Title: The Thief and the Wizard

AU X-men/Harry Potter crossover

Summary: After Gambit is left to die in Antarctica help comes in an unexpected way. Harry Potter was on a job to retrieve an artifact from an old wizard stronghold when he ends up saving a strange man from the ice and snow. What does the future hold for these two men?

Warnings: Possible slash as well as hetero interaction, Violence, Blood, Gore. Does not follow cannon for HP or X-men.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or X-men they belong to their respective creators.

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Dear Readers,

I have been absent from writing fanfiction for quite some time now. This is the first thing I have been able to sit down and write in many years. I don't know why this particular story is the one that finally gets put to paper or why I am unable to finish my other story. This chapter is only a prologue and I can't guarantee when or even if more updates will be coming. I ask that you be patient and give me some feedback on what you think of this prologue. Please do not send me flames or questions on my other work you will not get a response. With that said I hope you enjoy this beginning and the idea behind it.

Dragonscales

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The Thief and the Wizard - Prologue

The arctic wind hit Harry the minute he landed. Cursing to himself he cast warming charms and a few other spells designed to help him survive in this frozen wasteland. Done with his immediate survival preparations Harry took a look around him through his new snow goggles at the miles of ice surrounding him. Casting a compass charm with a wave of his hand he set out towards what was indicated as northeast. As he was walked he went over in his head the circumstances that had led to him slogging through the snow and ice in Antarctica.

At twenty-five years of age Harry had developed himself a reputation that had nothing to do with him defeating Voldemort a second and final time. He was now well known as the person to go to if you needed an artifact retrieved or found in the wizarding world. In the muggle world he was known as an information retrieval expert. In short Harry Potter was now a well-known thief, and a very good one at that. He took jobs based on a referral bases only. Essentially you had to be recommended to him by someone who he had already done business with. That's not to say he didn't do his own background checks because he did, as well as having certain rules about what kind of jobs he took and how they were carried out. It wasn't as if he needed the money anyway.

He currently based himself in the United States and more specifically New York where he had first arrived when he was nineteen. After Voldemort's defeat and the beginning of the clean up afterwards he spent the time he was healing thinking about himself and where he wanted his life to go. Many of the things he had thought about when he was younger were out of the question. Finding out just how far Dumbledore's manipulations had gone had left a bitter taste in his mouth towards many of the people he thought of as friends and family.

*Friends and family indeed, * he snorted at that thought. The only friends he had that hadn't been engineered by Dumbledore were Luna, Neville, Fred and George. Forcing his mind away from still unpleasant thoughts he returned his attention to how this job came about.

Bored and wanting a change in his life as well as determined to get away from a ministry looking for any chance to declare him the next Dark Lord so they would have an excuse to monitor and control his movements. Harry decided he wanted to move and leave Britain and the narrow-minded wizarding world there alone. After careful consideration he chose the United States. He had been impressed with the two agents they had sent with their congratulations after Voldemort's defeat, and knew that the best place to try and blend in would be there. The US and Britain magical communities weren't on the best of terms so Harry could be reasonably sure that if the British did trump up some charge against him that the Americans would more than likely be inclined to listen to him first. When he sent a letter to the Americans asking about the possibility of relocating they were happy to help him out. Within a week anything of value to him was transferred to a New York apartment arranged for him by the goblins who were only to happy to transfer his inheritance and money since he was only changing branches and not taking all of his money out of the bank like he was prepared to do if he didn't get what he wanted. As a formality he met with both the head of the AAD (American Aurors Division) and the muggle FBI. Both agencies expressed a desire to have him work with them even informally or on a consulting basis. Needless to say they were disappointed when he turned them down stating he didn't want that sort of life anymore and he had already done his share of catching the bad guys. He ended up leaving the meeting with special dispensations from both departments in case of assassins or illegal arrests from the British wizards and a promise of a job if he ever changed his mind.

