige and Amara watched, impressed with the tenacity the other girl was showing. Also amused of course.
After about ten minutes Dani shook her head. "I don't know how viable an option for combat this is, I mean, I don't like not feeling the ground underneath me, and I have no idea what it would do with any sort of recoil from hitting something, being hit or firing a weapon."
"Maybe not having them on all the time, just being able to flip them on at will when you need to move quickly?" Jean responded, jotting down some notes as she watched the young girl move around.
"Even so, control will be an issue, I'm a decent skater, and I'm having a lot of trouble with this." Dani said, gritting her teeth while she again pushed herself upright. "I'm going to see what happens if I try to 'skate' fast from side to side and then forward and back."
That actually worked better, though that might be because Dani was getting used to the odd feeling. Still, it definitely allowed her to move faster than she could have and in different ways than she normally would have been able to, something all of them could see the point of.
Finally Dani nodded. "Okay, that wasn't so bad, why don't we see what it looks like if I'm dodging something."
Jean nodded, then called up her telekinetic powers, trying to attack the other girl as she dodged around. It was a decent show actually, though it was obvious that anyone who used the boots would need training in how to move and more importantly how to keep their centers of gravity balanced. You couldn't actually lunge from one side to another, and the control wasn't intuitive.
The two watchers laughed as Dani, in an effort to jump aside from one of her attacks, lost control and skidded into a cliff face set into the room as an obstacle. Jean shook her head, a wry smile on her lips "Okay, so controls need work, not certain what to do there."
Dani groaned, feeling her nose for a moment, thankfully it wasn't broken, she knew that feeling all too well from fights she had gotten into with both other girls and boys in her old school. Being a Cherokee girl in a school dominated by whites and blacks hadn't been pleasant, but it had at least taught her self-reliance and the need to stick up for herself. "Maybe something set to respond to twitches in the legs? They are really fast to react to small movements now, why not take advantage of it?"
"Not a bad idea, though that might be tough to program if I can't find an actual engineering solution, damn it, that is becoming a bigger bottle neck every time I turn around." Jean groused. "Alright, let's go through some more movements, then Paige, Amara, it's your turn." Both girls blanched, while Dani smirked at them evilly.
OOOOOOO
While Jean was busy with her projects, the business side of things was picking up. Even without the potions actually able to be sold yet to the civilian sector, hundreds of hospitals across the UK had called in to pre-order them, and his ad campaign was up and running as well. Emma and he had a plan to push that even harder in the future, but were waiting until the potions actually hit the civilian side to launch it.
Harry himself was working on various magical projects, above and beyond a major one he was working on with Steven Strange. He created a room that was dedicated to protecting the gem they had gotten from Selene's last cache, and added some new defenses he had taken from that little adventure to the Hogwarts array. The one that was the most difficult yet best in terms of potential in his opinion was the one that basically bounced any physical attacks against the walls of the castle away like it was made of rubber. Melody had a lot of fun helping Harry test that one after he was certain it worked, testing out different walls to make certain the array had covered the entire castle.
He had also moved the Big Book of Students out of the library tower to the room next to the hearthstone. The names of the students in Hogwarts had been removed from the Book, and were now designated on the magical image of the castle Harry had created months ago, with each student having their own label, with the same danger-dependent color label.
The Big Book of Students itself had been connected to a wall on the other side of the room, in front of which were several chairs. As names were added to the book, they were placed up onto the wall in categories of their country of origin. Harry hadn't figured out a way just yet to change that spell enough to let the color also chain from the book onto the wall, but it would come in time, and until then the book still allowed them to see who was in immediate danger.
During this time Ororo was working with Father Garnoff compiling a list of students that were in danger not because of their names listing such, but because of their countries of origin. There were five names in particular that Ororo was worried about despite them being in the green, because all of them were in the Middle East. That area wasn't known for its compassion towards those that were different. So even if they were in the green or yellow now, she was concerned they it would swiftly change, too swiftly for them to act. Other areas of concern were segments of Asia and Africa.
This work was tied into the elephant in the room for all of the adults who had really thought about what the Big Book of Students was doing: Eventually a name would appear in the book then would go black before they could respond to it. What they would do then none of them knew, but it was a sobering thought.
The Big Book of Students had also been connected to a warning system, which would sound a gong if a name suddenly changed from green into the more dangerous colors. Yellow was okay, but anything worse than that was flagged by the spell, with differing level of volume to denote rising levels of danger. That had taken Harry some time to get right, but they were all pleased with the result.
