Train taken hostage, situation like in first volume of FMA?
There was something sharp prodding her cheek and Harry woke up immediately.
Instincts from a year on a run made her duck and sucker punch the person in front of her without thinking about it.
When she fully blinked the sleep from her eyes, everyone was looking at her and there was a groaning man on the floor by her feet.
“What’s going on?” she asked with a yawn in her voice.
“You bitch!!” someone yelled.
Harry ducked before she realized what was going on, then she flipped the man and stepped on his shoulder blades.
She blinked at the man and his muggle gun and knife. She twisted her heeled boots on his hand and kicked away the gun before he could get back his bearings.
“No seriously,” she asked out loud. “What’s happening?”
An Asian man with a smiling face stood up, red silk and a long tail of hair flapping on his back. He had the gun she had kicked away in his hand and he was dismantling it easily. Like he took apart guns in his spare time or something.
“You interrupted a hostage taking of a train,” the man explained serenely, like he wasn’t just a hostage himself.
Harry nodded. Ah, a hostage taking. Just another par for course.
Take a holiday, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. No one ever said there would be so much walking. It was her second day in her overseas tour and she felt overstimulated from the entire experience of travelling.
Next time, magical travel.
“Oh cool,” she said. “Is this all of them or is there another person?”
On cue, there was an explosion of gunshots in the other car.
She looked at the man and the sure way he was standing despite the speed of the train. At the deceptive cut of his changshan and the ease which he dismantled the gun.
“Wanna come with?” she asked him.
His smile widened. “Of course.”
.
.
Some improbable acrobatics and discreet wandless magic (which she had to use, because she was not a martial arts prodigy, Fon. She was a normal human who can’t jump that far.), the hostage takers were down and Fon was steadily going through their pile of weapons and disassembling it beyond repair.
Harry took charge of the knives and blunted them.
One of the men groaned out awakening and she kicked him firmly.
“Do you have anything to tie them with?” she asked him.
Fon, without a sweat on him and silk changshan not even ruffled, nodded. He procured a lot of rope from nowhere. Harry was afraid to ask where he hid it.
“Ah, and I was supposed to be on vacation,” she sighed after tying up a truly large number of men. She hadn’t realized they were so many.
“I can take care of them for you?” he offered with disturbing eagerness.
She smiled wryly. “We want them alive for questioning, you know. Not in a ditch somewhere.”
He gave her a coy smile. “It’ll be less paperwork for you,” he purred.
For a man she’d just met, he had managed to read her and understand her character faster than all her friends combined. Strangely, she also understood him very well. They just fought together for thirty minutes and it felt like she’d been friends with him for decades.
“If you want, I’m busting an underground fighting ring next week. We’re not keeping and prisoners alive then,” she offered.
Fon’s eyes dilated and Harry’s breath hitched at the look in his face. “Yes?” she prodded.
“Yes,” he said in a low, quiet voice. His eyes flashed red fire and Harry wanted to squirm.
.
I just realized that I’m writing so much thirst. Oh god. where is the fluff.
Cho Chang hires Fon for a hit on Voldemort/Death Eater. Fon tracks down his target and meets Harry while his target and Death Eaters are attacking her.
Cho Chang doesn’t actually like going back home, but certain circumstances, such as a dead boyfriend, do necessitate extreme circumstances.
Still, it took her two years. A year to convince her father and another year to find Feng- gēgē. If it weren’t for how damn important it was, Cho would have given up but it was. It was so important.
So despite how frustrating it was to argue her father into agreeing, and how tiring it was to find a trace of a man who was like the wind, she was finally face to face with Feng- gēgē.
He hadn’t aged a day, as was typical of Asian men who took good care of themselves. He was still lean, tall and incredibly handsome.
He was also the uncle who’d cajoled her into calling him brother when she aged and he didn’t.
She didn’t want to know, because it would break her heart, but she posited it was a curse.
“Feng- gēgē,” she murmured, running to hug him.
He stood up in a hurry, still taller than her but just as incredibly warm. “Little Cho,” he greeted. “Why were you looking for me? Faisu didn’t say anything. Just that it was urgent.”
She sat down across him and warmed her cold hands with the heat from the tea.
“Do you follow magical news?” she asked.