About four months after arriving in New York and setting up a new life he found himself looking for something to do. The first couple months had been full of exploring his inheritance from both Sirius and his parents as well as straightening out the finances that hadn't been touched since they had died. On the advice of the goblins he took half of the actual money he had and created a corporation in the muggle world to invest in their markets and diversify his assets. It had the bonus of giving him the stepping-stone he needed to give him a complete identity with the muggles if he ever needed it. The next step was to learn what he had missed about the muggle world while he had been attending Hogwarts or being locked up at the Dursley's. Unsurprisingly it was a lot, his schooling before Hogwarts had been sketchy enough because of the Dursley's and once he got to Hogwarts it was halted completely. With that in mind he hired a private tutor who was under the impression he had suffered from a debilitating illness in his younger years and was only now healthy enough to endure the rigors of schooling. His greatest shock however was when he learned about Mutants. Mutants were a great deal more common here in America and the government was a lot more open about their existence than the British. Harry vaguely remembered hearing something about them one summer at Privet Drive. However at the time Voldemort and his death eaters consumed almost all of his thoughts. He had spared no energy towards things that weren't related to their defeat. As a result he was completely ignorant about mutants and just how much they were involved in the world today.

Immediately curious as to whether or not wizards were somehow connected he began reading everything he could on mutant researched. It didn't take him long to find that just like the purebloods back home hated muggles the muggles here weren't to fond of the mutants, and through his contact at the AAD he learned that the mutants were an evolution of normal humans and the wizards genetics were unable to support the X-Gene considering they had split from humans many thousands of years ago. It was apparent to Harry that it would be beneficial to keep an eye out for the key characters on each side of the mutant/human issue. He contented himself by collecting profiles on the most visible participants and added information as needed from then on. He couldn't really give a crap about prejudices considering his whole life had been full of them. He looked at someone's personality not their abilities or humanity, so long as they weren't out to deliberately do harm he didn't care who they were.

Harry was beyond surprised when he managed to finish his tutoring within a couple months and pass the GED. It seemed now that the seal on his powers that had broken with Voldemort's death had also freed up his natural abilities that had been suppressed all these years. He was able to concentrate and understand things much easier and faster than before. Meditation before had only managed to calm his mind down enough to absorb a lesson, now it was easy and the meditation was used as it was supposed to be and not as a buffer for his scattered mind. Everything was clearer and sharper, and he looked at things with a new eye and a better understanding of what he needed to do. Overall for the first time in his life Harry Potter felt that he could be more than a weapon.

In his boredom Harry decided to start shifting through some of the old papers that had been in the Potter and Black vaults when he visited. That was when he came across a scroll that would become his first job. When sorting through some of the papers that had come from the Black vault he found a scroll that when opened detailed a magical artifact and a directions on how to find it. Apparently one of Sirius's relatives had planned on going after the artifact but died before he made the trip, and the scroll got tossed in the vault to be forgotten until Harry found it. Unsure if the whole thing was real or a wild goose chase he took it to the goblins who authenticated it and told him if he brought it back they would most definitely have a buyer. It took him only about half the day to decide he was going. He felt lazy just sitting around on his ass the last couple months. Training in his gym and workout room only did so much, and if he was honest with himself he had gotten used to the adrenaline rush of being in a dangerous situation and he missed the sensation. Granted he didn't miss it enough to go back to hunting down wizards full time he figured if he did a job like this one and came back alright he might look into doing the occasional job here and there to keep his skills sharp. Needless to say he came back in one piece and thoroughly enamored with what would shortly become his calling.

