Chapter 3: Breaking Point
HYDRA Bunker, Washington State - January 1999
The sound of footsteps echoed through the corridor, each measured step a countdown to fresh agony. Harry Potter sat on his metal cot, his eight-year-old body trembling not from cold but from anticipation. He knew those footsteps. Everyone in this hellish place knew those footsteps.
Baron Wolfgang von Strucker was coming.
Three months. It had been three months since Harry had been taken from that quiet street in Little Whinging. Three months since he'd seen daylight, breathed fresh air, or known anything except pain and stone walls and the clinical white rooms where they broke him apart piece by piece.
Three months of torture that made the Dursleys' abuse look like a gentle reprimand.
The door to his cell slammed open. Von Strucker stood there, immaculate in his expensive suit despite the early hour, flanked by four armed guards. His cold eyes swept over Harry's hunched form, and something like satisfaction flickered across his face.
"Good morning, Harry," von Strucker said pleasantly, as if greeting a colleague rather than a captive child. "I trust you slept well?"
Harry said nothing. He'd learned that lesson in the first week—speaking without permission earned punishment. Sometimes speaking with permission earned punishment too. The safest course was silence.
"No response? How disappointing." Von Strucker gestured to the guards. "Bring him."
Rough hands grabbed Harry's arms, hauling him to his feet. His legs wobbled—they always did now, weakened by malnutrition and the constant torture. The guards dragged him from the cell, down the familiar corridor that Harry had memorized in excruciating detail.
Twelve steps to the first junction. Turn right. Twenty-three steps to the second junction. Turn left. Thirty-seven steps to the white room.
The white room. Harry had come to hate that color with a passion that surprised him. White walls, white floors, white ceiling. White coats on the scientists who treated him like an interesting specimen. White lights that never dimmed, never offered the mercy of darkness.
And in the center of the room, the chair.
They strapped him down with practiced efficiency—restraints on his wrists, his ankles, his chest. Electrodes attached to his temples, his chest, his fingertips. Needles sliding into his arms to draw blood, always more blood, his veins mapped and catalogued like a network of roads leading to treasure.
"Today's session will be particularly illuminating," von Strucker said, reviewing a tablet one of the scientists handed him. "Your magical reserves are depleting at a measurable rate. The constant stress, the malnutrition, the torture—all of it is draining your core. Soon, we'll understand exactly how much magic a young wizard can produce, and more importantly, how to extract it."
Harry's jaw clenched. His magical reserves were depleting—he'd felt it over the past month, a gradual draining like water leaking from a cracked vessel. His body's natural healing, the thing that had kept him alive through the Dursleys' beatings, was slowing. Cuts took longer to heal. Bruises lingered. The magic that had always been as natural as breathing was becoming harder to access.
He was dying. Slowly, but definitely dying.
And von Strucker knew it. The bastard was pleased about it.
"Begin," von Strucker ordered.
The machine hummed to life. Electricity coursed through Harry's body, not enough to kill but more than enough to make every nerve ending scream. His back arched, muscles locking, and he bit down on the leather strap they'd placed between his teeth to keep him from biting through his tongue.
The pain was a living thing, a beast with claws that dug into his mind and tried to shred his carefully constructed mental fortress. Harry retreated into his Occlumency, organizing the pain into neat compartments, shoving it into corners where it couldn't touch the things that mattered.
Charlie and Rose are safe. Grandfather and Grandmother are protecting them. Father is alive. I will survive this. I will escape. I will—
The machine's intensity increased.
Harry screamed.
Two Months Earlier - November 1998
The torture chair had become as familiar as his cupboard at Privet Drive. Harry was strapped in again, his body already covered in bruises that his weakening magic could no longer fully heal. Bones showed through skin in places—his ribs, his collarbones, the sharp angles of his hips where they'd cut off most of his food rations.
Malnutrition was a weapon, Harry had learned. Starve the body, starve the magic.
Von Strucker circled him like a shark scenting blood. "You've been with us for a month now, Harry. A month of resistance. A month of stubbornness. But I can see it in your eyes—you're breaking. Your body certainly is."
It was true. Harry could feel the cracks spreading through his foundations. The pain was constant now, a background hum that never stopped. His magic flickered and guttered like a candle flame in wind. And worst of all, his mind—his fortress, his last defense—was starting to fray at the edges.