He tilted his head slowly. “No, not really. There was not much interest in my line of work.”
Cho took a deep breath and decided to explain to him the magical war.
Feng- gēgē was a good listener and he didn’t interrupt. His dark eyes were intent on hers and only moved to refill her teacup when it was empty and held her hands when she started to fidget.
“Two years ago,” Cho breathed slowly so her voice didn’t break. “He killed my friend, Cedric. He was a good boy and I would have married him but that bad egg killed him.”
Feng- gēgē finally moved. He sat beside her and pulled her close to him in a hug, so close she was almost sitting on his lap.
“And you want me to kill this bad egg?” he asked in his low, deep voice. “Would that make you sleep again and smile, little Cho?”
Cho sniffled, but she bit her tongue. “No, though if you kill him, it would work. No. He has supporters. I know some are forced because of many things, but those that are there because they want to. Can you…?”
The image of a very angry Harriet Potter flashed through Cho’s mind and she almost laughed.
No, Harriet was angry and she needed something to do. If word got around that Cho had deprived her of the hunt, then Harriet would get angry at her.
The Death Eaters though, the ones willing, aside from the Lestranges – who Neville had claimed to hunt – they were fair game.
And while Cho wasn’t angry enough to hunt, she was hurt enough to ask the biggest predator she had ever known to hunt them down.
“Of course I will,” Feng- gēgē agreed. He patted her shoulders and hugged her again. “It will be a nice break from my work. Sort of like a foreign vacation.”
Cho did giggle at this. “Only you, gēgē, would find hunting to be fun. Though, take care. A friend of mine is hunting down the bad egg for revenge. If you meet her.”
“I will not hurt her,” Feng- gēgē promised.
That’s not what I’m worried about, Cho thought.
.
.
Face down on the floor of Malfoy’s elaborate sitting room, Harriet breathed.
Okay, so maybe the plan to storm Malfoy Manor wasn’t a good idea, but when they took Hermione, Ron and her had maybe gotten a bit desperate.
No, not a maybe. They had definitely gotten desperate.
But that was alright. She had a plan.
The plan was in tatters but it was still a plan.
Her wand was taken, and her best friend was bound in front of her and Bellatrix was getting too Crucio-happy.
But she could still breath and she could still cast an expelliarmus without a wand and enough focus and determination.
She just had to wait for the right moment.
“Crucio!!” Bellatrix screamed and Harriet shrieked in agony.
Fuck.
Okay, so focus was a bit difficult, but determination was there.
“Merlin,” Harriet sighed out loud. She had to distract Bellatrix enough that she could recover to focus. “You are so noisy.”
“What?” Bellatrix said.
Harriet struggled to sit up and, “I mean, if you’re going to Crucio me, can you at least not scream too? My ears are ringing.”
Bellatrix flushed red. Then purple. Then she raised her wand to curse then –
“She’s right you know,” Ron said, catching on. “Why do you shout that spell? Do you need the decibels for momentum? Because Merlin’s beard, you are so loud.”
Ron got the next spell, his scream a terrible thing to her ears.
It gave her respite, however and she had enough focus.
“Expelliarmus!” she enunciated clearly. “Accio!”
Accio was new in her repertoire of wandless spells. She thanked Hermione and her paranoia under her breath while Ron punched Bellatrix unconscious.
“Fuck,” Harriet sighed. “Thanks Ron.”
He patted her while searching the room. “No problem. You took the first three anyway. Where is everyone?”
He had a point. It was strange, because no one was around at all. The Malfoy’s had vanished to a side door when Bellatrix had started cursing.
“That would be my fault,” a male voice said calmly.
Harriet didn’t curse him, but she dearly wanted to. Heart attacks for the recently tortured were a thing.
“Pardon me,” he added when both of them breathed hard. “But I was busy taking care of the rest of the house. I had to save you for last. It turns out, you saved yourselves.”
Harriet holstered Bellatrix’s wand, and straightened up from her dueling posture. “Thank you. Who..?”
He smiled impishly. “My name is Fon. Little Cho asked me to help.”
Cho Chang was incredibly far from Harry’s thoughts. It blindsided her. She had to blink a few more times. Then…
“That’s great, thanks. Have you seen the dungeons? They have our friend.”
