16 16. SUPER SOLDIER IS A POSTER BOY.

"Ah! Man, we fucking suck at this Santa thing. We only did one hospital!" Domino whined as she dropped down heavily onto a bar stool.

Harry patted the girl gently on the shoulder, taking a seat next to her.

"I'll have a Gin and Tonic and she'll have … water." Harry asked as he carefully sat himself down on the stool.

The bartender appeared to be about to refuse when Harry pulled out a large pile of notes from his pocket.

"No! I want beer."

"Water first beer later." Harry countered.

"You're not the boss of me!" Domino whispered glumly as she fumbled for her glass.

"Actually, I am." Harry reminded her.

"Fuck off." the girl replied with a snort. "I'm going for a piss."

Domino walked off drunkenly towards the bathrooms leaving Harry to nurse his drink and wondering if she had any more brownies left, feeling a little peckish.

Looking around, Harry noticed a board over the bar but instead of a menu, it appeared to be a betting pool titled the 'Dead Pool'.

"So Mr. Hammer, what's this dead pool about?" Harry asked.

"The name is Weasel. Not sure how you found out that name but it's best you forget it." the bartender replied back with a serious expression.

"Santa knows everyone's name Mr. Weasel." Harry replied with a chuckle with gesturing at his gedup.

"It's just Weasel, my dad was Mr. Weasel." the man replied.

"If you know everyones name then what's mine?" a large man that looked like Hagrid might have had he been in a biker gang asked.

"Edward Thomas Buckford." Harry replied without hesitation.

"Edward? Buck is your nickname?" Weasel asked in surprise.

The man in question nodded back in surprise.

"You think you know someone …" the bartender commented. "I still don't buy that you're Santa. You're about one hundred and fifty pounds too light and about two thousand years too young. 'Edward' here makes a more convincing Santa than you do."

"Aright, I'm going to tell you what you wanted for Christmas the last time you asked me for something." Harry challenged.

Harry barely had to focus at all, his magic sprung forward, catching the mans associated memories. A page from an electronics catalogue showed a circled TRS-80. Harry wasn't one hundred percent certain what that was other than a computer of some type.

"Hunh. You wanted a new computer. A TRS-80?"

The bartender's eyes grew wide in surprise. "What the actual fuck!? Why didn't you get my computer then?"

"I'm new to the Santa thing. This was my first night, trying to ease into it." Harry explained.

"I fucking said no you asshole!"

Harry was up, and rushing down the bar towards Domino's angry voice before he even realised what was happening.

Domino was pushed up against a wall with a pair of large rough looking men crowding her. One man had a hand up to her waist.

"I think the lady has told you to piss off. You might want to listen." Harry growled out, his magic practically bubbling under his skin.

The second man looked over to Harry with a derisive look.

"Look little boy, unless you want to spend the holidays in intensive care, you'll walk back out the way you came." the second man attempted to shove Harry away but Harry's reflexes, honed by years of people trying their damned best to kill him, kicked in. Harry moved out of the way of the shove and attempted to shove the much larger man back … unbidden, Harry's magic reacted, sending the man careening into the nearest wall.

The room suddenly went quiet, the man crowding Domino looked at Harry in surprise as Harry stared at his hand in confusion.

Domino, seeing an opportunity kneed the large man in the groin. Someone by the pool table was heard to say: "That'll do it." and the entire bar descended into chaos.

"No, no, no! I just finished getting this place cleaned up from last time!" the bartender exclaimed in annoyance.

At this point in the story, Domino stumbled into the kitchen, dressed in her usual panties and shirt and slumped down at the table, eyes closed.

"Kill me." She mumbled as she lay her head in her arms on the table. "I fucking feel like I've been in a three day orgy marathon!"

"Language!" Captain Rogers reprimanded softly.

Domino's head snapped up suddenly noticing that they had a visitor, her red rimmed eyes grew wide, her greenish complexion took on an almost healthy pinkish hue and then something incredible happened … she squeaked in surprise and ran out of the room.

Harry snorted in amusement into his coffee.

"Oh hell, I'm so sorry but it looks like you have a fangirl."

"I'm sure she was just embarrassed by her state of dress." the Captain offered, his own complexion a little flushed.

"Nope. She sat here dressed just like that with Fury sitting right where you are and didn't bat an eyelash. And trust me, I can spot a fangirl a mile away."

Rodgers appeared a little uncomfortable at that admission so Harry continued with his story.

"Everything gets a little blurry from this point on." Harry explained.

Simultaneous fights broke out across the bar, a man had just broken a beer bottle on another man's back, another man had gotten tossed over the pool table in the back, Domino was kicking her original aggressor forcefully in the ribs.

Harry's bemused observation was cut short when he was tackled from behind and someone began raining blows to his head.

Again, Harry's magic reacted unconsciously, sending his assailant flying into another group of men.

The next few minutes passed in a blur as Harry dodged various assailants while punching or kicking anything that came close to himself or Domino.

