Widow' Vengeance chapter 22

Chapter 22 -

"So, Miss Rushman, what were you doing in my office?" Professor Quirrell demanded to know after casting several silencing charms around the room, aiming his wand at her, the tip glowing a bright red.

"I...I don't know what you mean," Natasha fearfully stuttered, masterfully portraying herself as a frightened little eleven-year-old girl whilst taking a step back and internally formulating a plan.

"Do not lie to me you filthy little mudblood!" Professor Quirrell hissed, glaring at her. "I know you were sneaking around! I know you were here! Do you really think that a small little thing like you could sneak past my magical detection spells?! You have nowhere near enough life experience to even try to get the better of me!"

'You have no idea,' Natasha thought to herself with amusement.

"I was only following orders, Professor Quirrell," She said in an apologetic voice.

"Orders? Whose orders?!" Professor Quirrell asked quickly, sounding more than a little interested. "Was it Dumbledore?"

"No, no it wasn't him, sir," Natasha answered, shaking her head in the negative.

"Whose was it, then?" Professor Quirrell asked impatiently, the tip of his wand glowing a lot brighter than before.

"My master's orders."

"Who?!"

"The dark lord's orders, of course," Natasha plainly stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and was common knowledge to anyone that was old enough to think.

"What?!" Professor Quirrell blurted out, staring at Natasha in shock.

"I'm following the orders of he-who-must-not-be-named," Natasha whispered, taking a step forward.

"You're lying!" Hissed Professor Quirrell. "There is no way possible for you to actually be working under the orders of the greatest wizard of our time!"

"Let me speak to the girl," A raspy voice spoke, causing Quirrell to freeze.

"Master, you're not strong enough," Professor Quirrell protested.

"I am strong enough to deal with a lying little mudblood," The voice hissed, causing Quirrell to wince. The defence against the dark arts teacher gulped before closing his eyes in resignation, he turned around and raised his spare hand to reach for his turban. Unfortunately for him, Natasha wasn't really one to waste an advantage. or opportunity when she saw one.

Natasha removed the blade from her pocket and lunged forwards before jamming it right into the back of Professor Quirrell's right leg, causing him to scream out in pain as he dropped to the ground, Natasha quickly yanked his wand out of his hand and took a step back, twirling it in her hand.

'That's much easier to take than a gun,' She thought with amusement before she snapped the wand into two pieces and tossed it away before she drew her own wand and pointed it to Quirrell who was still on the floor with a blade in his leg. "Wingardium Leviosa'," She said, casting the levitation charm on Professor Quirrell's turban, causing it to rise into the air before she let it drop to the ground.

Natasha didn't focus on that though, she was far more focused on Professor Quirrell's head, or rather the disgusting and ugly-looking face that was on the back of it. The face of none other than Lord Voldemort, sworn enemy of Harry and the man that had killed Harry's parents, or rather he was what was left of that man.

"You are a lot uglier in person," Natasha stated, wrinkling her nose as she stared at him.

"Silence mudblood!" Lord Voldemort growled. "Attacking a wizard from behind, cowardly,"

"Says the man whose servant was about to attack an eleven-year-old child," Natasha countered. "Plus, if you want then I can start pointing out how many families your followers have killed in sneak attacks. You're quite a hypocrite, aren't you?"

"You dare speak to me this way?!" Voldemort growled.

"Bit of an ego too, apparently," Natasha sighed.

"You are no servant of mine!"

"It's called telling a lie," Natasha smirked. "I occasionally do that."

"Get up, you fool!" Voldemort yelled at Quirrell who let out a groan.

"Y...yes...Master..." Professor Quirrell stuttered, for real this time, before forcing himself to stand up, ignoring the pain from his leg.

"Kill her!" Screamed Voldemort.

"Not going to happen," Natasha said, looking back at the window before taking a step to her left. Professor Quirrell growled before taking a step forward, his hands reaching out to grab Natasha by the neck, only to stop when he heard the sound of glass shattering.