Ron was giving her a look that said he was incredibly weirded out, but Harriet was tired and recently tortured. She had to roll with the weird here or else she’d suffer from a mental breakdown.
He smiled again and it Harriet was starting to find it comforting.
There was just something incredibly nice and attractive about a person who looked and acted confident. Like the world would throw whatever the fuck it was at him, and he’d still be standing at the end of it.
Harriet had gone through months trying to pretend like she knew and understood things, and having someone else take charge, even for a moment, was lovely.
She was going to end up having anxiety after this, she just knew it.
.
.
Hermione just about jumped into Ron’s arms and Harriet patted any bit of Hermione she could reach.
Fon waited by the doorway politely and didn’t make a sound.
“How did you end up here?” Hermione asked.
Ron and Harriet exchanged glances.
“Uhm,” Harriet said slowly. “Can we do that later? You can yell at us then.”
“Why would I yell at you? Unless you got purposefully captured?” Hermione asked in a half-joking tone.
They avoided her eyes and Hermione’s hair just about started to float.
“Merlin’s saggy fucking – I was joking!” she exclaimed.
They dragged her out of the dungeon and they were both hiding smiles as she berated them for their recklessness. At least Hermione was alive and there to berate them.
Hermione finally noticed Fon and went quiet and red with embarrassment.
“I’ll leave you here,” Fon said at the silence. “I still have more hunting to do.”
He inclined his head to Ron and Hermione and freaking bowed a few inches lower to Harriet. He flashed her one last smile and left quickly.
“Huh,” Ron said. “He’s your type exactly, isn’t he, Harry?”
Harriet flushed red. “No!”
Hermione stared. “Yes, he is exactly your type. Confident, self-assured and capable. Zabini, that sixth year prefect you dated in fifth year, and didn’t you have a crush in McLaggen?”
Harriet protested all the way back to camp. “I did not have a crush on McLaggen!”
.
.
I might add more and post this as an individual one-shot in AO3 tomorrow.
Everyone has wild theories about how the two first met, but it ends up being something completely normal? Example: Meeting at a tea house or something?
There was a confused looking tourist reading the menu and while Fon would usually leave tourists alone, this tourist was glaring at the menu and parsing through her notes, all the while her stomach growled in hunger.
Fon may dislike tourists, but here was one trying her best and not forcing everyone around her to speak her native tongue. He felt a bit fond, looking at her notes and the dark head bent over it.
“Excuse me,” he said, starting with English. “But do you need help reading that menu?”
She looked up and Fon almost startled at the lovely green eyes she had. “Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed with a lovely smile that left him a bit dazed. “I didn’t want to bother anyone, but I was getting a bit hungry.”
Her stomach let out a timely growl that made her blush and Fon smiled, holding back laughter.
“What do you want to order?” he asked.
“What do you recommend? I just arrived today and I haven’t really tried Chinese food,” she explained.
Fon looked at her, and ordered. They were usually what he ordered when he was in the restaurant, but he added Wonton soup. If he just got off a boat, hot soup was great.
At one point, he realized… “What’s your spice tolerance at?” he asked.
“Not high,” she admitted without shame.
He and the waitress exchanged speaking looks and she nodded. Her dish would probably come back with less spice. She was a nice tourist and they didn’t torture nice tourists with spicy dishes. They wanted them to come back.
“I forgot to introduce myself,” she said with a smack on her forehead. “I’m Harry.”
“Fon,” he said.
She shook his hand firmly. He noted the calluses and the sturdy grip.
They talked and he admired her ease in drawing him into conversation. She was shy, but she wasn’t ashamed to try new things.
When the food arrived, she dived immediately into the soup, and he patted himself in the back.
After they argued over the bill good naturedly, he eventually asked her. “What brings you to Ghuangzhou?”
She sighed. “Business, unfortunately.”
He leaned forward, making her look up in surprise. He had kept his polite distance from her the entire time. “Any chance of mixing it with pleasure?” he asked in a low voice.
She blushed and bit her lip but she didn’t look away from him.
Harry is just. Done. With the Ministry’s bull, and decides to leave the country to travel the world. Because she can. By non magical travel, so she and Fon end up seat mates or something?
