Chapter Text
It takes Eggsy three seconds to tear his eyes off the feed, slam the laptop shut, apparate to Harry’s side, and somehow manage to get back to St. Mungo’s with the added weight.
It takes him another two minutes to realize that Harry’s glasses are still on his face. And despite the fact that the left bow is hanging on for dear life by a single thread of PVC-coated wire beneath the shattered remnants of the lens, the tiny little LED atop the brow is still blinking obediently.
Merlin’s goddamn balls. He’s fucked.
The best they offer is a halfhearted, “At least you won’t be an Eighth-year.”
And so Eggsy ignores the students crowding to be aurors, healers, professional Quidditch players, and whatever the fuck else normal wizards are supposed to do, packs his things into the tiny, battered trunk that’s somehow withstood seven years of being lugged to and from Hogwarts without falling apart at the seams, gives Ryan and Jamal a pat on the back apiece, and heads for the train without saying goodbye to his teachers.
The muggle army doesn’t ask questions, or else has enough wizards peppered throughout that no-one looks twice at his hastily forged A-levels. Eggsy doesn't care enough to find out. He takes the luck where it’s given to him, buries himself in the training, and then one day he gets a letter from his mum that says Daisy needs him, and he knows without reading another word that Daisy is his new sister, and Daisy is a witch.
Mum’s great-great grandmother was a squib, and until Eggsy— and now Daisy— she and the rest of her side of the family had assumed that magic had run its course through their blood. Mum hadn’t known the first thing about raising a wizard, but at least with Eggsy she’d had a quiet house, enough savings to chew through when he started popping lightbulbs every time he giggled, and a reasonably startled but remarkably understanding husband for the first six years. But she won’t be able to go through that again— not without Lee. Not without Eggsy. And certainly not with Dean in the picture.
So Eggsy packs his things and hops on the first train from Camberley back to London, ignoring the stale, humiliating feeling of déjà vu.
There’s no way Merlin (not the expletive namesake, the one with no hair and a temper the size of bloody Hogwarts) hasn’t just watched Eggsy apparate out of fucking nowhere, grab Harry’s body, and apparate again into a room full of people wearing lime green cloaks with wands clutched in their hands.
But that’s honestly the least of Eggsy’s worries right now.
When the fear trickles in a slow, sick slide down from his heaving chest into the pit of his stomach, it’s centered instead around the number waiting for him whenever they’re finally done putting Harry back together. It’s only a flesh wound (only, he thinks bitterly, the gunshot still ringing in his ears) so it won’t cost him as much as untangling a six-way curse, but the measly handful of savings in his HSBC account still isn't going to cut it. For starters, it’s all in pounds sterling rather than galleons, but even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t have galleons.
He taps his feet restlessly on the waiting room floor, slick tile beneath his dirt-dusted trainers, fingers threaded together to keep them from shaking.
A hand taps his shoulder and he sits up, head spinning.
Slowly, like he’s looking through a pool of water and waiting for the surface to settle so he can see beneath it, a witch’s face swims into view. Her robes are a nice periwinkle blue rather than the traditional healer green, but they still bear the St. Mungo’s crest over the breast. A nurse, then, which would explain the lack of blood. “Mr. Unwin?” she says pleasantly.
Eggsy nods. He doesn’t really know what to say, but it doesn’t matter because his tongue feels like it’s been glued flat against his teeth.
“I’m very pleased to inform you that the operation on Mr…” The witch consults her clipboard. “... Galahad was successful.”
Eggsy loses about twenty kilos in the span of a second, slumping forward with a rush of air. “He… you…” he stammers, and his cheeks burn as the words fumble out, sloppy and unfocused. It’s no goddamn wonder he didn’t get the job. “Really?” he finishes, because if he’s being honest, even though paper memos have been zooming past his face for the last twenty minutes, the wizard sitting across from him keeps coughing up rubies, and he has a goddamn wand tucked up his sleeve, it’s still a little hard to believe that magic can fix a bullet to the face.
Well, this ain't that kind of movie.
