AN: I'm supposed to have a writing rotation… well, fuck. At least I'm writing, and I do have a plan for the Archer update. The real trick is now I have to get creative for shit to go on outside the videos for my star wars fic… possibly. Honestly Functionality I might ask you to play sounding board for some shit soon because I'm basically out of plans and down to ideas there.
Hopefully I managed to give Harry a bit more personality in this one.
Thank the beta folks. Functionality does great work.
{}{}{}{} Taylor
"-believe we let you into our home!"
I was not used to people screaming at me. Dad kept a pretty solid lid on his temper most of the time. The trio never needed to shout. Even the Protectorate heroes and other villains didn't erupt into screaming fits like Molly Weasley.
"-don't know what Harry was thinking, not warning us!"
I did not appreciate it.
"-only knows what you have planned for the poor boy, but I'll not let you take advantage of him!"
I also did not appreciate that little bitch Ginny going to mommy with my 'dirty little secret.' If that bitch only knew what I'd actually done… Well, this was just one more reason why giving people the full story was stupid.
"Are you even listening to me?!"
"Everyone within three miles is listening, whether they want to or not. I am trying to see how many bees buzzing by my ears it takes to drown out your voice." I pulled down my hood to show almost twenty bees hanging from my hair by my ears. "Honestly it's just as annoying, and I can still hear you over them so I'll have to try something else next."
Molly puffed up like an angry cat and hissed like a tea kettle.
"Taylor,-" Harry started to speak up, no doubt to play peacemaker, but I was in no mood to humor him, or this self righteous banshee.
"No!" I snapped. "I told your friends a bit about my background because you insisted I could trust them. It took her-" I jabbed a finger at Ginny, "just two days to betray that trust. And now I'm getting screamed at again! By someone who knows none of the context and is judging me for things she knows nothing about."
"There is no good justification for being a criminal!"
This stupid, ignorant, holier than thou, bitch!
"There are dozens of perfectly good reasons, you sanctimonious twit!" I shouted right back. "My friends? My gang? Rachel was on the run for years after escaping an abusive foster home. Lisa was running from parents that were trying to exploit her for money. Alec fled Canada to escape his abusive, cult leader, rapist, father. Brian just wanted to earn enough money to get custody of his sister away from his drug addict mother. The system isn't perfect and sometimes people have to fend for themselves!"
I was saying too much. I never meant to share this. But I was just so done. I'd been cut off from my world for a week, married to a complete stranger, paraded through the press as a harlot out to corrupt a national hero, and I'd put up with three days of passive aggressive sniping culminating in this.
"I shouldn't have fallen in with them. I didn't have a good reason. But they were kind to me. When no one else had been! And given what I found out later? The only better group I could possibly have hooked up with included a girl that tried to kill me! Twice!" Which didn't even get into the likes of Armsmaster, Piggot, or that asshat Tagg.
"I spent most of my time trying to stay alive, and fighting people that would give you nightmares for the rest of your life! But no, your daughter came running to you to spill my "secrets," and suddenly I'm an irredeemable force for evil. Suddenly I'm out to get Harry, and you, and anyone else you can think to be offended for!"
"As if a criminal hedge witch could know anything about nightmares from fights with common criminals!" Molly spat. "I lived through the last war. Why I have half a mind-"
I slapped her across the face.
"How dare you!" I seethed. "You ignorant small minded, bitch! Brian got his nervous system pulled out of his body trying to stop a serial killer! It was a miracle he could be put back together! I put my life on the line to get a little girl away from a psychopath who was keeping her drugged up in an underground bunker, and I only survived by the skin of my teeth! And that was just two fights out of dozens!"
Molly looked off balance. Hermione looked sick. Ginny looked like she was starting to regret setting this in motion. Harry kept fidgeting like he didn't know what he was supposed to do, or maybe he was just afraid we would both jump down his throat if he gave us an alternate target. And I, I was just done.
This woman wasn't worth the effort it would take to convince her. I wasn't going to keep wasting time trying to defend myself, or my friends, to people who lacked all of the necessary context. I didn't have to sit here and listen to this. Spinning on my heel, I headed for my assigned room ignoring everyone's protests at my exit.
I dug a gun out of my bag. I hadn't had a chance to clean this one yet, and I needed to get familiar with all my potential weapons. Pulling out the cleaning kit I got started on learning the mechanics of yet another slightly different gun. A knock at the door was in no way welcome.
"Go away or eat a bullet!" I shouted without looking up.
The door cracked open regardless. I snapped off a glare only to see Harry step in. Stupid. I was getting lax, or distracted. When had I lost track of which bug was marking who?
"Taylor?"
"Go away, Harry." I pulled apart the gun with a bit more force than necessary, laying the pieces out on the cleaning cloth.
"Look, I just, that wasn't, you're normally in better control of yourself?" He half asked with all the subtlety of a socially awkward teenage boy.
I buried myself in the swarm trying not to start screaming at him as I got to work with the cleaning rag.
"I am trapped in an alternate dimension. I am trying to help stop a genocidal madman. I'm fighting to make sense of your insane abilities which defy almost every standard I'm used to. Never mind that everyone but you is dismissive, condescending, or outright insulting when they talk to me because my hard earned reputation was left behind when I was punted into this stupidly soft dimension!" I snarled.