This proved its worth on Wednesday that week, not even two days after Harry had finished with it. Ororo looked up from where she and Father Garnoff had been going over a list of names in Northern Africa to note in particular when a name in the book went from green to orange and now was flickering between orange and red.
"That is what happened with Paige's name." Alexi said, frowning. "But that name is one I would never have thought would be in danger."
Ororo nodded as she read from the book. The address for it was' US Embassy, Yerevan, Armenia'. The name was 'Ramsey, Douglas.' She flipped through some notes that they had made up on the different names in the book, frowning as she saw what she had thought she had remembered. "He's the son of the ambassador! Is this a direct attack on him, or something like a terrorist threat on the embassy itself?"
"No way to know but to go over there." Alexi said, shaking his head.
"I can teleport there now. Nessy." Her handmaiden house-elf popped in. "Could you find Harry and the others and informed of what's going on, I don't know if we'll need the full team for this, but it's better to be prepared in any event."
"Yes mistress." The little creature said popping out quickly while Ororo raced up into the headmaster's tower, summoning her clothing to her with a burst of magic. While she wasn't quite ready to use her spells in combat yet, some of them at least she could use outside of it.
Fully clothed she cast an illusion over herself, not a transfiguration as that would have negated many of the protective entrenchments on her clothing, they wouldn't have been there when she changed them back. The illusion was one of the spells she had learned from Gaia, and was as good as any Harry or Dr. Strange could come up with. It looked and felt real until she dispelled the image. She now looked like a normal businesswoman, like any of a thousand she would find on the streets of New York or London, but everything underneath was untouched.
Then she began to intone a teleportation spell she had learned from Gaia. Unlike Harry's apparition Ororo's teleportation did not require her to be intimately familiar with the area she was going to teleport to, but it was limited to only working in or around the earth. Essentially what the spell did was ask the Earth Goddess to fill Ororo's head with the knowledge of where she wanted to go, and then Ororo's power transported herself and anyone she was in contact to that point.
Harry had reported that it felt more like a port key, being pulled along rather than simply appearing from one place to another. Ororo had tried it several times, and found it didn't bother her as much as his apparition had at first. Now, she spent a few minutes finding a place near the embassy, it wouldn't do to appear on embassy grounds after all, not if the guards were tense at present, to teleport too, then she disappeared from Hogwarts.
She alighted down near the embassy in a small alcove hidden from the main streets by a massive overhanging tree. Looking out from her hiding place, she almost immediately saw what was going on. A huge crowd had gathered in the street leading up to the embassies entrance, which was set into a high wall that had barb wire or something similar on top of it.
Ororo frowned as she moved through a rowdy crowd shouting about mutants, plural, in Armenian, not a language she was familiar with, but it shared certain words with others, and she could get the gist easily enough. Something had stirred them up, and the plural of the word mutants surprised her.
Trusting in her magical defenses to make certain that no one noticed her passing, Ororo moved through the crowd towards the embassy, stopping near the gates. She looked at the four uniformed marines who were standing on the other side of the gate. They looked nervous, but resolute.
With a brief wave of her arm, Ororo was once more visible to normal people and she stood there waiting for a moment.
The four of them started as did a few people in the crowd a few blocks away. But seeing as this woman wasn't shouting or had any kind of weapon and was actually dressed like someone going in to meet the ambassador despite being on foot the marines didn't react just yet. The sergeant in charge of the guards moved towards her. "Ma'am for your own safety I'm going to have to ask you to vacate the area. We are in lock down at present, as you can see from all the hullabaloo behind you." Despite his clipped words his worry came through, along with a slight Californian accent.
"I can see that." Ororo said smiling and nodding her head. "However, can I ask what caused this?"
Talking about it like this as the crowd was working itself into a frenzy was rather strange, but something about this woman told the sergeant to be very polite, and it wasn't just the fact that she was possibly the most beautiful woman he had seen. "A few mutants were discovered here in the city about two months or so ago. They reached the embassy last night and asked for asylum from the ambassador. He granted it, and we've been housing them since. But the two of them have been dodging this lot since their powers came out, and the mob somehow figured out they were here. We managed to scare them off at first but as you can see…" he shrugged.