Except it is, apparently, because the nurse gives him a warm smile. “Yes, Mr. Unwin. Unfortunately, our healers weren’t able to save the eye, but otherwise Mr. Galahad is expected to make a full recovery. We do have a selection of replacements, if you’re interested?”
“Er, no,” Eggsy says quickly, ears burning. “That’s not really, er, in my budget.”
The nurse gives him a puzzled look. “Sir?”
“Look, just—” Eggsy gives a quick glance to either side of the hallway, more out of habit than anything else. It’s not like he’s going to run into anyone he knows in here. Still, when he’s reaffirmed as much, he leans forward, lowering his voice. “Just tell me what I owe you for keepin’ him alive.”
“Sir,” the witch says again, her confusion now bordering on concern. “Your expenses have already been paid.”
And there goes another twenty kilos.
“Oh,” Eggsy says stupidly.
That money obviously didn’t spend itself, and there’s a tangle of questions beneath that fact. Either Eggsy’s not the only wizard at Kingsman (unlikely, given their arsenal of muggle weapons and not a single ward in the mansion) or there’s a wizard somewhere in the snobby silver spiderweb of posh people who all know each other that saw Harry’s name— or his codename, at least, since it was the first thing Eggsy’s adrenaline-shot brain could think of when he apparated into the reception room with a body in tow— and paid it themselves. Which means someone else out there knows that Harry’s alive, which could mean a lot of things that range from okay to very, very bad.
But it also kind of fucking doesn’t matter because Harry’s alive.
A voice in Eggsy’s ear whispers never look a gift Niffler under the tail, but another voice, the that’s grown considerably stronger and smarter over the last few months, snarks back because that worked so well last time. Leaving basic had had nothing to do with the inexplicable ease with which he’d slotted himself into service, but a part of him wonders if Harry might be right as rain right now if Eggsy hadn’t followed him into that tailor shop. Nothing comes for free, and when magic is involved that tends to be by design rather than happenstance.
The end result of his gut splitting in two and pulling in opposite directions (and perhaps also a result of the grainy memory surfacing to the forefront of his mind, the image of Harry’s body falling in a lifeless bloody heap on the ground beneath the Kentucky sun, leaking blood and brains into the dirt) is that Eggsy lurches forward and clamps his lips shut to keep from throwing up all over his shoes.
“Sir!” the witch says, kneeling down now. “Sir, are you quite all right? I can accompany you to the third floor if you’ve contracted some kind of sickness—”
“I’m fine,” Eggsy assures her, forcing a quick smile. “It’s just been a long day. Didn’t think he was gonna make it.”
She smiles again, sympathetic this time, and as much as pity makes Eggsy’s skin crawl under normal circumstances, it’s actually kind of nice for now. There’s no-one on earth he can talk to about this with perfect candor on all sides of the thing— and even though he can’t tell this witch Harry’s a secret muggle agent who’s just been shot in the face by some kind of megalomaniac trying to take over the world (admittedly, he’s not quite sure about that last part, but whatever Valentine’s doing it’s certainly not good) it’s still nice to know that there’s someone who knows about at least the tip of the metaphorical iceberg of Shit Eggsy Has To Deal With Right Now.
Eggsy takes the eye brochure she offers him to be polite, but even if a magical eye is apparently on the table, it really doesn’t feel like his decision to make. He stashes it into his pocket and forgets about it entirely by the time the nurse leads him down the west hallway and into a small, unassuming room with olive-painted walls, a tiny leaded glass window set too high into the brick to see properly through, an old-fashioned wooden chair sitting innocuously by a small cot, and, framed atop it by a set of violently purple sheets, Harry Hart.
He almost looks like a different person.
Eggsy’s only ever seen him sleep just the once, the night after Harry invited him home after cutting him free from a set of train tracks. The figure sprawled over Harry’s ridiculously ostentatious bed, while asleep, had nonetheless still carried with it a certain air of tension, as if lying in wait for a sound or a shift in the air to pull him back to consciousness at a moment’s notice. (And for the record, it wasn’t like Eggsy went out of his way to watch, he just happened to pass by Harry’s bedroom on the way to the loo, and Harry just happened to have left his door open, and if Eggsy happened to catch a handful of glimpses instead of just the one, that’s nobody’s business.)
