WANDA MAXIMOF + HARRY POTTER
MENTION OF DEATH | COMPLETE
Wanda’s nerves had been on edge ever since the housing attack occurred barely a day ago. Her home had been completely destroyed, so she and the others in Head had been moved elsewhere to bunk with others. Thankfully, Django, her cat, had managed to find safety during all of the chaos, but everything else was gone. A few possessions had been picked out from the rubble, but the rest had been destroyed. The piano she’d received her first Christmas here that had belonged to her mother, pictures of her parents and brother, and other small mementos of her time over the nearly three years in Atlantis. She’d tried to helping and doing anything she could to help spare some of the houses around her, but it was too late. The attack had happened too quickly, and it was all gone.
There had been injuries on various missions and not to mention the kidnappings and the trauma of the arena, but their community was left with some devastating blows once daybreak came. Clint was hurt badly, and Sam had been roughed up a great deal too. Bucky sustained a few injuries, and Doctor Strange hadn’t come out unscathed either. Lorna had a few scrapes and bruises, but thankfully she seemed to be mostly alright. So many others were badly hurt and three of their own were dead.
Instead of sitting on her hands worrying or feeling helpless, Wanda volunteered to help guard what housing was left. Groups of those with much less fighting experience were being escorted and moved to Mako Island, but she wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, she almost wanted to dare anymore COS to come try to attack any additional housing on her watch. The red hexes and chaos magic crackled at her fingertips as she patrolled the area back and forth. Her anger, grief, and worry fueled her in a way that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Atlantis as a whole felt somber and as if everyone was about to break or explode. Something was happening, something big, and it was only a matter of time until the next attack happened. She didn’t know if they would be bold enough to strike the same place again so quickly, but she would be ready. She had to be.
Harry was relieved that Ginny and Jamie were safely on Mako. He knew his wife could handle herself in a fight, but she was carrying their second child and he could breathe easier knowing the two of them were away from the battles. One thing he was certain of was that this was only the beginning.
It felt selfish to think that he’d gotten lucky, but he couldn’t help thinking it, anyway, if only for a moment. His loved ones had come through the last few days alright, but they’d had casualties, too - Commander Pike, Octavia Blake, Faith, who’d been in his own department were all dead. Several others were injured, some seriously. Harry, himself, had a splint on one arm thanks to some healing fractures. It seemed in Atlantis, magic could only do so much to mend bones, but this was still loads better than the time Gilderoy Lockhart had accidentally removed all the bones from his arm. The same one, ironically.
The loss of housing and the destruction of intake and most of the paths out of the city was devastating, too. It all was. Harry found it hard not to flash back to the Wizarding War, to the Battle of Hogwarts. Somehow, this felt on the same scale and he didn’t think they were done losing people. It was a sobering thought.
Coming across Wanda on his own patrols, he gave her a quick nod of greeting. The whole PD was out here along with a handful of volunteers, trying to protect what was left of housing. Harry didn’t know Wanda extremely well, but he knew she was a good mate of Alicia’s and he knew she was powerful. He was grateful to have her out here with him.
Even though she was walking through one of the sections of housing that hadn’t been hit the hardest, there were still countless signs of battle. The grounds were littered with debris, some houses were burned or others showed bullet holes in the siding. It was hard to look at as she walked and patrolled, but there was no escaping it. Her mind had tried playing tricks on her by flashing back to the day her childhood home had been destroyed and feeling Pietro’s hand in hers as they waited for the last bomb to explode. He wasn’t here to comfort her this time, but she still had him with her in other ways.
Although some of her thoughts were preoccupied, she noticed someone walking towards her who had been also set out on patrol. There were a handful of others there out there with her, but so far she hadn’t spoken to any of them. Making eye contact with Harry, Wanda returned the greeting in the same manner, with a nod.
He wasn’t someone that Wanda knew very well, this version or the one that had been in Atlantis previously, but she knew a lot about him from the friends she’d made from his world. “Hello, Harry.”
“It’s Wanda, right?” Harry offered her a half smile, but it was hard to make it reach his eyes considering everything. He knew, intellectually, that he’d been brought here to fight a war, but with all the strange occurrences during the first month or so, it hadn’t really felt like a war until just this week. COS, it seemed, was getting more and more aggressive in their efforts to beat them once and for all.