"I see." Ororo said frowning thoughtfully. So it wasn't a specific danger to Douglas Ramsey that changed his name color, but a danger to him and other mutants in his presence whose powers had activated before the Big Book of Students had been completed. I wonder if my presence in the room at just the right time to catch it is an example of what Kurt has taken to call the spandex affect. Still, that just means that I am in the right place at the right time to do some good.
Across from her the sergeant looked nervously behind her at the crowd, which were now waving weapons, both makeshift and non around in the air as they raced toward the embassy. "Ma'am, Get out of here please!"
"A moment please, then we shall see." So saying Ororo calmed moved over to stand in front of the gate, ignoring the man who was now frantically trying to urge her away from the building, since the mob had finally worked up enough courage to charge their positions. "In the name of the holy mother goddess, the spirit of earth and all its children, be this place defended." Suddenly a wall of force went up, magical power shaped and formed by her will moving from her position in either direction to surround the embassy.
Ororo's spells were all spoken in the tongue of her ancestors, a dead language now. She had imagined a rampart of force, a story tall wall of pure energy, and that was what she got. The closest mob members slammed into it and were suddenly forced back, screaming not in pain but in shock as the magical shield acted like a gentle hand pushing them backwards.
With that done Ororo closed her eyes briefly then opened them. Gone were the blue eyes that had been there, now they were white from one end to the other as she summoned her powers. "And now to clear the streets."
Quicker than most would think possible storm clouds began to appear in the sky above the city. Raindrops began to patter down in ever increasing fervor and soon enough a torrential downpour was falling on the city. Ororo felt there was nothing to put out ardor of a crowd of faster than being rained upon. Mobs were fun and interesting to be a part of on a clear bright day. When it was pouring cats and dogs, and now with wind added to the mix, that was a different matter entirely.
The most ardent of the crowd shouted at her angrily, calling her all sorts of names which Ororo could follow but ignored. Many threw a few bottles that smashed impotently against the shield of magic that she had just thrown up, shouting epithets of mutants, mutant bitch and freak, but she ignored them all. Instead she turned to the guards, who are now looking at her as warily as they had been at the crowd. When Ororo turned to step towards the gate one even raised his weapon, but the sergeant barked "Put it down Martinez! Christ you dumb fuck, the lady just saved us from a mob and you want to shoot her!?"
Ororo smiled. "Now that issue has been taken care of, might I come in to speak with the ambassador and his guests?" After a very hurried conference on the phone, during which Ororo called Harry telling him that she wouldn't need the team's help on this one, she was escorted into the ambassador's office.
The ambassador was a fit man, who looked as if he had military background, and retained the same level of toughness that had been a part of him in his early life. Next to him stood a rail thin young man with blond hair, a worried expression, but quick, intelligent eyes. On the sofa across from the two of them were two young men, both of whom had physical mutations. One had hands that were shaped like a lizards claws, the other had, hidden among numerous bruises around his neck and face, what looked like gills.
"I understand we have you to thank for driving off that mob out there? Fantastic job, though I have to wonder about the nature of your own powers madam. I was getting ready to call in air support, but there was no way they would've reached us in time if the mob attacked." The ambassador said, moving forward with his hand outstretched. "Philip Ramsey at your service miss."
"Philip." The African woman bowed her head slightly, and Philip was not the only one in the room to notice that she did not call him 'Mr. Ambassador'. Yet there was something about the woman, something of the way she stood that showed an almost regal bearing, which stopped Douglas from saying anything. "Thank you for standing up for mutant rights as you did allowing these two to ask for asylum. Such an act was in keeping with what I believe is part of the true American spirit and you have my sincere thanks."
Philip waved her off, asking intently. "Can I ask what brought you here just in the nick of time like this?"
"I represent a school for mutants, though eventually we hope to open our doors to normal humans as well, the better to integrate into normal society. Unfortunately at the moment we don't have enough people to really make that a viable option. We have the ability to monitor those mutants who activated their powers within a certain timeframe, and your son Douglas was one of them, Philip. His name came up on our datanet as being in danger."
Rather than trying to explain magic they had made the decision to simply say that it was an advanced computer that monitored all communication frequencies and other things that could tell them if a mutant was in danger worldwide. Though Ororo and Harry were both of the opinion that eventually their use of magic would come out.
Philip blanched a little but then laughed, shaking his head. "Well there goes that secret I suppose." he said placing a light hand on his son shoulder and smiling at the boy. "Yes Douglas is a mutant, though since his powers activated we've kept the secret as well as we could, for fear of idiots reacting as the locals did to these two."