Harry’s all sharp angles and tight, primed muscles ready to strike. He’s not supposed to be like this, all loose and floppy and limp. If it weren’t for the tight green bandages tied over the left side of his face, he’d look positively cute.
Hell, the drooly mouth and duck-footed feet are pretty cute anyway. No point pretending.
He reaches over and takes Harry’s sleeve between his fingers, keeping his knuckles just short of brushing over Harry’s wrist. There’s no one to hide it from here, but he bites back the stupid, giddy little smile anyway, just because it’s probably not a good habit to wear his infatuation on his sleeve.
Yeah, he’s fucked. But that doesn’t mean he’s not damn grateful.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there in the chair, the old wood pressing uncomfortably against his back and his bum, thick sturdy fabric pressing softly between his thumb and his forefinger, but at some point someone comes in and pushes a cup of tea in his empty hand. At his request they also drop in three cubes of sugar, and he nearly jumps out of his chair when the tea promptly begins to stir itself.
It feels for all the world like he’s seventeen again, skiving off Divination to sit by the lake and play with stolen Quidditch equipment with Ryan and Jamal. St. Mungos is brimming with magic, and Eggsy’s body pulses alongside it, languishing in the energy after having been starved for so long.
There must be some sort of comforting charm laced into the brick, because despite the hideous walls, the lack of sunlight, and the chair starting to really dig in against his bum, Eggsy feels more at home here than he’s been since he stepped out of the Hufflepuff common room five years ago. He can almost feel the magic itself tingling in his blood, warm in his belly and thrumming with energy all the way from his heart to his fingertips. Hell, he can almost feel it pouring out of him and onto Harry’s sleeve.
He blinks, letting go. The thread of magic breaks off, dissipating into the air.
Slowly, Eggsy pinches his fingers back around the fabric, and the instant he touches the wool he feels it again, the subtle, invisible pull that keeps his fingertips in place like a magnet.
Bulletproof, Eggsy’s arse.
“I hope this doesn’t mean you cheated.”
Perched in the doorway with his arms crossed and a thin, holly wand dangling loosely from his right hand, Merlin’s words take a few extra seconds to register, and even then Eggsy’s still too torn between adrenalinegriefrelief from Harry and whattheabsolutebleedingfuck from everything else for their meaning to process quite yet.
“I,” he says. “What?”
Merlin arches a wry eyebrow.
Eggsy bristles. “Oi, I got as far as I did fair an’ square.”
Harry shifts on the bed, groaning softly.
“Well,” Merlin says crisply, “I suppose we don’t have time to argue about that.”
They leave Harry in St. Mungo’s for now, because they don’t exactly have time to wait for him to wake up now that they have Valentine’s villain monologue of a confession on tape and a day at most to stop him.
“Besides,” Merlin adds cheerfully, “the only thing more useful than a Kingsman is a ghost.”
“Yeah? You lookin’ for a promotion?” Eggsy fires back.
Harry, still thoroughly unconscious under the influence of several potions, doesn’t comment, though Eggsy likes to think he’d take his side.
Merlin’s phone chimes the second they land back at the mansion, and Eggsy has a single second to realize belatedly that none of the Kingsman tech shorts out when he uses it before the dizziness of his third apparation of the day catches up with him and he doubles over onto the grass.
“Odd,” Merlin mutters, completely ignoring him.
Eggsy wipes his mouth. “What’s that?”
“Arthur wants a word with you.”
From the look on Merlin’s face, he’s thinking the same thing. Eggsy voices it anyway. “He was watching, too, wasn’t he?”
“Undoubtedly. Luckily for you, I cut the feed off the moment I saw you. And then erased the last few seconds, for posterity.”
“You’re the governor.” Eggsy clicks his tongue. “He’ll still have seen me, though.”
