'Right, what's the game plan?'

Natasha seems to have taken the escape of Loki and the two wizards as a personal slight. And when Natasha gets personal, most people run (not that they ever get very far).

'No warning. We don't give them any time to teleport, or whatever it is they're doing. Get in, get the freaks, get out.'

'There will be collateral,' points out Barton, 'this is a hotel, not a HYDRA base,' but Natasha waves him away.

'Doesn't matter,' she says grimly, 'we can't risk them leaving again. Who knows what they could do, what Loki could make them do?'

XXXXXXXXX

Loki is currently making Harry and Daphne order an obscene amount of food for breakfast. Daphne thinks its lucky they've got an unlimited supply of Muggle money, because this can't come cheap. Harry, on the other hand, looks absolutely delighted, and promptly starts shoving kippers into his mouth. Daphne can't suppress a sneer at his complete lack of delicacy.

'Merlin, Potter, you eat like a starving troll. The kippers aren't going to run away if you slow down, you know.'

Potter ignores her in favour of a particularly large bite. Daphne wrinkles her nose, and nibbles with pointed delicacy at her toast. Loki looks like he's about to make a snippy comment, but, rather unfortunately, S.H.I.E.L.D. choose that moment to burst into the dining room, knocking the heavy dark wood doors off their hinges as they do so.

Daphne chokes on her toast and Harry knocks over his coffee in his haste to cast a Protego over their table. Loki calmly finishes his tea, looking bored more than anything else as the shrieks of the rest of the hotel patrons fill the dining hall. Harry is taking stock of the situation; most of the guests and staff have left, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents evacuating the remaining few. Of the enemy forces, there are six agents in identical black bodysuits with very big guns, a woman in a similar suit with red hair who appears to be the leader (and at whom Daphne's wand is steadily pointing), the very blonde, very American man in the frankly ridiculous get-up that Harry remembers from London, and...

'Hey, he had the cube,' says Daphne softly in his ear, 'the man who looks like he's homeless, next to the walking Star-Spangled Banner there. They were experimenting...' She trails off as Harry gives her a curt nod. This can't be all of them, there were far more in London. Backup outside, maybe?

'Hominum Revelio.'

The amount of fleeing hotel patrons makes it difficult to distinguish between bystander and foe. However, most of them are standing in a large group in the garden, so he assumes that the five people on the front entrance are hostile, and there is someone on the roof that Harry highly doubts is a lost guest.

And then someone smashes in through the window, and Loki gives a long-suffering sigh that Hermione would be proud of.

'Brother mine,' he drawls, rising smoothly and looking disdainfully at the heap of Norse God on the floor, 'how kind of you to grace us with your presence.'

'That's not the brother who's the God of Thunder, is it?' Harry hisses at Daphne, even though just one look at the huge hammer the man is carrying tells him that, even if he's not, he is still Very Bad News.

Daphne, much to his despair, nods.

'That's Thor,' she murmurs, 'and that massive hammer is Mjölnir; only he can wield it, so even if you disarm him, you can't use it.'

'LOKI!'

'Bloody hell,' mutters Harry, 'we're only over here mate, no need to burst our eardrums.'

'I'm sorry, Thor, would you mind repeating yourself?' sneers Loki, 'I think there was a person on Asgard who didn't quite catch that.'

'Enough of your games, Lok-'

'Yes, yes, enough games, come home, Mother misses you, only oh, wait, she's not my mother, is she, so really why should I care?'

Loki's voice is a snarl by the end. Thor stands, looking slightly wrong-footed.

'Well, she does miss you,' he protests, at a mercifully lower volume, 'and you should come home, brother.'

Loki looks like he's about five seconds away from doing something that Harry is certain will not help his plan to make it home alive (and preferably with all his limbs still intact).

Thor, completely unaware, blunders on.