"Can I ask what your power is Douglas?" Ororo asked, looking at the boy.
"I'm good with languages Ms. I mean excellent…" he stuttered, a little tongue-tied in front of this lovely older woman. "Um, I can understand anything I hear or, or even see so long as it is used to communicate information and I, I can speak any language instantly after hearing it just once."
"Fascinating." Ororo said smiling slightly at the boy's nervousness. "We will have to test that, as well as see how wide the definition of 'communicate information' goes. My offer for schooling is for all three of you however, an alternative to seeking asylum in America since America, despite what Philip has done for you here, has not as yet formed a consensus on what to do about mutants and their rights."
"I'll join up." the battered young man said in heavily accented English, touching the bandages on his face. He would have several scars there for the rest of his life, but he had got off lightly in comparison to his brother who was also mutant. He had been torn apart by the crowd consisting of their neighbors and even family members when they tried to flee. They had been eager to expunge the dishonor of having a freak born into the family.
"I'll take it too." The other young man said shaking in place for a moment. His English was far better than the young man's, and he showed marked signs of being of mixed dissent. "My father told me a lot of stories about America, but I've been watching the news too, and if this school of yours can offer protection well, that's what I want."
"I'm not so sanguine about you just taking my son away," Philip interjected, looking a little irritated at the very idea. "However, I'll have to say that getting him some extra training might be good. Could we arrange for him to simply go there rather than board with you?"
"That is a question I'll have to ask my… the headmaster, he's the one that handles the security element. But I can't off the top of my head see why that would be a problem, so long as we take certain precautions. The change in time zones might be it an issue, but…"
She stopped seeing Philip shaking his head. "I'm going to resign if I'm not reassigned elsewhere, I've had enough of these idiots, and besides, nearly being attacked by a mob is grounds for reassignment anyway. I'll see if I can finagle to be moved to someplace in Europe, if not back home. Will that do?"
"That will much better, we already have a few students who come in from America on a daily basis. Here she was speaking about Sam and Kitty, who weren't exactly students, but the point was a good one anyway.
"In that case, I will tentatively agree to send my son to your school, though obviously I'll have to talk to his mother before giving it a final okay."
Ororo laughed nodding her head. "A brave man then, and a wise one too. Would it be all right however if I take these two with me now? If we can call in a helicopter, seeing it come and go after my rain stops may make the mob think that their targets have moved on and lessen the pressure on the embassy here."
Philip agreed to that readily, and Ororo once again shook his hand, before giving him contact information both for herself, Harry and their Duggan, their contact with SHIELD.
After that she moved up to the helicopter pad on the embassy's rooftop, which was clear for now, though she took a moment to cast a spell on the camera that was covering the area. The camera shorted out, though it would only last a few moments. "Nessy." She asked the air.
A second later a small creature popped in, startling the two younger mutants. "Yes mistress?"
"Can you pop us all back to Hogwarts, or will you need to take the two of them first?"
The house-elf wrung her hands. "I can only take them one at a time mistress, and that with taking rests in between. I'm not the best popper." she added shamefacedly. Ororo smiled rubbing her head affectionately for a moment and saying that that was all right before calling in Cory, who easily took all three of them plus helped Nessy along.
The two young mutants had barely gotten over the shock of the little creature's arrival before they were faced with the second one, and then suddenly not being where they had been a second ago. Where before they had been standing on a flat concrete roof, the sign of a helicopter landing pad underneath their feet with the view of a city all around them, now they found themselves in what looked like some kind of European castle.
Harry had sent off the rest of the team to go back to their daily routines, but he had waited in the entrance hall of the castle, knowing this would be where Cory would pop in. He nodded cordially to the two young interns. "Welcome to Hogwarts."
Despite their worry and confusion the two snickered at the name, and he laughed quietly. "Don't worry, we're going to set up a bit of a raffle to see what the new name is once we have enough students to actually have a full class. For now, Cory will show you to your rooms, you'll be bunking in the student tower, but you'll have rooms to yourselves right now. I take it by the way that I won't have to think of bringing your family's here?"
Despite the light tone that Harry had hoped to inject into his words, both of the youngsters grimaced nodding their heads. Happy Families was not a game that most mutants played for one reason or another. He nodded grimly at that then waved them off before turning to Ororo. "So you had an interesting day?"