Merlin sighs. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Well, there’s that theory confirmed. Arthur, and apparently the rest of Kingsman, are blissfully unaware of the accuracy of Merlin’s title. Or at least they were, until Eggsy apparated himself in front of a live camera feed streaming directly to their leader.
Christ on a stick. Is there anything Eggsy can’t cock up today?
“It’s not a stretch to say Harry might have taken you along on that mission,” Merlin offers. “Hell, even less of a stretch to say you stashed along without telling him.”
Both true statements, and if Arthur only had the one chance to see it before Merlin deleted the footage, maybe he won’t have noticed Eggsy popping out of thin air. Muggles tend not to think twice about magic even when they do see it, though it’s probably fair to guess that the head of a super secret spy organization tends to think more than once.
“If that’s not it, then why would he want to see me?” he wonders. The last time Eggsy saw Chester King, he’d been unceremoniously booted out of this very mansion with his pug in tow. He doubts the man wants a friendly chat for the sake of burying the hatchet.
Movement draws Eggsy’s eye to the edge of the grounds. Percival and Roxy— Lancelot, Eggsy supposes he should call her, now— are marching out of the woods. Roxy’s gaze lingers on them for a split second before returning quickly to Percival as though she hadn’t noticed them at all. Merlin shifts almost imperceptibly, standing a little straighter. They’re still out on the grounds, but while they’re safely away from cameras they’re still surrounded by eyes.
Merlin pats Eggsy firmly on the shoulder, fingertips lingering just a bit too long. “Probably wants to give you his condolences. Galahad is dead.” He lets the word hang in the air, dull and ominous, the warning clear as day.
“Long live Galahad,” Eggsy mutters.
Merlin’s lips twitch just shy of a smile.
“Don’t let Arthur see you with those,” he adds, plucking Eggsy’s glasses off his face. “After your last encounter, I don’t think he’ll take kindly to you plundering my equipment.” That’s rich, given how he’d handed them to Eggsy not five minutes ago, but the message is clear. Too obvious.
Eggsy snorts, thrusting out the pockets of his hoodie. “Yeah, like he’ll like this any better.”
“I think it suits you,” Merlin says amusedly, giving the yellow sign on Eggsy’s left shoulder a tap.
“Right.” Eggsy swallows. All he can do is trust that Merlin’s magicked his tech well enough that Eggsy’s magic won’t short out whatever Merlin’s stuck to his jacket, because there’s not much else he can do on his end. He’s got a wand, but he hasn’t dueled in half a decade, and he’s sorely bereft of any of those shiny little toys Harry showed him back in the shop. “An’ you?”
“I’m going to look through Galahad’s last transmission and see if I can find anything else that might help us,” Merlin says grimly. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”
Eggsy shrugs. “Pop on some Hosier?”
He forgoes the whole you wanted to see me, Sir? thing when he steps into what Merlin had informed him (with no sense of irony whatsoever) is called the Throne Room, and settles instead for a quick nod of the head.
Chester King does not return it.
“Galahad is dead,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “Hence. We have just drunk a toast to him.”
He says we as if he’s not surrounded by nine empty chairs. Eggsy’s gut tugs (mercifully, this time, in a uniform direction) with distrust. Merlin’s magic glasses— magic in the bullshit fucking science way, not the real way— probably show some sort of fancy-pants holograms or something, but without a pair to look through there’s no way to be sure if Chester’s telling the truth or not. There’s not much reason for him to lie, but given that his first words weren’t are you a wizard or something along the same lines, Eggsy’s not convinced the guy’s not holding all his cards close to his chest.
Plus, he’s still not quite over the dog thing.