Fuck her Potter Luck.
Just fuck it.
She had five options in front of her, and Hermione had challenged her to travel like a muggle. So that had given left her two options.
One, air travel. Two, sea travel.
By some unfortunate luck, she’d booked into a ferry instead of a plane and she was now stuck there. For a week. Like a damned muggle.
It was terrible, because she was sea sick and nauseous and just all around miserable the entire time. It got better around the third day, her magic adjusting and making her actually able to keep food down.
And that’s when they got the storm warning.
“Seriously?” she asked out loud, just freaking tired of muggle travel.
An Asian man, who slept in the cabin opposite hers and had given her godsent ginger candies, looked at her sympathetically.
“It’s the Pacific,” he explained. “Storms are par for course. It happens every other week or so. We just happened to have terrible luck.”
Terrible luck or Potter Luck?
Harry wanted to bang her head on the wall. And scream loudly.
.
.
The storm arrived just as warned and Harry went back to being miserable.
That Asian man named Fon, took one look at her after the first day and said, “Well, do you want me to knock you out?”
Which. Uhm. That was a very strange thing to offer people when you were a stranger. Except he had seen her vomiting and pale face for almost four days now. Helped her into her cabin and even tucked her in at one point.
She’d allowed this man so many liberties on her person and this was stretching it, but it was either misery or blissful unconsciousness.
“Alright, fine,” she sighed, just tired of it all.
He pushed her into her bed and then pressed something in her neck that made her eyes go wide and her entire body lax, mouth open with surprise. Then he pressed another thing and she went completely under.
When she next woke up, Fon’s body was over hers and there were gunshots.
Harry went awake immediately, body tense and Elder Wand materializing into existence in her hand.
“What?” she gasped.
“Keep quiet,” he whispered. “There are pirates. Pretend to be unconscious, they just want material goods.”
Given that most of Harry’s material goods were transfigured and disguised as innocuous bracelet charms on her wrist, she had no problems following that order.
What she did have a problem with was this incredibly handsome man on top of her. He was covering her body since she was in her sleep clothes, she got that, but his face. Was. Near her breasts.
It was embarrassing.
The pirates banged open the door to her cabin both she and Fon tensed. She forgot her embarrassment and pretended to be asleep.
“What’s wrong with her?” one pirate asked.
“She’s very ill,” a nervous man answered. “She’s been bedridden ever since the storm happened.
“Hmmph, let’s hope she’s not contagious. Where’s her things?” came the demand.
And shit, she had no luggage on display, all of them were hidden!
When there was a smack and a cry of pain, Harry opened her eyes, pushed Fon away gently and took down the pirates with three well placed jabs.
When she looked up, the ship’s captain was looking at her with an open mouth and Fon was looking pleasantly surprised.
“Sorry,” she told the captain. “But I just couldn’t let him push you around.”
The captain was very nice and patient to her vomiting; he actually gave nice advice and didn’t make terrible comments about her lack of sea legs.
Point was, she liked him and she didn’t like anyone hitting him.
“That’s alright,” the captain said faintly. “But he’s not the only one here, there’s a dozen of them in the deck with machine guns.”
Fon stepped forward. “I can help with that.”
Harry nodded eagerly. “It’s the least I can do since I was so much trouble before.”
The captain let them out, still looking pale and disheveled.
“If you hunt down more than me,” she told Fon. “You can ask me for anything.”
His dark eyes dilated and he smiled. “Yes? And If you hunt down more than me, you can do anything you want with me.”
Which. Uhm. Was an incredibly distracting offer. Fuck.
HIs smile widened. “Happy hunting,” he declared, before taking off without a word.
Harry’s team of aurors crash a mafia soirée/party bc a budding Italian dark lord is attending who has alarming parallels to Voldy? And Fon doesn’t really seem concerned or even care because he’s technically not even Mafia, he’s Triads, and maybe he starts helping just for the Drama™️ (or asking Harry what’s happening and upon hearing “we’re arresting him because he’s split his soul and made himself immortal” or w/e,he decides to help?)
Fon liked people watching and he liked nice clothes.
People somehow took this to mean that he liked parties.
Which was just stupid. He didn’t like the banality of it or how monotonous attending multiple parties in a week could get.