"Today, we're going to try something different," von Strucker continued. He nodded to one of the scientists, who approached with a syringe. "This is a truth serum of our own design. Somewhat cruder than your Veritaserum, but effective nonetheless. We're going to have a conversation, Harry. And you're going to answer honestly."
The needle slid into his arm. Fire spread through Harry's veins—not the clean burn of magic, but something chemical and wrong. His tongue loosened. His mind grew fuzzy around the edges.
"Tell me," von Strucker said, leaning close. "Tell me why we're doing this. What is HYDRA's ultimate goal with you?"
Harry's mouth opened. Words spilled out without his permission, his voice distant and dreamy. "You want... to turn me into a weapon. A puppet. An asset."
"Yes, good. And what else?"
"You want to extract my magic. Use my blood. Inject it into other children to see if you can create more magical soldiers."
Von Strucker smiled. "Very good. And do you know what children we have in mind?"
The drug pulled the answer from somewhere deep. "Young children. Ages three to five. The age when magic first manifests. You've already acquired them. You're keeping them somewhere in this facility."
"Excellent. You see, Harry, you're not our only project. We have six children currently in our possession—orphans, runaways, children no one will miss. We're going to use your blood, your magic, to see if we can force magical ability into them. And if that fails..." Von Strucker's smile widened. "Well, we'll simply acquire more children. There are always more children."
The words hit Harry like a physical blow. Six children. Three to five years old. The same age as Charlie and Rose.
They were going to torture children. Children the same age as his siblings. They were going to inject them with his magic, experiment on them, break them just like they'd broken him.
Something inside Harry crystallized. Not broke—crystallized. Hardened into diamond-sharp resolve.
He couldn't resist anymore. That path led only to death, his reserves depleted, his body broken, his mind shattered. And if he died, those children would suffer. They would be tortured with magic drawn from his corpse, and Harry would be just another asset that HYDRA had used and discarded.
No.
He had to survive. Had to escape. And more than that—he had to save those children.
But to do that, he needed to make HYDRA think they'd won.
Harry let his body slump in the restraints, let his eyes glaze over with false defeat. When von Strucker leaned close to check his response, Harry whispered, "No more. Please. I'll do whatever you want. Just... no more pain."
Von Strucker's smile was triumphant. "There. Was that so difficult? Welcome to HYDRA, Harry Potter."
The next day, they brought him to a different room.
This one was larger, with padded floors and walls. Training mats were spread across the floor. Weapons racks lined one wall—knives, batons, guns. And in the center of the room, standing with the perfect stillness of a predator, was a man.
No. Not a man. The man had been scraped away, leaving only the weapon.
He wore tactical gear all in black, a mask covering the lower half of his face, and a metal arm that gleamed dully in the fluorescent lights. His eyes were empty—not cruel like von Strucker's, not clinical like the scientists'. Just... empty. Void of everything that made a person human.
"Harry Potter," von Strucker said, entering behind him with his usual entourage of guards. "Meet the Winter Soldier. HYDRA's most successful asset. He will be training you."
The Winter Soldier said nothing. Just stared at Harry with those dead eyes.
"Your training begins now," von Strucker continued. "Every morning from six AM until nine AM, you will train with the Soldier in hand-to-hand combat. You will learn to kill efficiently, quickly, without mercy. From six PM until nine PM, you will study magic with Hans Gaultier, a former commander in Grindelwald's forces. Between sessions, you will rest and eat—enough to keep your strength up, but not so much that you grow comfortable."
Von Strucker stepped closer, his voice dropping to something almost gentle. "You are being given a gift, Harry. The gift of purpose. You will become HYDRA's perfect weapon—magical and physical, trained by the best we have to offer. And when your training is complete, you will help us create more weapons. You will oversee the children's transformation, ensure their magic manifests properly. You will be the first of a new generation of HYDRA soldiers."
Harry kept his eyes downcast, his shoulders hunched in apparent submission. Inside, his mind was racing. Training meant time outside his cell. Training meant learning skills he could use to escape. Training meant access to weapons, to other parts of the facility, to information.