Looking into Chester King’s eyes makes his skin crawl, but Eggsy holds his gaze as steady as he can. “Well then, you know what that psycho’s doing.” Too late, he remembers he’s supposed to be mourning Harry. He tries to twist the anger that comes as naturally as breathing into something a little more sour, and it only takes a second— sounds good to me— to pull tears into the corners of his eyes. He shoves Harry’s last words away (not his last, thank christ, imagine going out with something that lame) and pushes onward. “How many people in the world have got those SIM cards? Valentine can send a signal to any of them, all of them. If they all go homicidal at the same time, then…”
It doesn’t take a memory to conjure up the right emotion this time. The rest of the world aside, Harry aside (aren’t they the same thing, whispers a part of his heart that never truly escaped the trashy YA novel phase from his teenhood) he’s got a family on the line. Daisy’s not as hard on lightbulbs and phones as Eggsy was, and with Eggsy out of the house as much as he has been for the last few months, his mum’s been taking advantage of the reprieve from his electronic genocide.
Chester sighs. “Indeed,” he says, apparently having the decency to consider the rest of the world, while beneath him, at least worth not leaving to die. “And thanks to Galahad’s recordings, we have Valentine’s confession,” he goes on, swirling his nearly empty glass. “The intelligence has been passed on to the relevant authorities. Our work is complete.”
Relevant authorities? Above Kingsman? What, do they answer to the Minister of fucking Magic?
“And a most distinguished legacy to our fallen friend it is, too,” Chester finishes solemnly, like he’s reading the last line of a Langston Hughs poem.
Eggsy gapes. “An’ that’s it?”
Chester eyes him with an unreadable expression for a long moment, then: “Come sit down, boy.”
He doesn’t indicate a chair, which by extension means they’re all empty. The hair on the back of Eggsy’s neck prickles as he realizes they’re well and truly alone.
“This,” Chester says, gesturing to the glass, “is an 1815 Napoleonic brandy, and we only drink it when we lose a Kingsman.”
He pours out two glasses.
“Galahad was very fond of you, wasn’t he?”
I’ll sort this mess out when I get back.
Eggsy stays quiet, because the last person on earth who deserves to hear the truth that Eggsy doesn’t know if Harry ever held any level of fondness for him (hoped he would, thought he did, fears he never) is Chester fucking King.
Ignoring the lack of an answer, or more likely not even waiting for one, Chester goes on without so much as a curious quirk of the brow. “I think this is an acceptable occasion to bend the rules a little.” He gives a gentle smile, which transforms him for a single second from a posh wanker into the pastiche of a kindly, understanding grandfather. The effect is ruined immediately when he bends over to slide a glass to Eggsy and the light catches on his neck, illuminating the thin white scar behind his ear.
The back of Eggsy’s neck stops prickling.
“These are all Kingsmen?” he asks, casual and easy. Chester turns, and it takes less than a second to swap the glasses, silent over the thick, posh brick of leather that Eggsy thinks must serve as a placemat, though he can’t imagine for the life of him why.
“Yes,” Chester says impatiently. “Those are our founding members.”
Eggsy makes a mental note to ask Harry someday just when the founding members of Kingsmen had found the time to stand around and get oil painted. And if they still do it. And whether Harry would have made them paint in Mr. Pickle.
Chester turns around, and Eggsy’s already back in place, chin balanced innocently on his hands. Chester holds his glass up. “I want you to join me in a toast. To Galahad.”
To Harry, Eggsy thinks.
“To Galahad,” he echoes. He drains his glass in a single swig, watching Chester out of the corner of his eye. Chester only takes a brief sip— not too put out, then— before setting his down.
He doesn’t bother trying to hide the way he watches Eggsy drink, nor does he look away when Eggsy sets the glass down— after all, there’s no point in trying to hide behind careful language and expertly schooled expressions now that he thinks he’s won. Eggsy has no doubt he’s deactivated all the security cameras and microphones in the room, or at least he has the authority to delete their footage after the fact. Killing Eggsy now would be quick, easy, and leave little room for error (or at least it would, if he weren’t so goddamn stupid.) No, if Eggsy wants a confessional monologue, he’s going to have to go fishing.
“Harry said,” he begins, aware that Chester hasn’t once spoken Harry’s name, “that you don’t like to break the rules often. So why now?”
Chester’s eyes gleam. “You’re very good, Eggsy,” he says, in a tone of voice that makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t mean it as a compliment. His gaze darts down to the edge of Eggsy’s sleeve, where the tip of his wand pokes the fabric out just before the elastic cuff pulls it tight around the wrist.
