Child Of The Storm / Tropes A to H

Tropes from Child of the Storm.

Tropes I To P can be found here and Tropes Q To Z can be found here.

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• Action Dad: Thor, the god of thunder, and Harry's father. Other than his adventures in Thor and The Avengers being canon, he also gets to show off several times in the fic, most notably when he attacks Gravemoss after the Battle of the M4 and prior to the finale when he vaporises a giant zombified kraken that had been shrugging off everything the Avengers were throwing at it.
• Action Girl:
  • Carol Danvers has shown signs of this, and in later chapters, becomes a fully-fledged Badass Normal. By chapter 75, she's an Empowered Badass Normal.
  • Diana, who is in fact a teenage Wonder Woman. She's in Harry's weight class, and more than carries her weight in a fight.
  • Natasha, being an Avenger and all. Same that applies to Thor.
  • Darcy, to a more limited extent, via her trusty taser.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Samuel L. Jackson's role as Frozone in The Incredibles is referenced when Fury brings up the subject of monologuing with Baron Von Strucker.
  • After the Robin Hood on Ice incident, Snape is described as looking "as if he ever found out who the perpetrators of this act, they would beg for something so sweet as having their heart cut out with a spoon".
• Adaptation Expansion: Most definitely. Related to the Alternate Universe entry below.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Zig Zagged. More than a few characters have more reason to angst than their canon counterparts, but don't all that much.
  • Warren plays this straight as an arrow, though he has reason enough for that.
• Adaptational Badass: Everyone counts, as the story tends to take powers and extrapolate their logical capabilities.
  • Harry in particular stands out. While in the source material he is a somewhat better than average wizard when it comes to surviving fights, here he is a demigod who gets the powers of a Flying Brick (though not fully realized until the next book), Playing with Fire, Mind over Matter and Telepathy.
  • This logical conclusion is what turns Sean Cassidy from a B or C-List member of the X-Men famous for screaming really loudly to a badass (who has the face and body of a man in his prime for reasons only alluded to) referred to by one reviewer as "Black Bolt lite", who tore through an IRA cell that murdered his wife in such a fashion as to give Nick Fury himself nightmares, as well as deploying his powers effectively, making him capable of pulling a Stealth Hi/Bye that would make Batman blink, using Super Hearing to create a Daredevil-like radar and resonating concrete, wood, and bone. This has, in some circles, given him a justly earned reputation as The Dreaded, so much so that his name and codename shown up on Loki's radar. He's also a Nice Guy and Reasonable Authority Figure. However, you really don't want to make him angry.
  • Warren Worthington III is now not only in possession of impossibly sharp wings made of some as yet unidentified (but probably magical) metal that can take him to mach speed, he's also a low level superhuman capable of bench pressing a car, severe resistance to cold, incredible lung capacity (ergo, stamina), and with a Healing Factor close to Wolverine's.On one of his first appearances, he disables and beheads a zombified dragon in about ten seconds with a few deft flicks of his wings. As Warren notes, he's a Living Weapon and a whole new level of Super-Soldier. What depresses him is that he can slice loved ones to bits with a startled twitch. Chapter 70 demonstrates exactly what he's capable of. The result is a Mook Horror Show.
  • While Thor was badass to begin with, the story jacks him (and everyone else) up to closer to the levels of power he displays in the comics, and he uses his powers far more effectively — for instance, he deploys gales of Razor Wind to chop away at a swarm of Slendermen in chapter 60, and in chapter 61, he uses his ability to sense air currents as a very effective radar.
  • Even on the villains' side, Lucius Malfoy is growing more and more dangerous than his canon version even dreamed of. Especially now that he's in control of both The Death Eaters and Hydra and has been upgraded to the story's primary Big Bad. In chapter 74, he masterminds the takedown of the Avengers and the destruction of Avengers Tower, and by chapter 75, he has basically taken over the world. While this status is thoroughly temporary, it's a massive improvement on his canon self.
