Work Text:
"And your contact said to meet them out here? Where there's nothing but an old ruined castle and a handful of sheep?"
"It's Scotland. There will be more than a handful of sheep in the vicinity, even if you don't see them hiding among the shrubbery. Trust me."
Steve side-eyed Tony. "You just wanted a chance to say 'shrubbery'."
Tony leaned back against the quinjet's front wheel, unconcerned about the grime in his Iron Man suit. "I could have said 'Ni'."
Steve pretended to flinch and shared a grin and a chuckle with Tony. Steve had found Monty Python passingly amusing, but Tony truly celebrated their shows. And with them now so close to the troupe's origins…
"What do you think Loki is up to in Great Britain?"
Tony blew out a breath through his open face plate. "Nothing good, that's for sure. I hope we can catch him before we find out."
"Yeah, so do –"
"Steve?!"
"See? Transfiguration gives me a snake that is sort of a mindless drone." Harry pointed at the brown kingsnake aimlessly twisting itself into knots beside him. "It will hiss, attack and listen to commands in parseltongue, but it does not seem to have a mind of its own. Whereas this conjured snake," he pointed to the coral snake slithering toward the nearest rock post-haste, "seems to be aware of its surroundings, have all the relevant instincts like self-preservation, and is… I don't even know. Cursing magic?"
"If you conjure another one, will that one have a different personality?"
With a wave of Harry's wand and a clearly pronounced Serpensortia, a blue king cobra popped out of thin air and fell to the grass between them. This one gave a short look at the guileless kingsnake, hissed threateningly at the three humans, then made for the same rock the coral snake was hiding behind.
Harry scratched his neck. "Well, this one is definitely cursing magic, too. But he's also looking for his friend?"
He stepped around the rock to take a look, but was quickly rebuffed by the king cobra flaring its hood and hissing at him.
::Alright, alright, keep it in your pants. Jeez. I was just wondering if you guys were fighting or mating back there.::
::If you hurt him, I'll kill you. Damn sorcerer!::
Harry returned to his friends. "Yeah, um. This one is pretty angry. And not afraid to attack a big human magic user. I recommend not going that way for a bit."
Ron frowned at him. "So what you're saying is, these snakes you conjured have individual personalities. And they are based on yours?"
"I dunno. I sometimes curse magic, but I don't tend to mean it."
Hermione had her thinking face on. "Suppose they are not based on yours. Where do they come from? Do you actually create a person when you conjure a living being with a personality? Do they have souls?"
Harry flinched. "I hope not. Wizards are not meant to play god."
"But if we assume you do not create the personality, where does it come from? Remember the law of equivalent exchange."
"'Nothing comes from nothing,'" Ron quoted obediently. "'Whatever you ask magic to provide will necessarily go missing elsewhere.'"
"Not in its exact shape and form, though," Harry mused. "You can conjure gold, but the goblins will see right through it and feed you to the dragons since they know it will vanish in due course; the conjured gold must feel different to them. Most stores have spells in place to check for conjured gold, as well. What is worse, you can conjure food and you can eat it, but it will not nourish you. Does it return to its original place exactly as you got it or in the shape it is after? There are clearly limits on conjuring. And yet you can conjure a being with a personality? Again, where do those come from?"
The transfigured snake came close to Harry's ankles and prepared to strike. Hermione casually ended the transfiguration, turning it back into a rock. She checked to see what Harry's conjured snakes were doing and saw them beating a hasty retreat into the heather.
"Accio snakes. Wingardium Leviosa." She considered the two snakes writhing helplessly in mid-air before her. "If their personalities do come from elsewhere, would they be preserved if we transfigure them? Or return to their original bodies?"
Hermione lowered both animals to just above the floor, but kept up the spell.
"Let's try it out." Ron turned the larger snake into a rabbit.
"The blue seemed protective of the coral snake," Harry mused. He pointed his wand at the king cobra and turned it into a fox. "This should give us some answers."
Hermione ended her spell. The fox and the rabbit turned toward her in unison and attacked.
"Locomotor –!" Ron cried on top of Harry's own "Ligulate!"
Ron broke off mid-spell. Hermione stared wide-eyed at the two spoons lying innocently in the grass before her where just a moment ago there'd been two rabid animals baring sharp, wicked teeth. "What…?"
Harry tried to come down from his own sudden adrenaline rush as he lowered his wand. "Phew. I suppose they do keep their personalities, huh? I mean, that snake was cursing me up one side and down the other, and they both probably didn't like being made helpless. A new personality wouldn't have known about any of that, they'd have been a fox suddenly coming to awareness right next to a rabbit. I don't think their first act should have been singling out and attacking Hermione among the three humans standing around."
Shakily, Hermione sat down on the ground. The shock did not stall her sharp wit, though. "If they have personalities... If they keep them while transfigured…" She eyed the spoons. "Do they still have them now?"
One of the spoons seemed to twitch as though trying to inch closer to the other. All three magic users flinched.
