Chapter 27: illusionary money!

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A curse escaped Harry's mouth as he turned back to where they had been a few moments ago. Among the blood and grass lay his disguise necklace, the lace severed by the cutting curse.

He groaned, walking back over and picking it up, still holding Maria. "So you're constantly staring at me now I'm famous, handsome, and have saved your life? That is like, so shallow!" he mocked, then suddenly turned serious.

"Tell anyone about this and you die, okay?"

She nodded then hugged tighter into his side, causing Harry to glance at her as he repaired the necklace and put it back on.

'She's very subtle about showing her newly-found attraction to you,' Loki idly commented, his tone thick with sarcasm.

In his blood-soaked state, Harry decided it would be best if he didn't go back into the ballroom, instead going directly into the room they had been in before.

He was greeted by the sight of the three other members of the Aurelius family and a few guards rushing about.

"I assume you already found the guards in the corridor. There are five corpses of the would-be kidnappers on the lawn. I didn't exactly have time to interrogate them," Harry said casually, drawing everyone's attention onto him.

For a moment, the room was silent. "Is anyone going to take her from me, or shall I just stand here holding her?"

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Maria made the wise decision not to attend the rest of the dance. She probably wouldn't have had the choice to anyway with her family interrogating her about why she had left the room and lecturing that it wasn't responsible to go to the bathroom without your bodyguard accompanying you.

Harry simply settled on a couch and watched in amusement. After a while Marco joined him. "Good job," he said.

"I expected nothing less from you." Reaching into his pocket he procured a bag of gold and chucked it to Harry who snatched it out of the air and pocketed it, noting it was far heavier than anything else Marco had given him.

The expansion charms on it didn't do weight as well, then. "Would you consider-"

"No," Harry interrupted, giving him no room to continue.

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"Let me guess: would you consider becoming Maria's full-time guard?" Marco shrugged in admittance, not looking guilty in the slightest.

"Well, no. I don't care how much it pays, but I like my freedom, which isn't something I'll be able to retain while babysitting a girl."

"It was worth a shot. Will I see you soon?"

Harry glanced at Maria. It wouldn't be wise to show up at Aurelius Manor while she was here unless he wanted to be bombarded with questions about his true identity. "Maybe not – not here at least."

A grin broke upon Marco's face. "Why? Because you have a crush on my sister?"

For a moment, Harry was stunned into silence, but then realised he could have some fun with this."Yes, Marco," he deadpanned, "it is because I have a crush on your sister and I'm obviously not confident enough to confront her about it. That's also a reason why I didn't want to be her bodyguard. From that position it would be too hard to manipulate her into growing dependant on me. I'm also nowhere near manipulative and amoral enough to take advantage of the fact I saved her life."

Marco laughed. "I guess you have a point, but you do admit you have a crush on her?"

"I'm not sure what one counts as a crush, but I am certainly attracted to her. I could describe in explicit detail all of her attractive features if you wanted, but I doubt you would appreciate that." Harry hummed. "I suppose I could do the same for your mother as well if you like."

Loki cackled as Marco grew red in embarrassment. "I would prefer if you didn't, and-"

"Wait, aren't you meant to do the overprotective brother speech?" Now Harry was on a roll, with his goal to make Marco feel as uncomfortable as possible.

"Or are you just going to do the one about using protection?" Harry paused and frowned. "I never actually got an official sex talk, I think you might have to do that for me as well. My first question is where do you-"

"Okay, okay! I admit you're better at this whole embarrassing people thing."

Harry smirked. "I was taught by the best, I assure you." He glanced at his wrist, pretending he had a watch. "Well, I best take my leave. I don't want to keep my harem of Mafia heiresses waiting."

Without a final look at Marco, he strolled from the doors.

'Do you think that she'll reveal my identity?'

Loki hummed. 'While I cannot be sure, I do not think so. You saving her makes her indebted to you and there is nothing for her to gain by telling anyone - other than her crush's ire, of course. There is also no proof other than your name being Harry and being a similar age. Any attempt will probably be dismissed as a teenager's silly fantasy to be saved by a wizarding hero, only helped by her possibly being in shock.'

'I suppose.'

Using illusionary money, Harry checked into the muggle hotel. It was inconvenient to stay in the magical world when he needed to do experiments on muggles.

Unfortunately muggle slaves were expensive to buy and frowned upon by most of society. Then again, so was practising spells upon muggles, but Harry was going to do it anyway.

He sought to practise illusions, something he hadn't done in a while. Whilst he could disguise himself with relative ease, he fell flat when attempting to create light illusions not centred around himself or when trying to make himself convincingly invisible.

Practise was also needed with telepathic illusions, though that would be better done on wizards seeing as he could already do those easily against muggles since they had no natural magic to shield their mind.

After going up to his room to see it in case he felt like apparating up later – he most likely wouldn't as it was too easy to track and horrible to do – he headed back down to the street. Sitting down at a seat outside a restaurant, he asked Loki, 'What shall I do?'

'Start off simple. Do something that people don't usually take notice of - like your old brown-suited form.'

'Okay.'

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