Nice update; interesting story. Only one thing I felt I needed to voice my opinion on, though.

While it is understandable that as we reach deeper into Avengers territory, characters from that universe assume greater prominence, I am personally finding myself quite disinterested in the lengthy passages that are told from the POV of someone other than Harry.

Rather, I prefer the style of the earlier chapters, where any non-Harry interludes were fairly brief and directly related to him or his actions. Right now, it didn't seem to me that the 1/2 of the chapter that was told from the perspective of Clint, Natasha, or Sif contributed much to the story.

 

That was awesome. Also, what's an ex-rock star doing piloting in a war zone?

 

The next chapter again splits up the focus with Harry being the main one, and the four who can't fly going out on their own. I think that Sif, Bruce, Natasha and Clint can probably cover that angle well enough, though. Anyway, another familiar face will be showing up, and the focus of that whole affair will be on Harry regardless, for a number of reasons. I chose to have some varied POV's here to not overplay the Harry saves everyone theme, since these are the /Avengers/ and everone contributing is kind of the big thing about them.

In any case, the Harry-POV fans will get plenty in the coming chapters, when the story shifts back a little from the combat-heavy nature of these chapters, and he gets to find out what happened to the local wizards, who on earth is being an asshole and invading Earth, and of course the reason he got here in the first place explored.

Also, Spidey.

 

First of all...awesome work on this story. It is truly one of the best HP Crossovers out there. As for that quote..THANK YOU!!! Spider-man is awesome!

Not sure if you will answer this, but where are you drawing your main source material for him from? Ultimate? Cartoon? The Original three movies? Or the new Andrew Garfield version?

 

Well, I can't pretend I'd be a fan of Spider Man, but then again I never thought I'd like Marvel at all, and I'm quite confident you can pull it off.

Also I get the feeling I'm missing something about A.I.M and Tarleton. I have never read the comics, so I assume that's part of it, but I do wonder a number of things, namely how the flying fuck does a terrorist organization have any modern tech, much less sci-fi stuff. I loved the chapter, but I almost feel like focusing things on a tighter, more tense, and smaller level as opposed to the chaos of an open battlefield might be a tad better, but that has more to do with personal preferences than anything else. I guess all I'm trying to say was that despite the big, chaotic battle, the only time I felt any tension was when Sif was comforting the dying pilot, and I think that maybe deemphasizing the super high tech might make for a better, more powerful story.

Of course, the problem lies in that any critique along those lies runs counter to the natural progression of the story, and it's far too late to ask you to change up significant plot points and progress, but I just feel like Giant Robots take away from things, rather than make them better.

I still love this story, and I still think you are an incredible writer, and this is very well done, but I just think that there's a bit of clash between my personal tastes and this fic. There's nothing really wrong with it, but this is just my two cents.

Also forgive spelling/formatting errors - typed this on an iPod.

 

Giant robots make everything better.

 

*golf clap*

Continued excellence, old boy. I will say I am really looking forward to the actual Avengers timeline; but I really enjoy you filling in the blanks between the movies.

Looking forward to more!

 

You know I was really happy to see another update that fast. But omfg why did you have to end it there???? Blah, well once again a great frickn chapter.

 

I have to admit, after reading Tony's talk with Harry the previous chapter about the necessity of killing, I was kinda expecting Harry to end up killing a few of the cannon fodder this chapter. I rolled my eyes on a few occasions about Harry's efforts to avoid killing even a single person. It just doesn't seem logical to go out of your way to avoid killing people in a war zone when the people you are fighting are trying to kill you and are also wanting to kill a shit ton of innocent people. I don't know what the plan is for the mop up after the mission and how they are going to round up all the A.I.M. agents, but like Tony said, letting a terrorist get away when you could have killed them just means any innocent deaths that terrorist causes latter on is partly on your hands.

Now, don't get me wrong, I was not expecting Harry to go on a slaughter fest and be ok with it, but I was expecting a random lethal curse here and there thrown in with Harry's bag of tricks. I guess I am saying that it just seems the progression of the story pulled a 180 in regards to preparing Harry for having to kill people in the upcoming battle.

 

I don't really find it as a 180 turn. Like you said, it was Tony explaining the necessity of killing, not Harry. While Harry could probably see the logic, it doesn't mean he has to act upon that logic immediately. This is talking about murder after all.

 

There's no point in killing when you do not have to. He hasn't had to yet, I'm expecting this to change in the next chapter though.

 

I think the fact that Harry only really 'killed' one person and that was really more of a suicide by technicality, he'd be hesitant about starting doing that stuff, period, especially since the people he did know who killed rather indiscriminately weren't exactly good ones.