And if he was very, very careful, training meant an opportunity to find those children and get them out.
"I understand," Harry said quietly. "I'll do whatever you want. Just... please don't hurt me anymore."
"Good boy." Von Strucker patted his head like he was a dog. "Winter Soldier—begin his training. I want him combat-ready within a month."
The Winter Soldier moved.
Harry barely saw it. One moment the man was standing still, the next Harry was on the ground, his cheek pressed against the mat, his arm twisted behind his back in a hold that sent agony shooting through his shoulder.
"Lesson one," the Winter Soldier said, his voice flat and mechanical. "You are weak. Weakness gets you killed. Get up."
He released Harry and stepped back. Harry scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding.
"Defend yourself," the Winter Soldier ordered.
Then he attacked again.
For the next three hours, Harry was systematically destroyed. The Winter Soldier moved like water, like wind, like something that wasn't quite human. Every punch was precise. Every kick calculated. Every throw and hold and strike designed to teach through pain.
Harry lasted three seconds before the first takedown.
Two seconds before the second.
One second before the third.
By the time von Strucker called a halt to the session, Harry was a mass of bruises, his nose broken, his lip split, blood seeping from a dozen different cuts. He could barely stand.
"Adequate for a first session," von Strucker said clinically. "Rest. Eat. Your magic lessons begin at six PM."
They dragged Harry back to his cell and threw him on the cot. Someone tossed in a tray of food—more than they'd been giving him, but still barely enough to sustain a growing child. Harry forced himself to eat every bite, ignoring the way his stomach cramped and protested.
He needed strength. Needed to heal. Needed to be ready for the evening's torture.
Because if the Winter Soldier had broken his body, Hans Gaultier was going to break his magic.
Hans Gaultier was a nightmare given human form.
He was an old man—ancient, really, probably in his nineties—but his age hadn't diminished him. If anything, it had refined him, distilled him down to pure malevolence. He had fought in Grindelwald's army during the 1940s, earned the nickname "The Butcher" for his particularly brutal methods, and apparently decided to spend his retirement years working for HYDRA.
When Harry was brought to the evening training room—similar to the morning one, but with magical wards carved into the walls and floor—Gaultier was waiting.
"So," the old man said in heavily accented English, "you are ze boy who lived. Ze child who survived ze Killing Curse." He circled Harry slowly. "You do not look like much. Petit. Weak. Broken."
Harry said nothing. His Occlumency shields were firmly in place, every precious memory of his family locked away where this monster could never reach them.
"Zey tell me you know some magic. Parlor tricks, zey said. Wandless casting, which is impressive for one so young, but useless in real combat." Gaultier's thin lips curved into a cruel smile. "I will teach you real magic. Dark magic. Ze kind that makes weak men strong and strong men invincible."
He pulled his wand from his robes—a twisted thing that looked like it had been carved from a bone. "First lesson: pain. You must learn to cast through pain, to maintain focus when your body is screaming for mercy. Zis is essential for any dark wizard."
Gaultier flicked his wand. "Crucio."
The Cruciatus Curse hit Harry like a truck made of razorblades and lightning. Every nerve in his body exploded with agony so pure, so complete, that for a moment Harry's carefully constructed mental fortress wavered. His Occlumency threatened to shatter completely.
Then training took over. Three years of practice, of organizing pain into neat compartments, of building walls that could withstand anything. Harry shoved the pain into a box, sealed it away, and held.
The curse lifted.
"Interesting," Gaultier said. "You have some mental discipline. More zan I expected. But discipline means nothing if you cannot fight back. Take zis wand."
He tossed Harry a wand—not his own carved practice wand that had been confiscated, but a proper wand of dark wood. Harry caught it reflexively, and power sang through his veins. Not his power—the wand's power. Foreign, aggressive, demanding.
"Now," Gaultier said, "defend yourself. I will attack, and you will try to shield. If you fail, you suffer. If you succeed, you still suffer, but less. Begin."
Harry had barely raised the wand before Gaultier struck.
"Incendio!"
Flames exploded toward Harry. He threw up a shield, but it was weak, hastily constructed, and the fire punched through like tissue paper. Harry screamed as it seared his arm.
"Pathetic! Again!"
"Diffindo!"