OOOOOOO
Back in Yerevan, a nondescript man on a rooftop with a clear, if distant, view of the US embassy set down his magnifying glasses, frowning faintly as he reached up to touch the red diamond mark in the middle of his forehead. Interesting. I had hoped this might rouse out Jean Grey from wherever she has sequestered herself with this, but the outcome isn't one I am altogether displeased with. That was obviously Ororo Munroe, her powers tell me that much even if she seems to have some kind of cloaking magic or device that blanks her features from my mind. But that wall of force was certainly magical in origin.
Sinister had decided to rile up tensions between humans and mutants both in an effort to draw out this Guardian and his faction, and to weed out the weak among mutantkind. There were far too many mutants whose mutations were evolutionary dead ends, they needed to be culled quickly for the good of the species. His cybernetic agents had incited riots worldwide in the past few days in a random pattern no one would be able to link to any central organization. Much to his frustration, they had been stymied in America almost entirely however by the efforts of the X-men.
Still, Sinister had come here because his spies in the American government had told him the ambassador's son had a most interesting power, one that, while not combat applicable, was of immense strategic value. He had hoped to either see Jean Grey in action or abscond with the boy during the chaos of the riot, but Storm's swift arrival and the way she dealt with the crowd had put paid to that idea.
"I do not have as good a knowledge of magic as I need, that much is obvious." Sinister mused aloud, leaning back in his patio chair on the porch of the hotel room he had booked for this operation. Unless I wish to put all my eggs in one basket, IE the clone I have begun to cultivate from a strand of Grey's hair I was able to recover from her a brush in her room in her parent's house….
He spoke aloud again, his thin lips twisted in distaste. "I… might be forced to… call in outside experts to aid me in this."
OOOOOOO
Odin sat alone in his bedchambers, staring out over the nighttime sky of Asgard through a window by his side as he quietly sipped a stein of ale. Odin was a general, a king, used to making decisions quickly and with as much certainty as he could, the better to lead his people, because there was no surer way to lose your people's confidence then to appear as if you were uncertain about something. And to be fair most of the time he wasn't uncertain about anything, he had not lived this long, had not reigned as king of Asgard for as long or as well as he had without being confident in his own abilities.
Yet when it came to thinking of longer term issues, sometimes he did take the time to contemplate them before making a decision, most particularly when it came to humans, Midgard, and unknown magic. What he was contemplating now had to do with all three, hence why he was sitting here alone in his room. The news that Balder had brought him from his meeting with the power rising on Midgard, a human named Harry Potter (one individual!) was in some ways merely interesting, yet in others disquieting.
Despite using magic himself, Odin was an expert on using runes and glyphs, he was suspicious of magic users. This had nothing to do with his people's disdain for said, which was why his second son his adopted son had been a sort of outcast here and Asgard. The use of runes and magical items was all right, but to actually wield sorcerous powers, that was seen as dangerous and rather cowardly by most. Yet Odin was slightly more open about such matters than most, he was suspicious of magic users because the use of it tended to corrupt those who could. Especially those who gained power in it quickly, as this Potter had done.
In his opinion powers like that should never be in the hands of mortals, he had a big enough problem with beings like the Sorceress and others from Asgard having it. But Harry Potter was still visibly mortal, or close enough to still fall under that label at any rate. How much that was true was beyond Odin unless he saw Potter for himself, then he would be able to discern more. But for now, his distrust of magic users especially mortal ones, and his desire to keep Asgard separate from mortal affairs was warring with his desires to create a new ally that could aid his people.
His musings were interrupted by Frigg's voice coming from behind him speaking in her normal low tones. "You are troubled my husband. A trouble shared is a problem often solved, I am here to listen if needed."
Frigg came to stand before him, before sitting down in a chair opposite him staring into Odin's one remaining intensely. The king of Asgard huffed amusingly. For all that she never put herself forward, Frigg was one of his closest advisers, and not just because they were married and he had to live with her in the same chambers. What he had said when he had made a decision to send Balder instead of Thor to Midgard had been true, as far as it went: Frigg often gave him very good advice. But that wasn't the totality, for Frigg was as close to a real seer as could be found in Asgard.
Indeed, that had been why Odin had married her in the first place, not because Frigg was one of the fairest maidens of Asgard when they were young, but because she could read the weft and womb of the threads of fate better than even that little whore in the making Skuld of the Fates could. Yet they downplayed it, always keeping it a secret, never even mentioning the fact that she could almost literally see certain possibilities in the future unfolding. A weapon such as that was best used when no one knew about it.