Word spread quickly about his new occupation and he was in business. He first set up the rules under which he would take and complete jobs. His first few were recommended by the goblins and after that mostly through the referrals of his past clients. If the client had a problem with Harry's rules then they were turned down Harry didn't need the money and had no intention of involving himself in anything problematic or illegal. The muggle side of his reputation came about by accident. A previous wizarding client of his had valuable information stolen from his house and his hands were tied, as the thief's were muggles who he wasn't allowed to use magic against. So the client asked Harry if he could steal the information back from the thief's without using magic, because the wizard was a good client Harry said yes. Not many people knew that while he had been trained in wizarding areas of combat and stealth he had also been trained the muggle way and that included thieves skills. A day later he presented the wizard with his information and began taking jobs in the muggle side of the world. The authorities in both worlds and Harry had come to an agreement, they didn't want to piss Harry off and he just wanted to be left alone. So as long as Harry kept his nose clean and didn't go after any government property they would look the other way. For the next several years Harry built his reputation in both the muggle and magical world, which led to today, and a job in Antarctica to find an artifact in an old wizarding outpost from a few thousand years ago warded against muggles and the elements.

Unfortunately the port key he took dropped him off a couple miles from the outpost and that brings us back to him cursing as he trudges through the snow towards his destination. Just as he began to warm up courtesy of a liberal use of warming charms and his new cold weather gear he came within sight of the structure he was looking for. The only problem was the citadel was completely visible and there was a large black jet parked nearby. Immediately waving his hand and disillusioning himself Harry also cast a slight levitation spell on so as not to leave tracks and a few other spells to conceal his scent, aura, and magical signature. Instead of the slightly disgruntled attitude from a crappy port key Harry was now completely focused and his senses were busy scanning for danger. Just as he confirmed there was no one near him or tracking him and was about to cast another spell on the citadel and jet to determine how many people he was dealing with the ground began shaking. As he watched in slight stupefaction the citadel began collapsing in on itself and several people fleeing the collapsing structure. To his surprise several people were actually flying away from the building. Apparently this was a group of mutants rather than regular people. From that distance Harry couldn't really get a good look at their faces but he was pretty sure he realized who the two groups were. Then Harry's eye was caught by a figure flying towards the group that congregated at the base of the black jet, the other group had long ago disappeared out of Harry's sight. What caught Harry's attention was the fact the woman had been carrying a man with her when she escaped and now she was returning without him. He watched for a moment as she landed and the group seemed to argue briefly before climbing into the jet and taking off a moment later.

Harry stood there for a moment or two digesting what he had just seen and the fact he now had a few decisions to make. Number one was whether or not to see if that woman really had abandoned someone out in the snow and ice. The second decision was whether or not to see if he could still salvage this job and find the artifact under all that rubble and if it was still intact or not. Eventually his conscience nagged at him enough that he set out in the direction the flying woman had come from with a huff of irritation. Twenty minutes or so of walking through the snow Harry came across a body that was already starting to be covered in snow. After a moment of thought Harry cast a mild sleeping spell over what appeared to be a young man in his early twenties. Once he was assured the man was asleep Harry levitated him a couple feet off of the ground and formed a barrier almost like a cocoon around the man and filled it with heating charms. Deeming it the best he could do at the moment Harry began trudging back towards the ruins of the citadel the cocoon following behind.

Once he reached the ruins he conjured up a tent with another wave of his hand and placed the cocoon inside, this way the strange man would be more protected from the elements while Harry worked to get the artifact so they could leave. On his walk back Harry had decided to forgo any subtlety and just blast his way through the rubble till he got where he needed to go. He had a feeling that it would be a good idea to get out of here sooner rather than later in case someone else decided to investigate what went on a few moments ago. Quickly consulting the information regarding the artifacts location Harry began moving rubble out of his way either by levitation or just blasting something with the wave of his hand. After about ten minutes he managed to make a small opening into the chamber he was looking for. Muttering a short incantation and making a small movement with his wrist he waited for a moment until a small blue light zoomed up and out of the opening into his waiting hand. With a small smile on his face for another job completed he pulled a small well-warded box from his jacket pocket and placed the artifact inside. Once that was done his face lost that little smile and he made his way back to the tent were he had placed the man who had been left to die frozen and alone. Once back at the tent he quickly set about erasing any signs of his presence and his magical signature. Taking down the tent and reaching through the cocoon to grasp the strangers wrist he activated his emergency port key and with a slight pop was gone from Antarctica no traces showing he had ever been there.