Eggsy sits up a little straighter.
“I had my suspicions, of course,” Chester continues. “You seem to have… remarkable luck.”
“Luck,” Eggsy says stiffly.
“You held your breath three times as long as your competitors, and remained remarkably airborne with Lancelot, even with the one parachute.”
He sneers Roxy’s title like it’s an insult, like the knowledge that Eggsy failed to take it for himself will cause him immeasurable pain, but Eggsy barely notices. He's too busy remembering just how long he’d been swimming back on that first evening, and just how easily he’d touched the ground with Roxy in his arms. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but looking back now it’s exactly the sort of wordless, wandless magic most muggles would mistake for luck, a trick of the light, or a faulty memory.
“And of course, there’s the matter of Galahad,” Chester finishes, his lip curling. “Stashed away in one of your little hospitals, is he?”
Your.
Eggsy wracks his brain, trying to put the pieces together. Chester talks about magic with a familiarity that suggests he’s seen it on an intimate level, not just once or twice on the occasional spy mission gone supernatural. And yet there’s an unmistakable bitterness to the way he won’t even say the word magic, the way he looks at Eggsy with a level of disgust that suggests Eggsy represents the collective filth of the world through existence alone, actions and potential be damned. His eyes linger on Eggsy’s sleeve, shimmering with malice but— Eggsy realizes with a jolt— laced around the edges with the faintest trace of longing.
“You’re a squib.”
Chester sniffs, swirling the remains of his glass. “In my experience, intelligence is seldom valued in your world, so I applaud you for having at least a modicum.” He drains the last of his brandy, lets the drink linger for a moment or two before swallowing, and holds up a thick, gold-embossed pen. “Though I’m afraid it wasn’t quite enough.”
“Let me guess,” Eggsy says, leaning back and folding his arms. “You click it, I die?” He snorts. “I thought that brandy tasted rank.”
“Bravo,” Chester says icily.
“How’d Valentine get to you?” Eggsy snaps, because he’s getting tired of being poshed at and if the South Glade Mission Church fucking fiasco and a half (to put it mildly) was just a test, they really don’t have time for this shit.
Chester swallows the bait hook, line, and sinker, sitting back in his chair like a bad Bond villain. Eggsy half expects him to pull a cat out from under the desk. “My boy, there are certain things you learn when you reach my age. One of them, I believe you have learned already: that life is unfair.” He taps his thumbnail on the rim of his glass. Eggsy resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Those lucky few born into wealth, power, and fortune are wont to remain, while the bottom feeders either learn to resign themselves with their fate, or else spend their lives trying to reach the sunlit surface and die before they ever taste the air they know lies beyond it.”
He says it with a practiced gravitas that makes Eggsy wonder how many times he must have rehearsed it in the mirror before this exact moment.
“An’ what’s that got to do with Valentine, exactly?”
“Well, while there are no exceptions, occasionally there are… opportunities.”
Eggsy blinks. “For you? What, you think you’re on the bottom?”
Chester, holding a crystal bottle of brandy and wearing a suit that costs more than a year’s rent, gives a solemn nod. “The King line is one of the most influential magical families in the country. Of course, they claimed to be supportive. But there was never room for a squib in their ranks.”
“So now you’re just gonna sit an’ watch as the world destroys itself? Just so you get to be the special-est little boy in the room?” Eggsy sneers. “I bet you sifted through Valentine’s list of people to save and picked off every drop of magical blood you could find, didn’t you? Just because you never got your letter, you think wizards are the scum of the earth.”
Chester’s lips thin. “I have tolerated a wizard here because he is useful. And if you want my generosity to extend to you, boy, I suggest you watch that mouth of yours.”
“Generosity?” Eggsy snorts. “You want me on your side as, what, your secret weapon? Gonna make me threaten Valentine, get him to do what you want? Else I’ll turn his lady friend into a toad?”
“Good idea,” Chester praises. He holds up the pen. “In Galahad’s honor— and because even I can appreciate talent when I see it— I am inviting you to be part of a new world.”