Frigg had tried to steer Loki away from his self-destructive curse. She had also done all she could to protect their son Balder, to keep Ragnarock from happening. She had discerned numerous threats both internal and external many times, though the outcome of her attempting to change the visions she saw was not always effective.
"I am troubled." he said at last, sighing faintly through his beard. "Balder tried to hide it, but the fact he came to respect this human male Potter so quickly says much about him. Yet I am troubled by the power this human can wield, and the fact that it is almost all magic base, which does not make me happy. The enchantress notwithstanding, and even there we have had issues in the past, her mistress has often been as often an enemy as well as an ally, and magic in the hands of our enemies has always been a dangerous weapon against us.
"So keep them at arms-length but yet as an ally. Simply opening up a dialogue with him and a small trade of items and goods means nothing, it would not let them close enough to harm us if they turn out to be untrustworthy. You won't even have to have him here for a state dinner or other some such, I know you hate those." Frigg said calmly.
Yet her eyes were intense as they were locked on his face. "I can see this being very good for us indeed in the long run, not just because we will be able to share goods with the humans yet not be contaminated by their society, or their power struggles. I can see it opening up several different avenues of expansion for us." She emphasized certain words as she spoke, her entire body seemingly relaxed save for her stare.
He leaned back thoughtfully, not looking away as he thought of the various meanings behind her words. "How long term are we thinking?"
"Very long, it would not surprise me at all to find that this Potter is immortal, or at least as close as humans could come to it. I also seem to recall that Balder mentioned something of this Potter mentioning something that sounded very like someone the power of the Phoenix allied with him, and you know what that could represent." Balder hadn't actually mentioned anything of the sort, but it made for a good cover.
That jolted Odin out of his seat a little and he stared at his wife in shock. The Phoenix Force was well known to Skyfathers such as himself, even to that horrible adulterer Zeus. Odin hadn't been married to Frigg when he had lain with Gaia to beget Thor, and he had given over laying with the Valkyries at that point as well, he took his vows seriously regardless of their immortality. Still, the Phoenix Force was one of the primordial forces out of the universe, older and more powerful than any Asgardian could hope to be.
He made a few motions in the air, and a brief glyph appeared in the air. A brief thrum filled the air, as an array went off. It could hide their conversation from anything for a time. "An avatar?"
"Yes." Frigg said simply. "A young woman of fiery hair and disposition. Bonds of love is our between them, as well as the Stormcaller, chosen of Gaia."
There were others, humans and not around Harry Potter, but to what end even he was leading them Frigg couldn't see. But she could see a path, a path that led further then the Asgardians were being allowed to go at present. "As I said, I think in the long term this will be very good for us and for all involved."
Odin's eye narrowed in thought at that, and what else she had said while the spell around them cut out abruptly, its power expended in those brief moments. When he spoke he didn't directly address what his wife had said. "It is true that we could use another mercantile ally. With the trolls and the dark elves still allied, even though we won the recent campaign against him we were forced to retreat from much of our farmland. Very well, I will get with my advisors, and we will write up a formal letters of a nonaggression pact and a trade treaty. Not a full alliance, but enough to serve our purposes." He looked at her to make certain.
After a moment she nodded equitably. "I think that will do very well."
OOOOOOO
Odin and Frigg were not the only ones in Midgard who was contemplating Harry Potter, but Hela wasn't thinking about the future so much as the now. While in her perusal of the people around Harry had cropped up a person she could use as a go between, without the need to use any normal method to get to Midgard (and thus avoid anyone else knowing she had gone there) she had been stymied since. Those damn wards, she thought, not for the first time.
The wards of the castle that was so oddly named Hogwarts were simply scary. It wasn't just that they were among the most powerful, or the most complete, though they were both of those. No, they were almost, well almost alive, not quite, but far too close to it for her to want to attempt to get through. She had watched as the wards reacted blotting out some kind of small demon or other that had been loitering around the edge of the area it was supposed to cover. About two leagues away.
No, she had to wait until young Danielle was no longer covered by them, or in that other area that even her scrying couldn't see that Harry spent time in. Still it was frustrating, and she still hadn't decided what she wanted to do about her interest in the 'mortal' wizard. Hela sighed faintly, wondering again about that as she looked at the gift Lady Death had given her to pass on, before shaking her head and turning back to her real work.