The first one was always fine, but the subsequent ones were terribly boring, the luster wearing off and nothing interesting left.
And maybe that’s why the skylight breaking was amazing.
Everyone started screaming and Fon would have yawned if he had less discipline. As it was, he set down his untouched cup of tea and looked around.
There were people in robes throwing around flashes of light. Most of them were concentrated on taking down that new Don in Sicily, the one who was throwing around his weight and making everyone around him annoyed. No concept of territory or politeness that the Italian Mafia liked.
Fon watched and didn’t do anything, until that Don fled in his direction.
He had a split second of thought. To help or not. Hmmm. He looked behind the fleeing Mafioso consideringly, at the one woman among the robed people who had thrown off her robes the moment the fighting had broken out. She was dressed in jeans and had her long her in a messy bun. She was also the only one who had resorted to punching people and her form was excellent enough that he’d taken notice.
All this had taken him a moment and he decided.
Fon tripped the fleeing Mafioso and kept him on the floor with one well-placed foot. Just enough pressure and he’d probably pop like a grape so he had to be careful.
“Oh, you caught him,” she said, sounding displeased of all things.
Which. Was delightful. Did she want to hunt him herself?
Except, she was looking at him now and if he knew women, and he did, she appreciated what she saw.
“Are you going on any more hunts?” he asked.
She blinked at him for a moment. He waited patiently.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I am. There’s a couple more we have to hunt down.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Want to come with?” she asked.
He nodded.
Fon trussed up the Mafioso carefully and offered him up.
Amidst the carnage, one building stood out for how undamaged it was.
Fon stares.
He didn’t usually indulge in knock-out drag-down brawls the way most people with Storm Flames did. It caused too many casualties and made the sour taste of guilt well up in his stomach after he’d seen the damages.
Of course, he was usually well away by the time the haze of Storm-frenzy left him, so the guilt wasn’t usually severe, but this time.
This time, he’s still on site when the haze leaves him and he sees the most definitely destroyed town.
Thankfully, there’s not much dead, given that it’s in the middle of the afternoon and everyone would be at work and not at home.
But. That’s one pristinely undamaged building.
Its taking Fon’s attention from what pissed him off in the first place and he knows it. He focuses his energy on it so he doesn’t slip under again.
“What in the world?” he asks.
He blinks, allowing Storm Flames to coat his eyeballs for a moment and... There’s no signs of Mist tampering on the building, or any other Flame help. It’s just standing all by itself, having survived Fon’s rampage where all its other fellows did not.
Curiosity gets the better of him and he enters the building. He’s aware that he should be well away from the town before the authorities and curious reporters arrive but peeking would only take a moment.
A bell jingles merrily when he opens the door, at complete odds with how grimy and blood stained he is. The inside is just as pristine and untouched as the outside, the shelves lined with small boxes, and those boxes filled with shining gems.
A...a trinket shop? A trinket shop managed to withstand his overwhelming Storm Flames untouched?
“Welcome to Harry’s Emporium of Charms, Luck or Otherwise!” a petite woman greets from the counter with a smile. “What are you seeking, stranger and how may I help you?”
The foreigner didn’t even bat an eye at the blood on his clothes, or the bloody knuckles that were slowly dripping blood on her clean floor. She just gave him a soft smile, patiently waiting.
“I was...curious,” Fon says. He eyed her dark hair thoughtfully. She looked as innocuous as her store, but the look in her light eyes told him that if he tried anything here, he would not be coming out of it unscathed.
“That is one reason to enter the Emporium,” she answers. “But what are you seeking, stranger?”
Fon remembers why he was angry in the first place and red filled his vision again before he quelled it forcefully. It took several deep breaths before he could remember where he was again.
“I need,” he says with carefully leashed violence. “Something to help me keep my temper. I am somewhat prone to loosing it when something triggers me. Other than that, I am mostly calm.”
“Mostly,” she agrees, for the first time making a reference to what he’d done outside. “What do you say you need more though, Reason or Patience?”
Other people asking this would get Dragon punched into the next life. The woman, however, wasn’t asking out of schadenfreude, or the intent to use it against him later.
“A mix of both,” he says.