  • Grindelwald is mentioned as having amped himself via certain deals to god-like levels (prior to Doctor Strange stripping most of that power away during their duel in Berlin), carved out an empire from Lisbon to Moscow and beyond, and brought immensely powerful wandless Evil Sorcerer and Necromancer Kemmler firmly under his control.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • So far, Lex Luthor is a genuinely good guy, if somewhat of a Knight Templar Big Brother when it comes to Carol (who is implied to be his Morality Chain as well as substitute sibling) and the other people he cares about. It helps that he's not yet in Smallville and actually has friends, such as Professor Xavier and Loki. Plus, he's started warming up to Harry as well. Since Harry got him a date with his long term crush, Sue Storm, leading to the start of a relationship, is friends with Carol, tipped him off about the dangers of investigating the magical world, and can relate with having a certain feature being what everyone fixates on (eyes/scar as opposed to baldness), this is perhaps less than surprising.
  • The main case of this, however, is Loki. To quote the author, "Loki has been redeemed, largely off-screen..." This is to a point where he actually helps out his brother and other assorted characters. However, it is made abundantly clear that for all his charm and genuine remorse, he is Reformed, but Not Tamed and is more than willing to do... questionable things to do good.
• Adaptational Super Power Change:
  • Baron Zemo is explicitly a Super-Soldier.
  • Carol Danvers goes from Flying Brick and Flying Firepower to Super-Soldier. Later, she gets a different kind of Flying Firepower, but only temporarily.
• Adaptational Villainy: Johnny and Sue Storm's father murdered their mother, whereas in canon, he was imprisoned for manslaughter after a fight with a loan shark (caused by gambling debts he ran up after the death of his wife in a car crash) and gets a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: An interestingly played example. Jane is in her late twenties when Harry is thirteen, with there being about a fifteen year age gap between the two. This, though wider than most examples, is a source of a fair degree of awkwardness between the two (along with the fact that Harry associates his father with being with his mother, Lily), with Jane lampshading the relatively small age difference and noting that she doesn't think she's ready for kids yet, let alone a teenager. This awkwardness has largely been resolved, with the two now being close (when Jane finds Harry crying in his father's arms in chapter 58, she simply asks, voice hard, "Who?", fully intent on making them suffer), and having a relationship that is probably closer to Like Brother and Sister (Jane explicitly notes that she treats him more like her younger half brother, who's maybe five years older than Harry), while resolutely ignoring the potentially weird implications for her relationship with Thor, for which Harry is now decidedly a Shipper on Deck. The general view is that they care for each other very much, platonically speaking, and the details don't matter.
• Affably Evil: Alexander Pierce. He's kind to Harry, friendly and charming, and every indication is that he genuinely means it. He's also one of HYDRA's most powerful members and one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
  • Lucius, who's broadly and genuinely polite - while it's partly out of general aristocratic good manners and a desire not to unnecessarily aggravate various allies, he metaphorically takes his hat off to Arthur Weasley and admits he was wrong about muggles and their technology.
• The Ageless: implied for the Lady Knight, who's noted never to have aged on her unwilling voyage through time.
  • The Alfar are the basis for Tolkien's elves In-Universe, and are correspondingly this trope.
• Agent Peacock:
  • the very Camp Gay Jean-Paul Beaubier, who even the straight and not remotely interested Harry describes as beautiful, with long, dark hair. He's flirty, effeminate and ticks every stereotypical box of the Gay Best Friend, even adding in some Gratuitous French. It is then established that at least some of this is a façade: the mannerisms and Gratuitous French disappear when someone starts treading on thin ice and Harry inwardly notes that when this happens, it's rather intimidating. And while he's a Fragile Speedster who doesn't particularly enjoy fighting, that doesn't mean he's not good at it. There is, for instance, nothing fun about having a sharp rock thrown in your eye at several times the speed of sound. He's also much more observant than he lets on, almost absently giving Harry a Sherlock Scan.