"Soft?"
"You have mostly stable countries. You have one genocidal madman who seems mostly confined to a single country, and really only one community within said country." I snapped.
"We have three monsters capable of wiping major cities off the map, who do so regularly. America has a band of wandering murderers with individual kill counts numbering in the hundreds or thousands, which has managed to survive for decades. China is ruled by a group controlling an army of brainwashed capes. A large chunk of Russia was evacuated because it was safer than risking waking up and annoying one man. They stopped producing maps showing countries in southern Africa before I entered grade school, because half of the continent was controlled by an ever shifting line up of parahuman warlords, and borders rarely last more than a year."
Harry said nothing.
"Yes, your world has issues, but trying to compare your world to mine… Harry, we're dying. One city, one disaster at a time, we're dying, and I'm not sure anyone can stop it, though I'm going to try if I ever get back. You have one damn megalomaniac, with, what? Twenty lieutenants, and a slowly growing army? It's just so much smaller, so much more contained. But it feels like no one is bothering to prepare!"
I glared at him.
"You know what's coming. More than anyone save the older generation, you know what's coming. But you're perfectly happy to spend your time playing games when you could be preparing. When you could be studying magic, or tactics, or harassing your headmaster about how the fucker managed to not die. The hell is wrong with all of you!"
God I missed my friends. Sure, Alec and Aisha would have been slacking off and cracking jokes, and Rachel wouldn't have given a fuck about these people if they couldn't be bothered to stand up for themselves. But Lisa and Brian would have been right here with me, planning and studying, and just trying to get on top of everything before it could blow up in our faces. I missed them so damn much right now.
{}{}{}{} Harry
Well, that stung. And I'd never seen Taylor this… raw? Uncontrolled? I mean sure, we'd basically known one another for a week, but she hadn't been this off balance when she found out we were married with no chance of divorce. She'd barely raised an eyebrow at Voldemort's resurrection. But now she was just… Angry, and mean, and still incredibly terrifying as she methodically cleaned a gun I knew for a fact she'd had for less than a week.
"I, you're not wrong. But all last year was nothing but stress, studying, and it ended with another near death experience and..." Damn it Padfoot. Why did you have to stand in front of the bloody veil, wasn't dueling Belatrix dangerous enough already?
I carefully sat down next to her.
"Vegas was supposed to be a chance to relax, but that obviously didn't work out so well. Being in the air, especially with my friends… I needed that. A lot."
Taylor's harsh movements slowed to a stop. With a sigh she put down the pieces of the gun and faced me fully.
"I'm sorry. I've been going non stop for months now trying to keep myself and my people alive. I don't… I'm not even sure what I'd do with downtime anymore. All I can see is how much there is to do to prepare, and…" She waved helplessly at the whole of the house. "Mr. Weasley is doing something as part of his job and the order. Everyone else? Especially Molly." Taylor scoffed. "It's like she thinks burying her head in the sand will make all the bad things go away! And She just keeps taking shots at me, or getting in my face! Do you have any idea how hard it is not to start feeding her flies until she learns to keep her mouth shut?! How am I supposed to work with these people?!"
Risking my life, I did the only thing I could think of. I gave her a hug.
For a full ten count she didn't respond beyond going stiff as a board. I honestly expected to start feeling spider bites, but finally she relaxed a fraction and returned the hug. Cautiously.
"I'm sorry." I said, continuing to risk my life by not letting go. "I know this must all be… Kind of insane for you. Even with your background. I've been, well I've been kind of lost in my own issues." I admitted.
And damn it all I should be entitled to at least that much after everything! But I did have some sort of responsibility to Taylor in all this, and I'd been setting it aside as best I could because I just didn't have it in me to deal with her problems and mine without a chance to destress a bit. But some of my issues were issues we shared. I could have, I don't know. Talked to her about them instead of just running off to hang out with Ron and Hermione.
This… this was going to be hard. Making this work. Not even making the marriage work, just going from complete strangers to two people who could work together and trust each other in a fight. Helping her fit in with the friends I already had. Having her back when some of those friends decided they wanted to be particularly stupid, and make an enemy of a biblical plague.
Well, I could get a start on that at least.
"Mr. Weasley said Dumbledore will be by later tonight. He wants, well he wants my help with recruiting a teacher. Though he didn't really explain how I'm supposed to help with that… Anyway, I figured we might as well take the chance for what it is. Get a ride to headquarters out of it? We can stay there for a bit. Maybe give you a chance to start putting together those files you wanted? See if I can't badger some dueling tips out of whoever's there?"
For a moment Taylor didn't respond. Then she let out a slow breath.
"Yeah. Yeah alright." Gently she pushed me off and turned back to the gun she had been cleaning. "I'll finish with this and then get packed. You should take the chance to do the same before Dumbledore gets here… Unless you want to just throw your stuff in my bag?"
Standing up I nodded.
"Yeah, I'll pack my trunk, and see if Mr. Weasley doesn't mind shrinking it to fit in there."
"Sounds good."
I was almost out the door when Taylor spoke up again.
"Harry? Thanks."
It wasn't the warmest thank you I'd ever gotten, but it definitely sounded sincere.
"No problem, Taylor. We're in this together after all."