"No way," said Ron. "The personalities must have returned to wherever they were before. Right?"
Neither Harry nor Hermione had the stomach to answer him.
"I mean, if I turn this guy into, say, a crab," he followed action to words, "and that one into an onion –" the second spoon changed shape, "– then we have one animate and one inanimate object. Surely even if the crab retained its personality, it wouldn't recognize an onion as its friend. Right?"
The crab's feet struggled to make progress in the tall grass. It was determinedly heading for the onion.
Ron stared at it in mild horror. "No way."
Harry almost saw it coming. He still winced when Ron callously snatched up the onion just when the crab's feelers were about to touch it. "This is not a person," he said determinedly. "I refuse to believe that." He started to peel the onion. At his feet, the crab started scrabbling like mad, its pincers twitching as though electrified. Ron stopped.
"Well shit."
"Three hours to seven days," Hermione said softly. "That's how long my conjurations usually last."
"I don't want to evanesco them. Nobody ever explained where vanished things to." Ron looked a little green around the nose.
"Turn them into something that will survive a week out here," Harry suggested.
Ron wordlessly turned the onion and the crab back into spoons. He carefully laid them down at the base of the rock, protected by the elements and hopefully invisible to the eye of the casual passer-by. Then he backed away as though from a dangerous animal – or from a sleeping baby. Harry couldn't make up his mind as to which metaphor was more appropriate in this context.
"We need to have some serious words with Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick."
Nobody felt like disagreeing.
As the three students returned to Hogwarts, two spoons lay one on top of the other, silver bodies aligned in the shade of a rock in the Scottish highlands, praying for the magic to fade.
Tony stumbled and fell. He just so managed to break his fall with his hands. A quick look up confirmed that he was back in his own body, crouched beside the front wheel of the quinjet which was still parked on a lonely country road in Scotland.
"Tony!" Clint ran down the quinjet's ramp to meet him. "You're back!"
Tony's mind whirred. "Is Steve here?"
"Tony?" came Steve's voice from behind his back. "Are we back?"
Tony turned quickly, seeing Steve back in his human body, alive and in one piece. He breathed out a relieved sigh. "Yeah."
"Thank god."
Even without any claim to religion, Tony agreed whole-heartedly.
Natasha spoke up, making Tony aware of her presence at the top of the ramp. "When you didn't return from Scotland and failed to reply to our attempts at communication, we came to investigate and found only the quinjet, parked one mouldy castle over from the one where you were supposed to rendezvous with Maya. What happened?"
"Magic," they said almost at the same time. They shared a grimace.
"A damn accident," Steve added. "Not Loki. Juvenile magic users failing to understand the ramifications of their actions."
"Someone should talk to their teachers," Tony agreed.
Steve met his eyes again. Both started sniggering. It was either that or burst into tears.
Being helplessly at the mercy of children who had no idea that their toys were live human beings had been harrowing. Tony was going to have nightmares for years. But the idea that Scotland held enough magic users that it made sense to build an entire school for magic out there?
Ridiculous.
He had no idea how those three kids had come about their powers. He just hoped those powers would leave the same way they got here, preferably before anyone died.
Two weeks later
"You made a very handsome crab," Steve said a propos of nothing.
They were eating lunch side by side at the kitchen counter. Everyone else was out. Maybe it was good that Steve wanted to use this chance to talk about the incident without an audience. Neither of them had felt like describing the details of their magic adventure to the rest of the team, but Tony couldn't imagine keeping it all inside indefinitely. Didn't mean this was easy.
"Why thank you. It was quite comfortable, after all I'm used to wearing armour." Dropping the blasé attitude, Tony put his hand on Steve's on the counter. "I was so afraid for you when that kid started to peel you."
Steve's eyes went soft. "It was only the dry outer skin, it didn't hurt me."
But it could have. And they both knew it.
Steve broke the weighty silence with a quick smile and the words, "Think of it as clothes. He was basically stripping me."
Tony felt a flush rise to his cheeks. "That is an image I will happily ponder."
"Your antennae were twitching like you were already pondering it at the time."
Tony pouted. "Don't be crass. It will take more than a strip-tease to rouse this old hermit crab."
He was not prepared for Steve to turn his hand around and link their fingers, giving Tony's hand a warm squeeze. "Will it, though?"
They were teammates. Steve came from a time when homosexuality was banned by the law. This couldn't possibly be a come-on.
Undeterred by Tony's lack of an answer, Steve leaned in close. "I liked spooning."
Tony spluttered. "We were literal spoons. We were not spooning!"
Steve withdrew, still looking amused. "What would you call it, then?"
"Being spoons," Tony repeated stubbornly.
Steve chuckled and let go of Tony's hand. They both returned to their breakfast in a silence that was surprisingly not awkward at all.
Just when Steve was about to stand and get rid of his empty dishes, Tony quietly mumbled, "I liked it too."