Harry tried to dodge, but the cutting curse caught his shoulder, leaving a deep gash that bled freely.
"Again!"
"Reducto!"
This time Harry's shield held—barely. The blasting hex splashed against his hastily constructed barrier like water against rock, but the force of it drove Harry to his knees.
"Better! But still weak! Again!"
For three hours, Gaultier attacked. For three hours, Harry defended, failed, bled, and learned. Every spell that hit him was a lesson in what not to do. Every successful shield was a small victory that bought him precious seconds before the next assault.
By the time the session ended, Harry could barely hold the wand. His magic was depleted, his body covered in burns and cuts and bruises layered on top of the injuries from the morning's combat training.
"You lasted longer zan I expected," Gaultier said, and it might have been approval in his voice. "Tomorrow, we try again. And ze day after. And ze day after zat. Eventually, you will learn. Or you will die. Eizer way, ze lesson concludes."
They dragged Harry back to his cell. He collapsed on his cot, his body a symphony of agony, and did what he'd been doing every night since the training began.
He reorganized his memories.
His mind was his greatest asset—even more than his magic, even more than his growing combat skills. So every night, Harry took the day's events and carefully filed them away. The pain went into one compartment. The training techniques went into another. The layout of the facility that he was slowly mapping went into a third. And at the center, locked away behind walls of diamond and steel, his real memories remained untouched.
Charlie and Rose, laughing as he taught them a simple levitation charm.
His mother's voice, warm and loving, explaining moral philosophy.
His father's sleeping face, peaceful despite the curse.
His grandparents' fury when they first saw his injuries.
Those memories were sacred. Those memories were why he endured. And nothing—not HYDRA, not von Strucker, not Gaultier's torture or the Winter Soldier's brutal efficiency—would ever touch them.
Harry fell asleep with his siblings' faces in his mind, and dreamed of the day when he would be free.
Week One:
The Winter Soldier broke Harry in three seconds. Then two. Then one.
Harry learned to fall, to roll, to take hits without breaking. His body adapted, growing harder, more resilient. The constant training, combined with the slightly increased rations, began to rebuild what starvation had destroyed.
Gaultier's curses still hit more often than they missed. But Harry's shields grew stronger. His reflexes sharpened. He learned to read his opponent's wand movements, to predict attacks before they landed.
He lasted thirty seconds in a duel before Gaultier overwhelmed him.
Week Two:
The Winter Soldier broke Harry in five seconds.
Progress.
Harry studied the Soldier's movements, began to recognize patterns. The man was a machine, perfect but predictable. Every attack followed optimal efficiency. Which meant that if Harry could just think differently, could be unpredictable, could sacrifice efficiency for surprise—
He lasted ten seconds before the takedown.
Gaultier taught him darker spells. Bone-breaking curses. Spells that boiled blood. Magic so twisted that even thinking about it made Harry's skin crawl. But he learned them anyway, filed them away with clinical precision, and promised himself he would only use them when absolutely necessary.
He lasted one minute in a duel.
Week Three:
The Winter Soldier broke Harry in twenty seconds.
Harry was learning. Not just the techniques, but the mindset. How to shut off emotion, to become a weapon, to strike without hesitation. He hated every moment of it, hated what it was turning him into, but he couldn't afford to refuse the lessons.
Because he'd found them.
During a bathroom break, escorted by guards who thought him broken and compliant, Harry had seen a corridor he wasn't supposed to see. And at the end of that corridor, behind a reinforced door with biometric locks, he'd felt it.
Small, flickering magical signatures. Young magic. Frightened magic.
The children.
Gaultier stepped up the intensity of the training. More curses. More pain. More lessons in how to cast magic through agony, through fear, through the kind of suffering that would break most adult wizards.
Harry absorbed it all like a sponge to water.
He lasted two minutes in a duel.
Week Four:
The Winter Soldier broke Harry in five minutes.
Five full minutes of combat before the inevitable takedown. Harry landed hits now—not many, not effective ones, but hits. He was faster, stronger, more skilled than any eight-year-old had any right to be.
Von Strucker watched the training with undisguised satisfaction. "Excellent progress," he told the Soldier. "Continue as you are. In another month, he'll be ready for field deployment."