She gets up from behind her table and went to one of the many boxes lining the walls of her store. She chooses three charms and, after a long thoughtful look at him, a sturdy looking red thread.
“You use your body often,” she says, more to herself than to him, glancing at his bloodied knuckles and bruised wrists, “And you would object to having your ears pierced, of course.”
Fon nods. He watched her fingers deftly twist the wire into shapes, looping it through one stone, then another, adding a decorative bead that shone, adding the last stone and somehow making it beautiful.
“What do you think about bells?” she asked again, producing a box of bells of all shapes and sizes from under the table.
He likes bells. But given his work, it would be inadvisable to wear one. With a pained expression, he tells her so.
But the woman isn’t deterred. “Try one,” she says, holding out the box to him.
Just to please her, he takes the smallest one and shakes it, releasing a small chiming sound that...sounded five seconds after he shook it.
“How,” he gasps out in shock.
Her smile is cat-like. “Trade secret. So. A yes for the bells?”
He nods. She adds it to the charm and it looked incredibly beautiful. Even if her charm turned out to be a hoax, he would still wear it.
“Where?” he asks.
She gestures to his hair and he realizes that the long tail he usually wore it in had slipped loose. She’d included a long, slightly elastic end that he used to tie his hair up, slipping his old hair tie into his pocket.
Impossibly, he felt calmer the second he placed his hands down. The bells jingled when he moved his head, the slight delay unnoticeable unless one was using the sound to track him down.
He breathes and didn’t feel the rage shimmering under his skin. Instead, it banked available until he deliberately called it.
“How much do I owe you?” he asks.
The amount she said was a more pittance compared to the peace of mind he would have for as long as the charm would last.
“A year,” she answers when he asked if he should get another one. Then, she looks at him closely. “Maybe less. You are...very powerful.”
He buys five more. Just in case.
Fon leaves the store, mood considerably brighter than when he entered it. That is, until he saw the police outside.
.
.
Fon didn’t tell anyone about the charms, or the woman who sold it to him.
He did get a reputation as the Eye of the Storm for how calm he could get, right until he eviscerated someone with a smile.
He did, however, drop by her shop whenever he had time. He owes her too much just to disappear on her.
Not that she took it that way.
“Welcome to Harry’s Emporium of – oh for goodness sake, it’s you again,” Harry cut off her spiel, looking exasperated and annoyed.
“Hello Harry,” he greets her with a slight bow and the chime of bells. “I bought you cake.”
She huffs and puts down the wire cutter, turning around to put the kettle on.
“What were you going to do with the wire cutter?” he asks, placing the box down on her working table.
“I was working on a commission, I would have you know,” she says. “Because I don’t just sit around and hope someone comes in.”
That is a sore point for her, given that he’d asked her that in one of his visits. How is he supposed to know that is insulting?
Her irritation melts the moment she opens the box. “Lemon cake! This will go well with some of that tea you gave me. I still have some left.”
She bustles around him and Fon feels the tension gathered around his shoulders bleed out. Harry exuded that incredibly calming presence that he’d never found anywhere else, not even those with Rain Flames or Sky Flames.
It was that surety of where she stood in the world, that confidence that no matter what would happen, she’d still be standing afterward. It was incredibly attractive to Fon, who only had the clothes on his back, and the orders of his Master to fall back on. Everything he had belonged to the Triads.
He would stock up on the calm Harry exuded until the next visit.
“Thanks for coming to visit,” Harry tells him after the cake had been eaten and the remainder packed away inside her little kitchen. She hands him a packet of cookies that is tied with another charm for luck. Harry keeps giving them away, it is a wonder she still made a profit. “I’ll miss you,” she sighs.
Fon would admit that he is an oblivious bastard. But even he could hear what she means with those words.
It takes all he has not to kiss her. It is too soon, and she doesn’t need the kind of man that would only show up sporadically.
“I’ll miss you too,” he sighs out, putting his forehead against hers, looking into her eyes. This close, he could see that they are a light color, green with flecks of gold and blue. It is incredibly enchanting and he could stare at them for hours.
But the appointment with Checkerface is waiting, as well as the promise of a challenge.
“I’ve got to go,” he murmurs.
Harry lets out a hitched breath when he releases her and Fon closes his eyes against the sheer need that flooded him.