  • Warren Worthington III is arguably just as pretty, with half of Hogwarts falling in love with him when he turns up as a de facto bodyguard along with Sean Cassidy (and not all that half is female) and prone to moping because of his Razor Wings. This leads to many, including Professor McGonagall, assuming that he's just present because he's Sean's protégé. Not so. He's capable of flying at several times the speed of sound, able to 'bench press a troll', would regard being hit by a car as an inconvenience more than anything else, has a Healing Factor that wouldn't shame Wolverine, and he's very, very fast. He also knows exactly how to use his Razor Wings to best effect — his Dynamic Entry in chapter 44 has him disable and behead a hundred foot long zombie dragon in about five seconds flat. And what he does in chapter 70... well. Definitely not just a pretty face.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier:
  • As usual, there's the SHIELD Helicarrier, which true to form, crashes in the Hudson Bay thanks to HYDRA (who actually intended for pieces of it to rain down on New York, something which only failed because the Winter Soldier sabotaged his sabotage), and only fails to sink thanks to the efforts of Rhodey and Namor.
  • HYDRA's own helicarrier is a colossal Vibranium-hulled and Destroyer-armed behemoth called the Dreadnought. And it can teleport anywhere in the world. The head of HYDRA, Lucius Malfoy, specifically invokes the Meaningful Name aspect, remarking that he's informed that the original Dreadnought rendered every battle ship in the world obsolete (which it did) and so has this one.
  • Britain, meanwhile, has the Valiant, which is apparently still in dry dock — jokes are made about it having the same name as another fictional helicarrier -- in this case, one that's fictional in-universe too.
• All Myths Are True: Thanks to the confluence of different canons.
  • Possibly subverted as Diana and Uhtred aren't entirely sure how many other pantheons are out there beyond the Olympians, Asgardians, and Avalonians when asked by Carol. They eventually settle on a consensus that all of them are probably real, except for the ones obviously created by humans, a possible Take That! at a certain real world religion.
  • Jesus is real and even makes appearances. The other characters react appropriately.
  • Apparently Mormonism was a joke gone horribly wrong.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
  • In Chapter 16, the HYDRA/Death Eater/Gravemoss alliance breaks into Castel Montesi in order to steal the Darkhold.
  • In Chapter 21, Lucius has Gravemoss destroy MI6, and the Winter Soldier destroy MI13's bases around London.
  • In Chapter 70, HYDRA launches a worldwide attack on everyone they view as a threat — Hogwarts, SHIELD, the Ministry, various intelligence agencies and heads of state, etc. — and for the most part pull it off completely successfully.
  • And then in Chapter 74, HYDRA puts the master stroke on their Evil Plan by having Zola seize control of Avengers Tower, which Tony ultimately destroys by overloading its Arc Reactor, so that HYDRA can't steal his technology. Even so, he, Steve, and Bruce are all captured.
• Alternate Universe: The author says that this won't be just a simple crossover, it'll be a new universe entirely. For instance. the MCU is only followed up to The Avengers and very little post that movie is taken into account (though Word of God has it that Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy played out pretty much exactly the same way as canon), the comics and cartoons are followed up to some degree, and there are heavy doses of other works replacing or influencing canon elements, such as the Vampire Courts replacing the vampires present in all other works.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Averted with the Dark Elves. Odin explicitly states that not all followed Malekith, something which is elaborated upon in more detail in the sequel.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • Harry, platonically and probably romantically, in the fullness of time.
  • Loki's in love with Sif and Everyone Can See It.
• Amicable Exes: Sif and Thor. Thor moved on with Lily and (after Lily's death) Jane, while Sif is clearly in love with Loki, who obviously has feelings for her but is too dense to act on them. Thor ships them, and often gets exasperated at his brother's obliviousness.
• Ambiguously Bi: Peter Wisdom/Regulus Black is quite attracted to Agent Jessica Drew, but also thinks that Captain America has one fine backside, if his comment about how Cap could lead a knitting circle of old ladies into battle on the strength of both charisma and the opportunity for them to admire him from behind, is anything to go by.
• Ambition Is Evil: Lucius plays this straight as an arrow. Taking over HYDRA to Take Over the World just for starters?