Field deployment. Going on missions for HYDRA. Becoming everything they wanted him to be.
Harry had maybe a week before that happened. Maybe less.
He needed his chance. Soon.
Gaultier tested Harry with complex dark spells. Fiendfyre control (theory only—they didn't trust him with actual Fiendfyre yet). Blood magic. Sacrificial rituals. Horror after horror, taught with casual ease by a man who saw nothing wrong with any of it.
Harry learned it all.
He lasted three minutes in a duel, managing to actually force Gaultier on the defensive for a few precious seconds before the old man's experience won out.
"You are ready," Gaultier said afterward, something like pride in his voice. "Not perfect. Not yet skilled enough to face a true master. But ready. You have ze potential to be formidable, boy. If HYDRA does not break you completely first."
The Wand:
The week before Harry's planned escape, they brought in the wandmaker.
Malcolm Malfoy was a distant branch of the famous Malfoy line—French rather than English, dark rather than merely grey, and completely amoral in his pursuit of wandlore. He looked at Harry the way a craftsman looked at a challenging project.
"So," Malfoy said in perfect English tinged with a French accent, "you are ze boy who needs a proper wand. Zey tell me you have been using borrowed wands, temporary things. No more. I will create for you ze perfect wand. And to do zat, I must first understand your magic."
What followed was a week of pure torture.
Malfoy's method was simple: flood Harry's system with different types of magic and see which caused the most pain. Whichever magical materials hurt the most were the ones that resonated with Harry's core, that matched his magical frequency.
He brought dozens of wand cores and woods. Each one was pressed against Harry's skin while Malfoy channeled magic through it, measuring Harry's pain response with cold precision.
Dragon heartstring: moderate pain. Phoenix feather: low pain. Unicorn hair: low pain. Griffin heartstring: high pain. Thestral hair: very high pain.
Oak: low pain. Yew: moderate pain. Elder: extreme pain.
By the end of the week, Malfoy had his answers. "Elder wood," he announced. "Ze most powerful, ze most difficult to master. And a dual core—griffin heartstring for protection and power, and thestral hair for death magic and dark arts. Zis will be my greatest creation."
He worked through the night, his wand-crafting magic humming through the facility. When he emerged the next morning, he held a wand that seemed to drink in the light.
Thirteen inches. Elder wood so pale it was almost white. And when Harry took it, power sang through his veins like nothing he'd ever felt.
His wand. His perfect match. The weapon that HYDRA had just handed him.
"Beautiful," von Strucker said, watching Harry's face. "How does it feel?"
"Perfect," Harry whispered. And it was true. This wand was an extension of his magic, his will made manifest. With this wand, he could do things that should be impossible.
With this wand, he could escape.
Present
That evening, after training, Harry was returned to his cell as usual. But something was different. Von Strucker lingered in the doorway, his expression contemplative.
"Tomorrow," von Strucker said, "your training enters its final phase. Tomorrow, we bring you to the children. You will observe as we inject them with your blood, with samples of your magic. You will watch as we try to force magical ability into their young bodies. And if you prove yourself loyal, if you demonstrate that you truly belong to HYDRA—you will help us manage them. Train them. Shape them into weapons just as we shaped you."
Harry kept his face blank, his eyes downcast in apparent submission. "I understand."
"Good." Von Strucker smiled. "Rest well, Harry Potter. Tomorrow, you become truly one of us."
The door slammed shut.
Harry waited. Counted to one thousand. Then two thousand. Making absolutely certain that everyone had left this section, that the night shift guards were settled into their routines.
Then he began.
His mind was his greatest weapon. Over the past month, he'd been using every moment of freedom—bathroom breaks, walks between training rooms, even the few seconds before and after torture sessions—to study this facility. To memorize guard rotations, camera placements, weak points in security.
More importantly, he'd been using Legilimency.
Not obviously. Not in a way that HYDRA's magical experts would detect. But small touches, brief moments of eye contact where Harry slipped into the surface thoughts of the guards and scientists who thought him broken. From those stolen moments, he'd pieced together a map of the facility.
The children were kept in Basement Level 2, Corridor C, Room 7. Two guards outside at all times, rotating every fifteen minutes. Inside the room, no guards—von Strucker didn't want the children traumatized before the experiments began.