One moment Harry had been fighting and the next he found himself outside with Domino and a group of men laughing. The sounds of fighting could still be heard coming from the bar.

After another moment he was lying face first in a strange chair with his shirt off. A man, Wade Harry vaguely remembered, giving him a swig of a bottle before the needles began …

Harry stopped his explanation, whipped off his shirt and conjured two mirrors. On his back was a massive tattoo of a stag, a wolf, a grim and a Raven.

"Well … could be worse than getting a drunk tattoo after a bar fight. You could have gotten married." Rodger's offered as he tried very hard not to laugh at Harry's sudden panic.

At the word 'married' Harry remembered how he and Domino had been sleeping in the same bed and brought up his hand. To his relief, it was bereft of ring.

"It happened a lot during the war."

"What? Drunken weddings?" Harry asked, dropping bonelessly in his chair in relief.

"Well, I'm sure there were a few of those but no, I meant the drunken tattoos after a bar fight. Guys would get antsy between conflicts and get drunk at the local bar. Usually no hard feelings at the end."

Harry nodded.

"From your file, you mentioned a war broke out? I'm guessing you were part of it."

Harry moved to the coffee pot and busied himself with pouring another cup.

"It wasn't a war like the one you were in." Harry began. "It wasn't massive armies on battlefield. It was actually not even technically a war. My friend Hermione explained that it was an insurrection, a group of bigots who believed that only those born of existing magical families had worth and all others were little more than animals."

"Sounds familiar." Rodgers offered accepting a fresh cup of coffee.

"It wasn't battles on battlefields, it was people vanishing in the night, the government being taken over little by little. Laws accumulating and the next thing people knew, first generation witches and wizards were being rounded up, interrogated to find out who they had stolen their magic from and then sent to 're-education camp'."

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"When I was one year old, the leader of the Deatheaters came for my parents. He killed both of them but when he tried to kill me his spell rebounded from some type of protection my mother had placed on me and destroyed him instead. Unfortunately, he'd made himself sort of immortal and was simply banished as a spirit. By the time I started magical school, he was strong enough to possess willing hosts. He tried to kill me at age eleven, I killed his host instead."

"A lot of crazy stuff happened over the years but he tried to kill me a few more times until he finally managed to resurrect himself. He wasn't going to let his multiple defeats at my hand stand so he hunted me. Our Minister for Magic refused to believe he was back, he'd been bribed by Voldemort's supporters for over a decade, so we lead a shadow war against the Deatheaters while the government tried to discredit me while elements inside the governement also tried to murder me."

"My friends and I left school to hunt the items that granted Voldemort his immortality. We spent a year living out of a tent, being hunted. I actually have a copy of my Public Enemy number one wanted poster in my things. We finally got all of them when I discovered I was also one of those items. A part of Voldermorts soul had attached itself to me we he failed to kill me the night he murdered my parents and as long as I lived, he couldn't die."

Harry looked up at the soldier knowing he would understand, he had done the same himself.

"So I walked into his camp as he attacked my school and let him kill me."

Rodgers simply nodded. "You jumped on the grenade."

"Except, instead of killing me, I was able to sacrifice the piece of soul he'd left inside me and came back. By then there was only one anchor left, his snake familiar but one of my friends took care of it and then I killed the now mortal Dark Lord."

Harry looked back up at the man sitting across from him at the kitchen table. He could see no pity, not judgement only understanding. In the hallway, the sneakoscope remained perfectly still. Harry felt a rush of relief. The emotions he'd bottled since Voldemort's resurrection came back with a vengeance.

He'd never had a chance to tell anyone any of this. Well, he had of course but none of them really understood. Even the Aurors like Shaklebolt hadn't understood. To them, Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived or The-Man-who-Conquered. Moody might have understood but he had died during the escape from Privet Drive. Hermione would have understood but Harry had refused to burden her with his grief as she dealt with her own demons and he had already been enough of a burden on the young woman and Ron didn't have the emotional range to understand okus he was also suffering through his own loss.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, simply sipping their coffee. Domino eventually returned, showered and properly dressed.

"Dude. Did we get tattoos?" Domino asked.

Harry lifted his shirt and showed her his tattoo.

"Totally worth all those pot brownies." the Girl exclaimed.

"You drugged me?" Harry asked in disbelief.

"You didn't know?!" Domino asked in disbelief. "Did you not smell it when I was baking them?"

"I've never done pot in my life! How was I supposed to know? Doing mind altering drugs when you can literally reshape reality with your mind is a bad idea!" Harry explained.

"That and winners don't do drugs."

Domino and Harry both looked at each other incredulously.

"Dude, I think you're totally awesome but ... " Uncharacteristically, Domino hesitated to say what was on her mind.

"You are sort of the poster boy from performance enhancing drugs." Harry continued.

Rodgers appeared to want to argue the point but stopped, appeared confused for a moment before realization came upon him.

"Right."

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(edited chapter.)

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