• Ancient Conspiracy:
  • Doctor Strange is a one-man Benevolent Conspiracy since at least Odin's time. He's explicitly trying to strengthen the current generation as much as possible.
  • HYDRA is just as ancient, though it only took its current form after WWII. Their general goal is to Take Over the World, with a dash of social Darwinism or Nazism thrown in.
  • The Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, is trying to be this, but Magneto has made a habit out of purging them every decade or so.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Harry is closely associated with the Phoenix.
  • Thor is occasionally described in leonine terms.
  • Lucius Malfoy is generally associated with snakes.
• Apocalypse Cult: The Clan Akkaba was this in the most literal way possible, before being mostly obliterated by a mixture of Dracula and a very irritated Phoenix.
• Apocalypse How:
  • The Darkhold is attempting to bring about a Universal/Multiversal scale apocalypse with total Metaphysical Annihilation, simply by bringing Chthon back to the universe.
  • Gravemoss aspires to a Universal apocalypse of Total Extinction levels.
  • HYDRA, meanwhile, aspire to a Societal Disruption/Societal Collapse on a Planetary scale, so they can reshape human society to their own ends.
  • And Krypton underwent a Planetary/Stellar Scale Apocalypse (its sister planet, Argo, was wiped out too) and almost all its people died in the traditional Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Hermione does not believe that Harry Dresden is an actual wizard, just because he's in the phone book - which, to be fair, violates the International Statute of Secrecy. Ron quickly disabuses her of that notion by explaining that since he is a wandless wizard, the Statute doesn't apply to him (even if the White Council is quite secretive).
  • Heimdall all but name checks this trope when he says that 'skepticism is good, so long as it is not arbitrary'.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Voldemort to Harry, Thor, and Loki (or rather, the first two; Loki simply vows eternal suffering on Voldemort because of what he did to his brother and nephew).
  • Malfoy to Fury. He took Fury's eye, Fury snapped his wand, gave him a limp, and burned down his house. Using napalm. Scenes from both their perspectives indicate that It's Personal. Deeply personal.
• Arc Welding: Played with. According to the author, a bit of this happens to bind stories together in the lesser story arcs. The major Myth Arc has been around since near the beginning, so that isn't so much of a problem. However, this is all being done to things which aren't posted yet.
• Arc Words:
  • There are variations on "a storm is coming" throughout the story, alluding to the constant, steady build-up of trouble and evil, before the storm is finally unleashed in the epic 4 part finale (chapters 75-78, not counting the two chapter epilogue. An argument can be made for chapter 74 being a part of it too), when everything comes to a head. It relates to the title, with Harry being the titular 'Child of the Storm.' As the son of Thor, this is literally true, but with the way trouble tends to follow him around, and how he's at the very centre of events (by the design of Doctor Strange), it also refers to the more figurative storm.
  • Doctor Strange's Catchphrase, "Check," pops up a couple of times before the finale, alluding to his nature as The Chessmaster who's been maneuvering everyone, with his final, understated Badass Boast being "Check. Check and Mate."
  • And then there are the repeated references to how Harry can either be a bright and shining Messianic Archetype or a terrifying Dark Messiah based on his choices.
  • There are numerous references to Smallville and the Superman mythos, namely the titular town in Kansas, "The Lost Omega", the destruction of Krypton, and the Kent family. There are also many references to Alan Scott, AKA Green Lantern and he makes a posthumous appearance in chapter 76.
• The Archmage:
  • Loki is referred to as the god of magic.
  • Albus Dumbledore, at least as far as wanded wizards go.
  • Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme. For the record, he managed to keep a title that spelled short lives for all its previous users for millennia.
  • Wanda Maximoff, Strange's student.
• Artificial Limbs: The Winter Soldier.