Harry's blood samples were stored in the medical lab on Level 1. High security, biometric locks, constant surveillance.
Von Strucker's office was on Level 1 as well. That's where the data was kept—all of HYDRA's research on magic, on Harry, on their plans for the children. Digital files backed up on servers that Harry couldn't access. Physical files in a safe that required von Strucker's handprint to open.
And Gaultier—the one person Harry absolutely could not face in direct combat—left the facility every evening at 10 PM and didn't return until 6 AM. Harry had exactly eight hours where his most dangerous opponent was absent.
Tonight. It had to be tonight.
Because tomorrow, they would bring him to the children. Tomorrow, he would be expected to help torture them. And Harry would die before he let that happen.
He closed his eyes and reached deep inside himself, to the place where his magic lived. His reserves were low—nearly depleted from weeks of torture and training. But there was enough. Barely.
Enough to escape.
Enough to save six children.
Enough to destroy this place and everyone in it.
Harry Potter began to plan his revenge.
Harry waited until the guard rotation changed at midnight. The night shift was smaller—only thirty guards for the entire facility, spread thin across multiple levels. Most of HYDRA's security relied on technology, cameras and motion sensors and biometric locks.
Which was their first mistake.
Magic and technology didn't play well together. Harry had been punished for it repeatedly—every time his magic surged in fear or pain, nearby cameras would fritz and computers would crash. HYDRA had learned to keep backups, to replace equipment regularly, to minimize his exposure to their tech.
But they'd missed the obvious: Harry could do it intentionally.
He placed his hand against the wall of his cell and pushed. Not physically—magically. A pulse of raw power, unfocused and wild, designed to do nothing except exist.
The camera in the corner of his cell sparked and died.
The electronic lock on his cell door clicked open.
Harry smiled in the darkness.
He slipped out of his cell, his new wand in hand, and moved down the corridor like a ghost. The disillusionment charm—one of the pieces of magic HYDRA didn't know he possessed, learned from his grandparents during those precious training sessions—wrapped around him like a cloak of shadows. To any observer, Harry was invisible.
The first guard never saw him coming.
Harry hit him with a silent Stupefy, caught his falling body with a levitation charm, and lowered him gently to the floor. The man's weapons—a HYDRA-issue pistol and combat knife—went into Harry's pockets. He'd learned to use both during his month of training.
The second and third guards went down just as easily.
Harry moved through the facility like death itself, silent and inevitable. Every camera he passed, he fried with a pulse of magic. Every guard he encountered, he stunned and disarmed. The guns felt wrong in his small hands, tools of violence that shouldn't belong to an eight-year-old, but Harry had stopped being a normal eight-year-old the night his mother died.
He was a weapon now. HYDRA had made him one.
And weapons could be pointed in any direction.
The medical lab was on Level 1. Harry ghosted through the corridors, his magical senses extended as far as they would reach, alert for any sign of magical personnel. The guards were easy—Muggles with guns, no match for a wizard who could strike from shadows. But if he encountered someone like Gaultier...
No. Gaultier was gone. Harry had watched him leave at 10 PM, seen the old man Disapparate from the facility's apparition point. He wouldn't be back until morning.
The medical lab door had a biometric lock. Harry studied it for three seconds, then decided subtlety wasn't worth the time. He pointed his wand at the lock mechanism and whispered, "Bombarda."
The explosion was muffled by a silencing charm Harry threw up at the last second, but it still shook the corridor. The door hung off its hinges. Alarms began to wail.
No time for stealth anymore.
Harry ran into the lab and found what he was looking for immediately—a refrigeration unit marked "Potter, H. - Blood Samples." Dozens of vials, all filled with his blood, all ready to be injected into innocent children.
Harry raised his wand. "Incendio Maxima."
Fire exploded from his wand, not the usual orange flames but white-hot, magically sustained fire that burned at temperatures no normal flame could reach. The refrigeration unit melted. The vials shattered. Harry's blood boiled away to nothing.
Guards burst into the lab. Harry spun, his wand already moving. "Confringo!"
The blasting curse took the first guard in the chest, throwing him backward into his companions. Harry followed up with cutting curses, bone-breakers, every offensive spell he'd learned from Gaultier. Bodies fell. Blood sprayed. And Harry felt nothing except grim satisfaction.