OOOOOOO
Over the next few days the two newcomers fit in somewhat well with the rest of the teens. Neither of them was at all interested in joining the team unlike Dani. This was both because their powers didn't loan themselves to combat and their natural temperament. They were simply happy to be someplace where they didn't have to hide like animals.
Both teens had a significant amount of mental trauma from their time before they could get to the US Embassy, and Harry had put them both in their own rooms in the tower at Dr. Druid's behest. Despite not being a psychologist, he was the closest thing to one that they had on hand at the moment.
Harry contacted Charles about it and he agreed very firmly with Dr. Druid then went on to thank Harry for aiding the two of them. Unfortunately neither of them would be able to transfer to Charles's mansion, since the mansion was going to be getting an influx of new students at the end of the month, along with Sam moving in fulltime, which would fill the mansion up.
Charles himself was also very busy in helping Xian, who had pulled out of her coma. The poor girls mind was once more her own, but she was still dealing with the effects of her monstrous ordeal, as was her mother. No boy was allowed in her room save Xavier, and even around him she still acted skittish at times. There was also something else that was bothering Charles about Xian, something that he couldn't quite put his mental finger on.
Then too, neither of the teens had enough education to enter the high school level schooling of Bayville. Still, Charles was more than willing to have them over for a few days so that he could check their mental health, and did so during this period of calm. He found both were recovering as well as could be expected, and saw no need to assign any medication other than very weak sleeping pills to help keep the nightmares away.
Their fitting in with the castle denizens was surprisingly helped by the ongoing prank war of Harry vs. everyone else. Piotr had actually brought in the girls and his sister, who brought in all the other kids, and all of them had taken to pranking Harry whenever they could, or even the other adults at times save for Ms. Brown, who stamped on such activities hard in her classroom, believing them to degrade her authority there. The two newcomers thought this was a lot of fun, and it got them used to magic in the most amusing way possible, so they joined in.
When he wasn't planning pranks or protecting himself from said Harry finished up several more magical projects. He again updated the parameters of the Big Book of Student's but there wasn't any noticeable effect. There was frankly a limit to what magic could do to detect mutants, much like technology. Every new 'type' of mutant they found it got better, but it still couldn't detect mutants whose powers activated prior to the book being created, or those who had been born with a physical defect, and thus did not differ from their own baseline.
The house-elves under Hessy finished up fully modernizing the Castle, with every room now having hard light projectors and electrical appliances, with Piotr and Nikolai moving out of the students' tower into their own rooms, along with the girls. The projectors had hit their funds worse than anything but Jean's equipment, yet not nearly enough to put a dent in them now. Harry had also bought enough supplies to create greenhouses, and gone it over with Hessy and his team of construction specialist house-elves to create several of them.
One greenhouse would be magically enlarged in the inside so as to augment the potion ingredient farms in High Note, giving them a second source for that, though not nearly as large. The others however would grow food for the castle. Harry had thought about it, and didn't like the fact that they were buying food from outside sources. Yes, they had covered their bases pretty well there, but the connection between their purchases and the school could still possibly be discovered, and that meant that their food supply was vulnerable to attack.
Orders were still coming in from all over Britain, France and Italy as well as Ireland now, and even a few progressive hospitals in other European countries for Harry's potions. American hospitals were suspiciously lacking so far, given Harry knew their embassy's doctor had been among the ones looking over the Gurkhas after the battle with Selene's forces, but Harry knew that would come shortly.
The orders were going to literally bring in trillions, and Harry had doubled the house-elves assigned the task of creating the potions. For now he would be able to match the initial call for them in the UK and France when he was finally allowed to sell to the public, but the rest would need to wait for the second harvest to come in.
To combat this, Harry had been forced to change the runic arrays controlling the flow of time in the farms, to force the plants to grow faster. He'd been a little worried that this would have an adverse effect on the plants, they were magical plants after all and there was a reason potion making was so precise an art, but it hadn't done so yet. Luckily Harry had thought ahead about the need to modify the speed of the arrays, and modifying them had been relatively easy if not very quick.
Jean had finished her next round of upgrades, and was busy modifying the team's uniforms, including her own, to take advantage of the new health sensor, which was loaded with a modified program from one of Pym's medical beds. Unfortunately this meant that her own suit could no longer be simply transfigured from normal clothing into unstable molecules as she had done a time or two, the health sensors built into it were simply too intricate for that to work. But the upshot was that the next time the team went into combat they would be able to coordinate to a much higher degree if needed.
She had also finished Dani's suit.