• Ascended Extra: Has a few examples:
  • Jean-Paul Beaubier is transformed from B-List member of the X-Men, largely famous just because he was one of the first out gay characters in comics, to a charming teenager who affects a harmless, flighty facade, but is in fact pragmatic, ruthless, observant, and with the elevation of his powers to Flash level following chapter 60, arguably the most dangerous of the junior cast he generally prefers to avoid fights, but when he does fight, he goes to the wall, being one of the good guys, but having an unknown agenda of his own.
  • Carol Danvers, both in and out of universe. In-Universe because she starts as a minor supporting character added in chapter 20 on what Word of God admits was a whim, a new teenage muggle friend for Harry, before steadily evolving into a major supporting character by the end of this book. Out of universe because, while she was added just as her canon counterpart was being pushed by Marvel, she was still relatively obscure.
  • Wanda Maximoff, while a long-standing Avenger in the comics, was still relatively obscure pre Avengers: Age of Ultron when she was introduced to the story. She became an important supporting character, getting far more Character Development than she's generally given in the comics, cast as the former apprentice of Doctor Strange, Harry's godmother (who couldn't take him in because Strange warned her of the consequences), and Hermione Granger's biological mother by John Constantine, who becomes a substitute mother to Harry and an important supporting character.
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: A technical example in Thor — he'd been sort of de-ascended into James Potter as part of a first run at the humility thing (it went kind of pear-shaped), and dying as James essentially resulted in his ascending into Thor once more. Since this was hideously traumatic and decidedly unwilling, he went somewhat nuts and had to have his memories removed.
  • A straight example is Luna, who after her death in chapter 70 became the new Delirium/Delight of the Endless.
  • Another straight example is Lily Potter, who is revealed in chapter 78 as having ascended to become the White Phoenix of the Crown, the Phoenix Force (a.k.a. Destruction of the Endless) incarnate, as part of her deal with the entity in question to protect Harry.
• A Storm Is Coming: Regularly mentioned and name-dropped.
• The Atoner: Loki. Very much so, feeling serious guilt about what he's done under a calm and relaxed façade.
  • Sif hints that this is, in fact, common to more people than he would think, including to her.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Lady Loki. Thor was, apparently, once this for a few hours.
• Author Appeal: The Sleep Cute and Badass Family tropes appear in other works by the same author.
• Author Filibuster: Occasionally takes on hints of this in response to assertions of wizarding power, in very pointedly (both in story and in notes) noting Wizarding flaws — an undeserved societal superiority complex, relatively limited power, and, as a rule, a severe inability to come to terms with anything outside their frame of reference — but carefully avoids it.
• Author Tract: Verges on this with various characters occasionally drifting towards being the author's mouthpieces on various social issues.
• Ax-Crazy: As is immediately obvious and regularly noted, Gravemoss is completely batshit insane.
• Back from the Dead: In chapter 45 Doctor Strange brings back Sif, who'd had her heart ripped out and Harry Dresden, who'd used his Death Curse to launch Gravemoss halfway into orbit. He's also implied to have saved/resurrected Coulson.
  • Technically Thor, having died as James Potter.
  • Harry in chapter 71, resurrected and possessed by the utterly enraged Phoenix Force which promptly goes on an epic rampage. This makes sense when you realise that the White Phoenix of the Crown is Lily Potter.
• Badass Adorable:
  • Diana, being a small, sweet, and pretty adolescent girl who also happens to be capable of keeping her nerve when faced with the Disir and ripping giant werewolves in half.
  • Harry, being quite small to begin with and frequently seen as dorky, as well as being capable of surviving a number of truly improbable things (as the Disir, Voldemort, and HYDRA can attest, the latter on multiple occasions).
• Badass Boast:
  • Thor:
    "I am the God of Thunder and Lightning, not Reason and Understanding!"
    "I am the God of Thunder and Lightning spoken of in ancient myth and whispered legend, Snape. I am he who battled Jormungand, the father of all great serpents, and fought the greatest Jotunheim had to offer when Merlin was but a suckling babe. I am Thor Odinson, God of the Vikings. Not a petty conjuror of cheap tricks. All the power of the storm, from all the world, flows through my veins. It can be summoned by my hammer at any time, wherever it is. A lightning storm in Japan? Mine. A hurricane off the coast of Barbados? Mine again. A brace of tornadoes in Kansas? Mine. All that might, all that destructive force, mine to command."