They had tortured him for three months. They had planned to torture children. They deserved worse than death.
More guards poured in. Harry switched tactics, dropping his wand and drawing the pistols he'd taken. Charlus had taught him—during those precious training sessions that felt like a lifetime ago—that wizards were arrogant, that they forgot Muggle weapons could be just as deadly.
Harry didn't forget.
The guns barked in his hands, impossibly loud in the confined space. Guards dropped, clutching wounds, their eyes wide with shock that a child could be so accurate, so deadly.
Harry ran.
The section was in chaos now, alarms blaring, guards mobilizing. Harry threw up shield charms as he ran, deflecting bullets. He needed to move fast, needed to reach the children before—
Malcolm Malfoy appeared in the corridor ahead, his wand raised.
The wandmaker. The man who had tortured Harry for a week to create his perfect wand.
"You dare?" Malfoy hissed. "You dare use ze wand I created against HYDRA?"
"I dare a lot of things," Harry said coldly. His new wand rose. "Avada Kedavra."
The green light exploded from Harry's wand, powered by three months of rage and pain and suffering. The Killing Curse struck Malfoy in the chest. The wandmaker's eyes went wide with shock and betrayal. Then he crumpled to the floor, dead before he hit the ground.
Harry felt nothing. No remorse, no guilt, no horror at having killed a man with one of the Unforgivables. Malfoy had been an architect of suffering, a creator of tools meant to torture and kill. The world was better without him.
Harry stepped over the body and kept running.
Basement Level 2, Corridor C, Room 7.
Harry hit the corridor at a dead sprint, his enhanced speed a product of the Winter Soldier's brutal training. The two guards stationed outside the room barely had time to raise their weapons before Harry was on them.
Legilimency was an intimate magic, requiring focus and precision. But Harry had been studying it obsessively during his captivity, using every spare moment to practice on the guards who thought him broken. Now it came as naturally as breathing.
He caught the first guard's eyes and dove into his mind. The man's surface thoughts were chaotic—alarm, confusion, orders to protect the children until von Strucker arrived. But beneath that, memories. Procedures. Access codes. The combination to the room's lock.
Harry ripped the information from the guard's mind with all the gentleness of a blunt knife, then hit him with a Stupefy. The second guard went down the same way.
The lock responded to the code Harry had stolen. The door swung open.
The room beyond was clinical and cold, more cage than living space. Two small beds, a toilet, a sink. And on those beds, two children.
Not six. Just two.
A girl, maybe four years old, with dark hair and terrified brown eyes. A boy, three at most, clutching a threadbare blanket and whimpering.
They stared at Harry with the kind of fear that only children who've known nothing but suffering can show. He must have looked like a monster—covered in blood, holding weapons, his face hard with rage.
"It's okay," Harry said, forcing his voice to soften. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help. My name is Harry, and I'm going to get you out of here."
"You're... you're one of them," the girl whispered. "You're with the bad people."
"I was," Harry said honestly. "They captured me too. They hurt me, just like they hurt you. But I'm not with them anymore. I'm escaping, and I'm taking you with me."
"There are more," the boy said suddenly, his voice small but clear. "More like us. In the other room. Four more. They took them yesterday for tests."
Harry froze, his heart pounding. Four more children. That made six in total, just as von Strucker had said. The boy and girl here were the ones not currently being experimented on, but the others...
"Where?" Harry demanded, his voice urgent but gentle. "Where are they keeping the others?"
The girl pointed a trembling finger toward the wall. "Next room. Through there. But the bad men... they have keys. And guns."
Harry nodded, his mind already shifting into overdrive. He couldn't leave the four behind. Not after everything. But time was running out—the alarms were still blaring, and reinforcements would be coming. Von Strucker would be rallying his forces, perhaps even calling in Gaultier early if he could.
"Stay here," Harry told the children. "Lock the door behind me. Don't open it for anyone except me. Understand?"
The girl nodded, her eyes wide but trusting. The boy clutched his blanket tighter but gave a small thumbs up. Harry felt a pang in his chest—these kids were so young, so innocent, yet already scarred by HYDRA's cruelty.