'It is not fair on these Midgardians that you have caught up in your plans, Loki,' he booms chidingly, 'they are but helpless mortals, and one a fair lady too – have you no shame, brother?'

'Oh, please let me hit him,' mutters Daphne.

'I'll hold him down for you,' Harry offers in an undertone, and Daphne smirks.

'You're alright, Potter,' she decides, and Harry refrains from rolling his eyes with a monumental effort, and instead starts casting wordless Freezing spells on the six identical agents. It's a good thing too, as Loki chooses that moment to launch himself at Thor, and all hell breaks loose.

It takes Red-Head approximately two seconds to realise her little agent posse is out of action, and about two minutes for the rest of the team to figure it out too. But by that point, Red has already called the back-up, and suddenly Harry is very busy. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Daphne taking on the walking American Flag, along with about four other agents, whilst he gets Red and the rest, and tries to keep the remaining patrons safe at the same time.

And then some dude in a weird red suit that Harry thinks is made of metal and has flames (actual flames) coming out of the feet comes soaring through the window that Thor broke and starts firing laser beams everywhere.

Great.

'Stark!' shouts American Flag, 'what are you doing here?'

'Sorry, Capsicle,' comes an American voice from the metal man's mask, 'but I'm staging an intervention here.'

American Flag looks like he wants to punch Metal Man out of the sky. Harry opts to just shoot a freezing spell at him instead, which elicits a squawk of protest as he dodges round it and a, 'Hey, hold up hot stuff, we're on your side!'

Harry gives that the snort of derision it so clearly deserves, before an arrow comes flying at him from somewhere (damnit, the roof, he forgot the roof!) and he has to conjure a lightning-fast Shield charm.

'He's from the labs!' shouts Daphne from where she is trying to hex American Flag into oblivion, 'he had the cube!'

'Knew it,' says Harry, shooting another spell his wand at Metal Man again, who swerves to the side and raises his hands in mock surrender. Harry hesitates.

'Harry!' yells Loki across what once was the lobby, but is now an exhibition of how much damage two Norse gods can cause, 'what are you doing? That's an Avenger, he's hostile!'

'Only to you,' Stark shouts back, 'you messed-up son of a—'

Daphne shoots a Stupefy at him from behind, and he falls out of the air with a very satisfying thud.

'Nice to see someone has some sense,' shouts Loki as he and Thor battle on in a swirl of green and red leather.

Harry just rolls his eyes, and goes back to cursing the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents into oblivion (or, at least, a nice long nap).

Loki is likewise throwing green-tinged magic around left, right, and centre, and it's only years of training that means Harry is able to keep track of more than just his own situation. It's how he notices Daphne, not used to the carnage that he calls a career, is on the brink of being overwhelmed, and how Loki, though expending a huge amount of power, is too emotionally invested in Thor to have any of it truly hit the mark. If Harry can get him to help Daphne, they might have a chance—

'POTTER!'

Harry abandons Red and her lot in favour of a panicking Daphne. But it's not the attackers that caused her to scream.

It's the cube.

The runes are glowing a very familiar shade of green, and turning so fast they're blurring before his eyes, and this is both Really Great News and the most Emphatically Terrible Timing, Possibly Ever.

'Loki!' he shouts, but Loki is absorbed in Thor, and doesn't turn.

Harry stares in horror at Daphne, his expression mirrored in her face.

'LOKI!' they scream together, and this time he turns, just to catch them vanishing in a swirl of sparks.

The foundations of the hotel shake with his reaction.

XXXXXXXXXX

They end up landing in Harry's office, scattering Paperwork Mound No.2 all over the tiny floor space. Harry smashes into his table, and swears very loudly, whilst Daphne is whirling around like a caged animal, trying to make sense of events and only making her head hurt.

Harry catches her wrist before she can pull out all her hair in frustration.

'Energy surge,' he grits out, and Daphne joins him in very loud swearing.

There's a knock at the door, and both of them freeze.

