Harry knew that appearing like this, sitting casually with a child while her family of legendary monsters watched in paralyzed horror, was straight out of a villain's handbook.
Honestly? He could finally understand why the "big bads" did it so often, when they appeared like this to heroes in shows. There was a certain undeniable flair to it.
He watched them with a detached sort of amusement. The moment they had burst into the room, every single one of them had tensed. He could practically hear the individual fibers of their muscles coiling like overwound springs.
Hayley was hunched low, her golden wolf-eyes flickering as her body prepared to break its own bones and transform, she was ready to maul him.
"Calm yourselves," Harry said lightly, not even looking up from the drawing in his hand. It was a sketch of a bird, a swallow, perhaps.
He examined it with interest. "These really are good, Hope. You seem to have a real future in the arts, kid."
He handed the paper back to the girl, who was looking between him and her family with a mixture of confusion. She had sensed the shift in the room, she was a smart girl, after all.
"What are you doing here? How did you find us?" Kol growled.
Harry noted with satisfaction that while Kol's voice held its usual bite, his feet remained rooted to the spot. The Original hadn't rushed forward. He hadn't lunged with his usual reckless abandon.
seems his Arrogance had finally been strangled by the cold hands of fear, and Harry found the silence of a Mikaelson far more pleasant than their shouting.
"If you think we'll allow you to harm even a hair on Hope's head, then you're—" Rebekah began, her voice trembling with protective fury.
"Wow, wow, wow," Harry cut her off, finally looking up and giving her a look of exasperation. "Why is it that every single one of you jumps to the most dramatic conclusion possible? Is it the centuries of living in a melodrama, or just a lack of patience you all seemed not to have developed, even after all these centuries? I'm not here for the little one. You can all breathe. I'm not in the habit of kicking puppies or hurting children."
He turned his focus back to Hope for a brief second, his expression softening just a fraction. It was the "Daphne-induced fatherly high" acting up again.
They couldn't help but imagine what his kid would be like, and hoped he wouldn't take after him. "You're safe, kid. Your family is just a bit high-strung. They've spent too long being the scariest things in the room, they don't know how to handle it when someone else takes the title."
Then he stood up slowly, the movement causing the vampires to flinch back in unison. He pointed a finger directly at Freya, who had been trying to subtly chant a spell behind her back, her lips moving in a silent. "I'm here for you."
Freya froze. The subtle twitching of her fingers stopped as if she'd been struck by lightning. The others instantly formed a wall in front of her to try to protect her.
"What do you want with our sister?" Elijah asked, his body tensed. He was leaning slightly to one side, favoring his newly regrown arm as his fist clenched repeatedly.
"Oh, let's see," Harry deadpanned. "Why would a practitioner of the magical arts seek out the only witch in a family of thousand-year-old vampires? Real mystery, that. It's a real head-scratcher. Truly the enigma of our age."
"So you want Freya to help you with something," Kol said, a hint of his old confidence returning. "You need her magic. Is that it? Found a problem you can't magic your way out of?"
Harry glanced at him, and that small spark of confidence died. "Don't get it twisted. There is nothing she can do for me that I cannot do a thousand times better, faster, and with significantly more style. No offense, Freya, but you're just not on my level."
He tapped his temple. "What I want is this. Knowledge. Our way of magic is different, but it's interesting magic, and I appreciate knowledge for its own sake. You were trained by Dahlia, and despite spending half a millennium napping, you are a prodigy in magic, and I want to know everything you've learnt."
"And why," Rebekah stepped forward, her jaw set, "would we give you anything?"
Harry ignored her, keeping his eyes on Freya. "And I assume," Freya said, her voice cold and hollow, "you won't take 'no' for an answer and simply walk away?"
"Normally? I might have," Harry mused. "I can be quite reasonable when I'm not being attacked. But your brother tried to kill me for the crime of sitting in a bar, and the rest of you didn't even blink. You would not have cared if I had actually died. You only care now because I'm the one holding the leash. like animals, You only respect power, so don't be surprised when you're treated like animals."
Elijah opened his mouth to offer some noble platitude, but Harry snapped his fingers at the man to keep him quiet. "Save it. You sacrificed Davina Claire on a gamble. You betrayed Marcel Gerard on a 'what if.' You Mikaelsons don't care about anyone outside your immediate circle of obsession, so don't waste my time pretending you have a moral high ground to stand on. You're all villains in someone else's story. I'm just the one who walked into yours and decided to take the lead role."
"So here is the deal," Harry continued. "You can refuse. And I will reach into that mind of yours and tear the knowledge out. I guarantee you it will be more painful than anything you felt under Dahlia's thumb. It will be like having your soul unspooled like a cheap sweater. Your choice."
Freya stepped forward, shaking off Hayley's restraining hand that was trying to hold her back. Her eyes were defiant. "My answer…" she said, her voice gathering strength, "…is no!"