A sudden pain erupted from Professor Quirrell's left shoulder and a second later he found himself suddenly being pulled, he felt his shoulder and legs crash into something before he was suddenly being pulled along by something, though he was too panicked and in pain to try and find out what that was, not that he thought he could with how fast he was being pulled. A few seconds later (or what felt like a few seconds later) he ended up rolling several meters across the ground.

He looked up and discovered an arrow of all things was currently stuck in his shoulder, through his blurring vision he was able to see that the arrow was attached to a piece of rope, his eyes trailed along the piece of rope until he found the end of it, the end that was now firmly held in the mouth of none other than what he recognised to be Harry Potter's nightmare horse, he looked around and noticed that he had been dragged deep into the forbidden forest.

"Oh fuck." He cursed.

(.)

"Hey, Nat," Harry smiled when Natasha came into the library and joined him and Clint, she smiled back at him as she sat next to him, placing herself opposite Clint. "What did Professor Quirrell want?" He asked curiously.

"Oh, just to ask me a couple of questions about my school work," Natasha lied with the same ease with which she could breathe. "Anyway, have you two finished your transfiguration homework yet?" She asked before Harry could continue to question her about the matter.

"Well, I'm nearly done," Harry began answering. "Clint, on the other hand, decided he needed to go straight to the toilet after you left so he only got here a couple of minutes before you."

"What did you get for question number four?" Clint asked Harry whilst reaching one of his feet forwards slightly and very gently tapping Natasha on her right foot.

"I wrote down that it's harder because of an increase in weight," Harry replied whilst Natasha used her right foot to tap Clint's foot twice.

"Great," Clint smiled and looked down at his paper, he and Natasha had damn near countless ways to signal and communicate various things with each other. They had well over ten different ways to non-verbally communicate that they were not physically injured.

"Harry, do you have a spare quill?" Natasha asked hopefully.

"Oh yeah, give me a sec," Harry nodded to her before he turned and reached into his bag.

"Thank you," Natasha mouthed to Clint while Harry wasn't looking, managing an appreciative yet apologetic look on her face.

"Anytime," Clint mouthed back just before Harry turned back around and handed Natasha a quill.

"There you go," He said.

"Thank you," Natasha said gratefully.

"Anytime." He smiled.

(.)

Natasha Romanoff let out a small sigh as she continued to crawl ahead.

Currently, the secret agent was inside the air vents of Nick Fury's shiny and spacious helicarrier, the reason behind doing so was because she knew that Clint likely knew these vents better than anyone, perhaps even including Nick Fury himself, seeing that whenever Clint stayed in any sort of building for any period of time that was longer than a few minutes he would map out the building along with all of the entrance and exits, including those that other people usually wouldn't think about, and Natasha had no doubt that he had done the same with the helicarrier. She knew that Clint would have happily been able to spend hours in these vents, familiarising himself with the layout of everything.

Since Clint was in Loki's control it was highly likely that he could mount an attack on the helicarrier, there was also a possibility of him sneaking through the helicarrier via the air vents, meaning if Natasha wanted to chase after him then it was possible that she would end up in the vents. Unlikely, but possible, a saying which pretty much summed up Clint as far as Natasha was concerned. Natasha had decided a good thing to do is map out the vents as well, especially since she had nothing better to do since nobody had yet worked out what Loki's plan was and the work on that was being slowly ground to a halt since Tony and Steve were better at getting into arguments with each other than working out how to stop Loki.

It especially didn't help that Revenant eventually had gotten tired of the others and decided to leave the room, something that didn't surprise Natasha at all. She knew that Revenant was not social, to say the least, he seemed to barely tolerate other people. Thankfully, he appeared to at least somewhat get along with her, mostly because she felt like she knew when his patience was running thin so she knew when to stay quiet.

"What the fuck do you mean, Fury?!" A voice growled, causing Natasha to stop in her tracks.