He turned to the wall the girl had pointed to. It was solid concrete, reinforced with steel, but to a wizard with a tailored wand and months of pent-up rage, it might as well have been paper.
"Bombarda Maxima!" Harry incanted, channeling his magic through the elder wand. The explosion rocked the room, blasting a hole through the wall into the adjacent chamber. Dust and debris filled the air, but Harry was already moving, his shield charm deflecting falling chunks of concrete.
The next room was similar—cold, clinical—but this one had four small cots, each occupied by a child hooked up to machines. IV lines snaked into their arms, monitors beeping steadily. The four kids—two boys and two girls, all between three and five—were sedated, their faces pale and slack.
Two scientists in white coats whirled at the explosion, their eyes widening in shock. "Intruder!" one shouted, reaching for an alarm panel.
Harry didn't hesitate. "Avada Kedavra!"
Green light lanced from his wand, striking the first scientist in the chest. The man crumpled instantly, life extinguished. The second scientist fumbled for a weapon—a pistol holstered at his belt—but Harry was faster.
"Sectumsempra!"
Invisible blades slashed across the man's torso, opening deep gashes that spurted blood. He screamed, collapsing to the floor in agony, but Harry silenced him with a quick Stupefy. He couldn't afford noise drawing more guards.
Moving quickly, Harry approached the cots. The machines were pumping something into the children—likely sedatives mixed with experimental serums derived from his blood. He couldn't just rip out the IVs; that might cause shock or worse.
Think, Harry. Healing theory from Grandmother. Stabilize first.
He waved his wand over the first child, a small girl with blonde pigtails. "Episkey," he murmured, followed by "Rennervate." The healing spell closed any minor damage from the needles, and the reviving charm countered the sedative. The girl's eyes fluttered open, confused and scared.
"It's okay," Harry whispered, moving to the next child. "I'm getting you out. Stay quiet."
One by one, he woke them, his magic working overtime despite his low reserves. The children stirred, whimpering softly, but none cried out. They seemed to sense the danger, or perhaps the experiments had already taught them silence.
With the four freed, Harry blasted another hole back to the first room. "Come on," he called softly. The boy and girl from before peered through, their faces lighting up at the sight of the others.
"You got them," the older girl breathed, helping the youngest—a toddler boy—climb through the debris.
Harry nodded, herding the six children together. "We need to move. Stay close, stay quiet. If anyone comes, get behind me. Understand?"
As they slipped into the corridor, footsteps thundered from around the corner. More guards—six this time, armed with rifles and tactical gear.
"Freeze!" one shouted, raising his weapon.
Harry's wand snapped up. "Protego Maxima!" A shimmering barrier erupted, bullets ricocheting off it. The children huddled behind him, their small hands clutching his bloodstained shirt.
"Confringo!" Harry countered, the blasting curse exploding among the guards, sending bodies flying. Screams echoed as limbs shattered and flesh tore.
But one guard fired a grenade launcher before falling. The explosive arced toward them.
"Reducto!" Harry incanted desperately, detonating it mid-air. The blast wave knocked everyone back, shrapnel slicing Harry's arm, but the shield held.
"Run!" he urged the kids, leading them toward the stairs. His reserves blurred—each spell draining him further. But he couldn't stop. Not with six lives depending on him.
They burst into Level 1, chaos reigning—fires from his earlier Incendio, bodies littering halls. Von Strucker's office was ahead.
"Hold here," Harry told the children, disillusioning them for cover. He blasted the office door.
But as the dust settled, Harry froze. Von Strucker stood there, pistol in hand, flanked not by two elites, but by a dozen armed guards and Hans Gaultier, who must have been summoned back early. The old butcher's wand was raised, a cruel smile on his face.
"You," Von Strucker snarled, his eyes blazing with fury. "After all we've invested in you—"
The guards raised their weapons in unison, forming a wall of steel and death. Gaultier's magic crackled in the air, dark curses already forming on his lips.
Harry stood before the children, wand trembling in his grip, his depleted reserves screaming in protest. They were surrounded, outnumbered, with no clear path out. Escape seemed impossible now, the facility's forces closing in like a noose.
He had come so close... but now, cornered in the heart of the enemy, Harry prepared for what might be his final stand.
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