The floorboards beneath Harry exploded. Freya thrust her hands forward, and the entire house's architecture seemed to obey her command. Furniture, stone, and splintered wood shot forward like cannonballs.
"I know magic doesn't work on you!" she screamed, her eyes glowing with raw, blue power. "But other things still work."
Freya had seen the way her magic rolled off him when they met at the bar, and here now, she had been trying to spell him from the moment they entered and saw him, yet everything just washed off him.
She didn't stop.
She conjured iron chains, pillars of flame, and roots that burst through the floor to entwine around his limbs. She hammered him with the physical environment, blasting him through the exterior wall and burying him under tons of stone and debris.
She used the magic to move the world, hoping to succeed where normal spells had failed. She didn't stop until her lungs burned and her magic felt like it was scraping the bottom of her soul.
Silence followed. The Mikaelsons stood in the ruins of their safehouse, breathing hard, looking at the pile of rubble.
"Is he…?" Rebekah started.
BOOM.
The debris exploded outward. Harry didn't even stand up immediately, he was lying on his back in the dirt, staring up at the moonlit sky, not a single wound on his body.
"That was actually a bit entertaining," he muttered, his voice echoing clearly. "A bit messy, but creative. I'll give you points for the roots. Very 'DnD' of you."
Freya's blood ran cold. He slowly sat up, dusting a bit of plaster off his shoulder as if it were a minor annoyance. "Now, don't say I didn't give you a fair shot."
Before she could blink, the gravity in the area increased tenfold. Everyone, Elijah, Kol, Hayley, and Rebekah, was slammed into the dirt, the pressure so intense they couldn't even draw breath. Only Hope was spared, standing in the middle of the carnage, frozen in terror.
"Mum!" the little girl yelled. She tore off her suppression bracelet, her magic surging wildly in response to her fear as she tried to help.
Freya felt herself being lifted into the air. She wasn't being touched, but she was being pulled toward Harry, who had stood up and now reached out, catching her by the throat.
She clawed at his hand, her magic useless against his skin, her feet dangling inches above the ground.
"As I said," Harry whispered, looking at her with genuine disappointment, "you Mikaelsons only know how to make more messes for yourselves. Even after seeing a fraction of what I can do, you still thought you could win."
He started to squeeze her neck.
Something hit him in the side of the head. It was a canvas. He turned his head slowly. Hope was standing there, shaking, tears streaming down her face, but she was glaring at him even as she showed fear. her hands shaking and her eyes terrified.
Her magic was lashing out instinctively, trying to attack him in any way possible, but it simply washed over Harry with no problem.
Harry stared at the girl. He looked at her tiny fists, her trembling lip, and then back to the family.
"...Damn it," he muttered. "Curse my weakness for innocent kids."
He tightened his grip on Freya's neck for a second, just enough to let her hear the bone groan, then he dropped her. She collapsed into a heap, gasping and clutching her throat.
Hope immediately ran to him, hitting his legs with her small fists, crying for him to stop hurting them.
Harry sighed and snapped his fingers.
A plush, high-backed armchair appeared out of thin air. He sat down, and the crushing gravity vanished instantly, freeing the others.
"Since the little one just saved all your lives," he said, his voice returning to its calm, conversational tone, "I'll give you one more chance. A new deal. Knowledge for knowledge. I won't even bother with Freya's head anymore."
He wasn't going to waste his time on her, he had been hoping she would accept because the mind was a fragile thing. If she fought him, he could end up getting nothing, so it's best to just not even bother.
Freya was coughing violently on the ground, looking up at him with pure, unadulterated terror.
"Give me Esther's original grimoires," Harry continued. " In return, I will give you something you desperately need. Something you don't even know you're looking for yet."
"And give you even more power?" Kol spat, glaring at the witch. He had promised himself that he'd find a way to kill this man one day. "Yeah, no thanks—"
Hayley slammed her hand over Kol's mouth, pinning him down. Her eyes were fixed on Harry, her maternal instincts screaming that this was the only way they were leaving this room alive.
Hayley had already figured out that they were not going to win this, and as the man was pinning them down, with them being able to do nothing, she could only imagine what would happen if he killed them all.
What would happen to her little girl? She'd be all alone in this world without her family and dozens of enemies coming for the Mikaelsons' name.
She had seen the way Harry looked at Hope, there was a sliver of humanity there, and she would exploit it. "What kind of knowledge?"
"Well," Harry leaned back, a dark, knowing glint in his eyes. "How about the knowledge of an ancient spirit that is currently making its way to New Orleans to claim your daughter's body as its own?"
The world seemed to stop. Hayley's heart skipped a beat. The air in the room turned frigid.
"What?" Hayley whispered, her voice barely audible.
Harry smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
————————————————————
If you want to read ahead and access 40 advanced chapters, check the patreon. $4 Dollars
Link:patreon/Phantomking785