Most people had been here much longer than him, he knew. He didn’t know Wanda well, but from what he’d heard, she was someone who had been here a long time. He suspected she had felt their losses more keenly than he had.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, more or less just making conversation, “but I’m half hoping they come back just to give us someone to hex.” These patrols were important, but his had been so far fairly uneventful.
Wanda nodded. “Yes, that’s right.” She smiled, but the same kind of half-hearted smile that neither really truly meant. “Alicia has told me a lot about you.” Some she’d learned from the handful of world collisions of his world and Atlantis, but Alicia had filled in a lot of the blanks that didn’t make sense. “She and I have been working and training together since about the time we both first arrived.”
Sighing a little, Wanda looked around. She understood the sentiment on one hand and wanted to make them pay for all that they’d done here, but she also didn’t want to see anyone else hurt. There had been enough destruction and death for one day, and they’d barely begun to pick up the pieces.
“I wish there had been more that we could have done last night.” Not the specific we of the two of them, but in general. They’d stopped COS from completely destroying all of housing and had kept them away from the Family housing, but so much had still been destroyed. She’d volunteered to help protect, but it was still hard to see. She could still smell the smoke. “It seems like it’s been hard to escape battles like this,” she said. “Here and at home.”
That was a sentiment that was hard not to agree with and Harry nodded. There was a part of him that wanted vengeance for what they’d done here, but if given the chance, he’d rather the ability to go back in time and stop this. He was sure they had agents out there patrolling and trying to locate COS. He knew they would catch up to them eventually and that they would try their damnedest to win this war once and for all, but he also suspected they weren’t done paying the high price for that hopeful victory. It was likely there would be more attacks, more injuries, more deaths before this was all over.
“That’s a feeling I know well,” he said, “but I’m sure Alicia has told you that.” It had been years since the Battle of Hogwarts for him and the Wizarding World had been mostly at peace since, but the battle and the events that had preceded it were something he would never forget.
“She has.” Wanda knew a lot about the war she, Harry, and the others had fought in at their school. They’d lost friends and family there just as she’d lost loved ones too. War wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t easy. It came with destruction and death, and so far this one was turning out to be exactly the same. And she was afraid that it was only the beginning.
Wanda didn’t go into detail about what she knew of his war, nor did she ask questions. If Harry was anything like her, the war in Atlantis had brought back some of those painful memories, and she wasn’t much for talking about those memories right now.
Clearing her throat a little, she offered him a sad smile. “As hard as it is that so many homes were destroyed, I suppose at least we were able to save the homes here.” Family housing where many small children lived. “Even if it doesn’t seem like much considering what we lost.”
“It’s something,” Harry said. He was grateful his own home had been spared and that Ginny and Jamie hadn’t been hurt. Their forces had managed to prevent any of the family housing from being damaged and he couldn’t help being grateful, even knowing others had lost their own homes. It was fortunate that there had been enough houses in the family section to accommodate everyone in the aftermath.
“Sometimes, you have to focus on what you still have instead of what you’ve lost. There’ll be time to grieve later, but we have jobs to do now. Dwelling on all we’ve lost won’t help us do them.” It wasn’t easy to put into practice and Harry had certainly had his hothead moments of rushing in or acting on emotion, but he also had gained enough maturity and experience to know he was right.
While he was right on some level, Wanda knew that it wasn’t always that simple. She wasn’t someone who was able to box out her emotions to do a job; her emotions often drove her to do that job. Rage and grief could be channeled into something more powerful, and while it had taken time, she’d learned to harness it. She planned to use it when the fight came again, and it was only a matter of time before it did.
“We do have jobs to do,” she said. With that much, she definitely agreed with him. No matter how they individually channeled their focus into their work, they all played a role in some way no matter how big or how small. “And for now, that job is making sure the remaining housing stays untouched.” Wanda would fight tooth and nail to make sure it stayed that way.
Harry nodded. There was no part of her that wanted to argue with that statement. Putting aside your feelings and focusing on the job wasn’t always easy - Merlin knew he had a history of rushing off without stopping to think, but he rather felt they were agreed on this, in particular, and he felt glad that he had this woman as one of his allies out here as they both continued on their patrols.