Now, he won't come out of things with clean hands, but I see it as rather integral to Harry that even when he knows that it's probably not a smart thing to do, that he'd rather not go for the easy answer here. At least, that is how my idealized view of Harry's personality is, flawed as it might be in some respects. Perhaps in ways not dissimilar from Dumbledore's, who probably handed out more second chances than he ought to have.

I know that late-books Harry was a rather erratic guy, including his use of Unforgivable Curses with progressively less justification and apparently with more ease. I'd prefer to think that this has more to do with him being in an impossible situation coupled with being a teenager than any long-lasting personality traits.

Now, Harry has another reason to be hesitant here; he already has one innocent life on his conscience, and he hasn't even figured that out, and now he's basically put out there with faceless goons and asked to dish out lethal blows like candy. He's agonizing over basically an accidental death, and I don't think you skip from that to mass killing with a single conversation, even if Tony makes some points that I believe his character and some people IRL would agree with.

Man, I put more Dumbledore parallels in there than I'd really planned on, if unintentionally.

Anyway, if things get dangerous, Harry would do some seriously grimy things as he's already demonstrated in canon, and that inevitably happens when you're involved in things like this. At the very least I can tell you that Harry will cast at least two seriously dark magic spells in the next chapter since they're so damn useful for the nasty work, and one of them would've put him in Azkaban, back home.

Cheers.

 

Killing terrorists isn't murder. Your right to life ends where others' begin. Killing people who are planning on killing millions and endangering hundreds of millions to billions isn't immoral. If anything, you have a moral obligation to kill as many of them as possible.

Not to say that it'd be in character for Harry to cleanse the entire complex in fiendfyre, but it's not the moral quagmire you seem to imply.

 

I believe you misunderstood here. You are correct in that it would be the correct choice of action but that doesn't mean that most people in that situation wouldn't hesitate before doing it(or not do it at all).

Killing is not supposed to be easy, the way I see it Harry has avoided killing so far because he can afford that effort. I mean yes he didn't use any lethal spells but then he also didn't spend much time over the fact that lots of people he didn't kill were killed right afterwards by their own allies.

Sure he could have went faster if he didn't care at all but that is a very slippery slope, even worse in this case since it is a magical enforced one.

 

You remembered correctly. Also, yes, it's not like Harry was shy of using Unforgivables near the end of canon there, and even though he never was one for killing, I doubt he was upset over Voldemort's end, or Bellatrix's.

Also, thanks.

 

This isn't really the place for such a discussion, but I think you'll find a lot of people who would really disagree with your statement here. Dumbledore would be one of them, Harry would likely be another.

Then again, sometimes you just don't have a choice.

EDIT: Hell, next chapter we're going to see one of the least murderous heroes on the Marvel roster as well.

 

Considering the fact that Harry has spent the last, say dozen years of his life as an Auror, which are roughly the equivalent of magical police, it's not that big of a stretch that Harry would have trouble in getting up the motivation to kill people. Even with police, taking another's life is a big deal. The other members of these proto-Avengers have their own justifications for why it's easy for them to kill randomly: Tony got a taste of real-life struggle and has a hatred towards terrorists due to the events of his captivity and the death of Yinsen, Sif has a warrior mentality, the Hulk is very primal and animalistic, and Natasha and Clint are agents and assassins. Harry is still halfway in Auror-mode, with a restrain-not-kill mentality, as well as the fore-mentioned issues from his childhood.

As for the action for this chapter, I kinda felt a bit disappointed. You said Harry would finally let loose, and while he is taking on multiple enemies and the suit, we haven't seen anything impressive. Maybe the my memories of the Harrys from Joe's Wastelands and Shezza's Denarian Trilogy are coloring my opinion of what an experienced, powerful Harry should be able to do when letting loose, though. This Harry isn't a god-like spellcaster, just a decently powerful wizard from another dimension.

And something I've been wondering but probably won't be addressed in the story, is what are the circumstances of Death's cost for using the Stone? Does Death use the soul of someone who died at that moment (with a population of 6.5 billion, probably happens every second)? Or does she pick out someone who otherwise would live longer, then arrange for them to die? I guess this would tie into whether Harry was the cause of Uncle Ben's death.

 

Well, Harry does get to be godlike in the same line as the Harry's from those two series did, but that can necessarily only be a temporary thing, I think, without completely messing up any sense of balance.

Anyway, the next chapter does have him pull out an Unforgivable and the like, which are a step above what he's used yet.

Regarding Death and the stone - well, we will get to that after current events. You should probably put your money on the latter option.