One of the juniors pops his head round, and takes in the sight of two very dishevelled adults, and papers all over the floor, and says, meekly, 'I'll just come back later.'

Daphne starts laughing. Slightly hysterically, true, but it feels good nevertheless. Harry looks bewildered.

'This will be all over the papers,' she promises him, 'your disappearance and subsequent heroic rescue of me from the depths of a German magical hippie commune.' She waggles her eyebrows at him, and then starts laughing at the expression on his face when he puts two and two together.

The next time she sees him, they're both much more put-together. She's been called in to give her side of the story for the official report, and although they've communicated via owl to make sure their stories tallied, it's still surprising to see Harry in his official capacity. It's all, 'Yes, Miss Greengrass,' and 'No, Miss Greengrass,' and 'I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, Miss Greengrass,' and the deference almost makes her giggle again. But she is demure, and appropriately apologetic, and if there is a rude note attached to the copy of the Prophet article detailing Miss Greengrass's 'Year of Scandal' that is sent to Senior Auror Potter, well, she does have a very mischievous nephew. She's sure it can be blamed on him, despite his inability as of yet to form letters.

Harry, for his part, gets a bollocking for going off-grid from Ron, that is slightly undermined by his clear worry for him, and also his glee at Harry doing something as normal as disappearing for two days with a girl. Harry doesn't get the chance to tell him and Hermione the real story until three days later, when the furore has finally died down enough that he can make it round to theirs for a quite supper, where they 'ooh' and 'ahhh' and 'oh, for goodness' sake, Harry' at all the right places, and ply him with wine and food until the whole episode becomes nothing more than a hilarious adventure.

Daphne doesn't feel quite like that. She told her parents that she'd got sick of it all – run away for a holiday to the Maldives, and had come back a roundabout way through Turkey, the Balkans, stopping a while in Germany… She hadn't realised they'd be so worried. They are a mixture of elated at her return, and furious at her supposed actions, but they believe her. Astoria probably wouldn't, but her younger sister hadn't cared enough to dig deeper, listening to the story with the same haughty acceptance she seems to give everything these days.

She's shipped off to a party in the evening, spends the time trading barbs with Pansy that appear in next morning's edition, and being charmingly airheaded to all who question her whereabouts. If it weren't for the way Potter now acknowledges her at the (relatively few) events where their social circles overlap, there are some days when she'd almost have convinced herself that it didn't really happen.

Three months later.

It's raining again when the woman appears outside the tired little tearoom in the village. There are a few hardy souls braving the weather, but none who notice her appearance. In the three minutes it takes her to walk across the street to the tearoom, her blonde hair is already sodden. The steamy heat hits her as she opens the door, and she can feel her hair start to curl in it.

'Table for one.'

The cups are china, mismatched (probably intentionally) to the plates. She has tea, a citrus mint blend, and the heaped plate of lemon meringue pie makes her smile when it arrives. She doesn't even attempt to eat most of it; that's not the point of this, after all. She's not entirely sure why she

Daphne Greengrass pays the bill, and tucks the box containing the rest of her meringue monstrosity into a bag that really doesn't look big enough to take it, but nevertheless swallows it up with ease.

She steps out into the driving rain again, not bothering to try and stop it as it seeps through her clothes and chills her bones. It feels like an affirmation. She walks in what she remembers as the direction of the small hotel. It surprises her for a minute that it's not half-destroyed – but of course, it didn't happen here, not really. She's so lost in thought that she doesn't notice the man come up to her with an umbrella, holding it over her head.

'Hardly the weather for it,' he remarks, and she looks up into gleaming green eyes, sitting in a face she doesn't recognise.

Daphne laughs, sudden and bright, as the man hands her the umbrella with a small bow, and winks at her before disappearing in a flash of green.

Seconds later, she does the same, and the village square is empty again. She's found what she came for, after all.

The biggest revisions to the story are in Chapter 1. Apologies for the absence!