She glanced to her right and looked down through a grill in the vent and saw that the director of Shield, Nick Fury, was standing in the room. He apparently had not yet noticed her and kept his attention firmly placed on the individual that was standing a few feet away from him and leaning on a table in an effort to support his weight. As Natasha stared at the small, sickly pale and underweight man that she remembered was called Potter, she couldn't help but notice the glare that he was sending to Fury.

"Potter," Fury spoke in a calm voice "We are doing all that we currently can at this point in time, that does not mean that..."

"You always say that!" Snapped Potter, cutting Fury off. "It's always the same answer, you're always 'doing the best that you can', aren't you? Yet I don't see any results!"

"If it was something easy then you would have dealt with it yourself," Fury pointed out, Natasha blinked when she realised that Fury had actually taken a step back during Potter's mini-rant.

"You promised me that you'd have answers!" Snarled Potter.

"No, I had promised you that we would get answers," Director Fury corrected him. "And I don't know if you have realised this or not but there had been a slight delay in looking for those answers since we have had an unplanned problem pop up via a rouge Asgardian named Loki."

"Unplanned?" Scoffed Potter. "First of all, I don't even think that he is an Asgardian. And second of all, I had told you from the start that you needed to get rid of that cube," He stared at Fury with an almost disgusted look on his face. "That tesseract, or whatever else you want to call it, is clearly what had lured Loki here. And who knows what else? You've brought this terror to this world because you're just like everyone else, despite your nice words, Fury, you're just another man who dreams of power."

"Perhaps it might seem that way, but I assure you, I was never holding all of my hope on the tesseract," Fury replied. "My hope was elsewhere."

"Right, the 'Avengers' initiative," Snorted Potter.

"How do you think that's coming along?" Fury asked.

"How do you think that's coming along?" Harry repeated. "Thor has no idea what he's doing on this world, he and Captain America are basically clueless, speaking of Cap, he and Tony have a nice and argumentative relationship going on. Banner's intelligent but he's about as imposing as a wet kitten."

"And Miss Romanoff?" Fury asked.

"Same standard as always, though she's clearly worried about Barton," Potter answered with barely a thought, causing Natasha to stare at him curiously, wondering how he knew any of this when he had only been with them for a short time. "You're hoping for a superhero team but it doesn't look like it's going to work out."

"Maybe," Fury hummed.

"You're wasting time, Fury," Potter said impatiently. "Let me deal with Loki, I'll get the damn bastard to sing if I have to."

"I cannot risk a war with Asgard," Fury refused, shaking his head.

"There won't be a war," Potter protested. "I can keep Asgard in line," Natasha couldn't help but stare at Potter with disbelief, the man looked like a light breeze could knock him over yet he talked as if dealing with beings that possessed the same strength as Thor was as easy as walking in a park.

"I am not risking it," Repeated Fury. "I'm sorry that you don't like the answers I have for you but I cannot give your problems the same focus as I have done before, the tesseract is missing and I have a rouge god in one of my cells, my hands are full right now."

"Fury, this can't go on!" Hissed Potter before he grimaced as if speaking was difficult enough to cause him immense pain. "I...I'm getting stronger every day, I can feel it. I'm getting more powerful each and every day."

"Well, surely that is a good thing, I..."

"You know damn well that it's not!" Yelled Potter before he suddenly began looking like he was a moment away from being sick all over the floor. He paused and took several deep breaths after swallowing what had threatened to force its way out of his mouth. "I can't go on like this." His voice cracked, tears slipping down his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Fury said, his voice far more gentle and sympathetic than anyone would ever expect him to be capable of being. "But right now, I have to prioritize the tesseract, once that is done, I give you my word that I will avert as many researchers and as much effort as possible into finding the answers that you need. I'm sorry." He gave him a small nod before he turned and walked out of the room, leaving behind a teary-eyed Potter.

Natasha watched as the broken-looking man allowed himself to fall back into a chair, he placed his face into his hands, his bony fingers reaching up and scratching at his forehead. After several minutes of silence, Potter whispered something to himself, his words just barely loud enough for Natasha to hear.

"C...curse you, Dumbledore,"