  • The speech in question is also a Shout-Out to one of Thor's canon boasts.
  • Bruce/The Hulk:
    "Rest assured, Thor. We will find Harry. We'll find the people who took him. And Hulk will smash."
  • Gravemoss:
    "[I am] A man of magic, Callidus Nott. And a man of magic can do anything."
    "Death is a gift, little mortal... and tonight I am feeling generous!"
    "Darkspawn of London. You. Are. Mine."
  • Baron Zemo
    [To Greyback after a Curb-Stomp Battle] "And to answer your earlier question, zer reason ve command you is because we are better than you."
  • Agent Wisdom gives a lengthy one (when asked by Betsy Braddock why he isn't letting the Avengers and various Asgardians deal with the villains).
    Because, Lady Elizabeth Braddock, hundreds of good men and women, loyal servants of the crown, died horrible deaths at the hands of these bastards. I watched friends and colleagues gunned down by the Winter Soldier, who’s now under HYDRA command. I had to identify the remains of old friends after the attack at MI6, and that was after I spent half a night running for my life from the Soldier. This was an attack on Britain and her people, Lady Braddock. We are not helpless little children, running to hide behind our big, tough friends after we get hurt. Any aid we receive is welcome. But this is our country, and our problem. And I intend to solve it by hunting down every single one of the bastards responsible for this and personally escorting them to whatever hell they believe in, Avengers and Asgardians be damned.
  • Natasha has a nice one.
    I was trained from the age of five to be an assassin. A killing machine. I learned my lessons in the Red Room and I relearnt them on the battlefield of Stalingrad at the age of 15. I have watched empires rise and fall and played my part in both raising them up and bringing them down.
  • Thor gets a nice one in chapter 58 after Hera (who hates demigods in general) makes an oblique threat to Harry. For context, he's talking about Zeus, an entity on par with Odin, who is considerably more powerful than Thor.
    The skies of Asgard belong to me, Lady Hera. Even if your husband was here in all his might, he could not stop me from striking you down.
  • Lucius has a decent one in chapter 58.
    Wizarding Britain is not enough. The world is not enough. But it's a start.
  • Steve (finally) gets a succinct one in chapter 59. On seeing a vast, supernaturally conjured storm consume the upper reaches of a mountain, trapping Harry and his friends on said mountain and being informed that it's been conjured by a pissed off Genius Loci powerful enough to leave Loki awestruck, he has this response.
    I've fought in worse.
  • Wisdom makes one on behalf of MI13 in chapter 80 of Child of the Storm.
    We're MI13, we break the laws of nature for a living.
• Badass Cape:
  • Thor, who almost invariably wears his classic red cape.
  • Wanda Maximoff, though she later leans towards a Badass Longcoat.
• Badass Creed: Carol gets one during the Final Battle, after becoming the new Green Lantern:
  "No matter your power, no matter your might,
  I shatter the dark with the brightest light,
  And I swear that before I am done,
  Darkness will flee and demons will run!
• Badass Crew: The Avengers and Sif and the Warriors Three.
• Badass Family: The Asgardian Royal Family. Includes Thor, Loki, Odin, Frigga, and Harry. It also includes Odin's foster brother, Kal-El I, namesake of Kal-El II a.k.a. Clark Kent who is about Odin's age and therefore ridiculously powerful, though he hasn't been seen yet.
  • And godparents Sirius Black and Wanda Maximoff.
    • The Avengers function as this.
  • Clint's family. His grandparents are Minerva McGonagall and Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier and his mother's adoptive brother was Jonathan Kent, father of Clark Kent. Yeah, Clint's first cousin is Superman. It's that kind of story.
  • Peggy Carter's family — her nephew is Brigadier Jack O'Neill, his daughter is Sharon Carter and his niece is Carol Danvers. That's a lot of badass. More so when it's revealed Jack is actually Peggy's grandson, and Sharon and Carol her great-granddaughters.