Talent, Eggsy thinks wryly. If Chester took one look at Eggsy’s OWL grades, he wouldn’t think twice about flicking the switch on his little pen. Even if he grew up in a magical home, it’s clear now that he doesn’t see a difference between one wizard and the next. He's only offering Eggsy an opportunity because he wants a wizard on his side, knows Merlin would sooner toss himself into the Thames, and thinks Eggsy’s young and stupid enough to jump at the chance to save his own skin.
“It is, of course, your decision.”
Eggsy thinks of lime green bandages, purple sheets, and a cup of lukewarm tea.
“I’d rather be with Harry, thanks.”
Chester’s disappointment is palpable and delicious. “So be it,” he says bitterly, and deploys the poison.
Eggsy gives it a second, just long enough for Chester to bask in the false satisfaction of a murder well done.
“The problem with us common types,” he says, fiddling with his own glass, “is that we’re light fingered.”
He gives it another second, heart jumping when he spots the exact moment Chester picks up on the implication. An instant later— because, really, it’s shaping up to be that kind of movie after all and what’s a good you didn’t fuck me over I fucked you over, bitch speech without a well-timed reveal— Chester’s chest convulses.
“An’ the problem with you,” Eggsy adds, “is that you think I’m just a wizard, ain’t I? Don’t know nothin’ about the real world, do I?”
With a choke, Chester sinks an inch down the chair.
“You— dirty little fucking prick—”
“Guess what, bruv.” Eggsy sets the glass down, leaning close to savor the hatred burning in Chester’s eyes. “The only one of us who don't know how the real world works is you.”
“Fuck you.”
Chester’s head hits the table.
It’s why he couldn’t shoot JB, because if he’d pointed his wand and shouted Avada Kedavra, it wouldn’t have done a damn thing. Because with magic, he has to mean it, to want with every fiber of his being when he speaks the incantation and twists the answering magic through his wand.
But any idiot can pull a trigger.
Valentine and Gazelle turn out to just be two muggles who grew too big for their own boots.
And thank god for that, because if Valentine had ever gotten his hands on magic— or even on a few of the wizards still keen on murdering anyone without three inbred cousins in their family— there’s no telling what kind of war they’d be fighting by now.
But at the end of it all, Valentine and Gazelle are dead, and Harry is alive.
He wakes up just as Eggsy’s turning the next page in his secondhand copy of Insurgent. It’s absolutely atrocious; Eggsy’s enjoying every word. Beneath the convex paperback spine, a thin stick (eight and a half inches, maple, containing one unicorn hair and a drop of acromantula blood) pokes out innocuously. Harry squints at it.
“What is that?”
“It’s my wand.”
Harry wrinkles his nose. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or if you’re talking about your cock. And to be quite honest, I’m not sure which is worse.”
Eggsy waggles his eyebrows. “You mean better.”
Before Harry can retort something about language, propriety, or something else equally unimportant, his healer bustles into the room. “You’re all set, Mr. Galahad,” she says brightly, pushing a bottle of silver liquid into his hand. “You’ll need a dose of Skele-Gro every morning for the next two weeks, and keep a vial of bitterroot balm on hand as needed for the pain. If you decide on a magical eye to replace the old one, please let the front desk know and we’ll set you up with an appointment— and don’t forget to stop by the gift shop on the fifth floor!”
“‘Cor, will do,” Eggsy tells her, while Harry just flops his mouth open and shut like a fish.
As if on cue, Merlin apparates into the doorway, tablet in hand, and Harry swears so loudly that Merlin drops the thing onto the floor. It promptly shatters into a thousand pieces, but he fixes it with a quick wave of his wand and a sour look at Harry’s bed, which softens rather quickly once he spots the bandages.
“Good to see you’re awake. How do you feel about a promotion?”
Harry looks between Merlin’s tablet, Eggsy’s wand, and the vial still clutched in his own hand.
“I get the feeling that I’ve missed something very important.”
“Drink your potion,” Eggsy hums, as Caleb betrays his sister for the umpteenth time.