    • And Lex Luthor seems to consider himself/be considered an honorary older brother to Carol, adding yet more badass.
    • As of chapter 75, now confirmed to have another member: Steven G. Rogers, Captain America himself, is Carol's great-grandfather.
  • The Maximoff family: there's Wanda, the Scarlet former apprentice of the Sorcerer Supreme and second most powerful wandless practitioner on the planet, her ex-boyfriend and father of her child John Constantine, her father, Magneto and her daughter, Hermione Granger.
  • The House of El, while primarily scientists towards the end, still tended towards having Minored In Ass Kicking, being the Jack of All Trades (they did whatever they were drawn to and were encouraged to choose for themselves, rather than simply join the Family Business, unlike the other Great Houses) and were all heroes to the bone, apparently, valuing broadly the same virtues as the House of Odin, explaining why both families were so close and Asgard went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in response to Krypton's destruction.
• Badass Longcoat: John Constantine, Harry Dresden and Peter Wisdom, unsurprisingly.
  • Loki, occasionally.
  • Thor wears one briefly in his James Potter form, designed by Janet Van Dyne, no less.
  • The Winter Soldier has a neat, dark three quarter length coat.
• Badass Teacher: The Lady Knight. Her list of students is a list of badasses through the ages, historical and mythological. According to Thor, they include: William the Marshal, Cuchulainn, Johannes Liechtenauer, Roland of Roncesvalles, Gerard Thibault d'Anvers, Atalanta and, among many others, 'most of the Argonauts'. Oh, yeah, and Lady Sif and Fandral. The best swordfighters in the Nine Realms, with only each other for peers.
  • And several of the above became badass teachers themselves. Liechtenauer, in Real Life, quite literally wrote the book on swordsmanship, and so did Gerard Thibault d'Anvers.
  • Dumbledore all but tells Fudge that if he messes with Thor, he messes with Harry, and if he messes with Harry, he will be messing with Dumbledore.
  • Sean Cassidy is not only a Badass Teacher but officially a Teacher of Badasses.
• Bad Future: Loki gets the briefest glimpse of one, courtesy of Karnilla to contrast the bright future Harry could bring. He'd be the one to bring about the Bad Future too, having morphed into a Blood Knight / Dark Messiah type.
• Bait-and-Switch: Dresden's lengthy description of various types of vampire — which he suspects are involved — appears to be setting up another facet of the villainous alliance... until Coulson shoots that idea down, and points out that not all the bad guys out are there are part of Dresden's frame of reference.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: The night after Lily's murder at Godric's Hollow, Nick Fury and Lucius Malfoy went toe to toe in Malfoy Manor, which was in the process of burning down.
• Battle Couple: Wanda and Dresden in chapter 2 of Chaos Reigns.
• Basement-Dweller: After Paris and the Battle of the M4, Gravemoss has become a strangely literal version of this — he's taken over HYDRA's basement. No one objects because the alternative is worse.
• The Beautiful Elite: Harry (fancast by the author as Tom Welling and repeatedly noted to be growing up into a handsome young man closer to Henry Cavill) and some of his newer friends seem to be shaping up to be this and Hermione is beginning to resemble her stunningly beautiful mother, Wanda Maximoff. That said, there is a hefty chunk of deconstruction as it is repeatedly noted that both Carol and Diana are envied and/or dismissed because they're good looking, and in the former case, get a lot of unwanted attention, as per Truth in Television, and Jean-Paul has to endure more than a little homophobia.
  • And, it is noted, all of them are fairly lonely.
• Becoming the Boast: a subtle example with Harry. He threatened the Disir with burning, and lo and behold, fifteen chapters later he proves to be very good with fire. And about ten chapters after that, he uses it on someone who threatens his friends.
• Beneath the Mask: Jean-Paul, who affects a harmless Camp Gay Gay Best Friend Chivalrous Pervert Gratuitous French speaking persona. While he hasn't shown much of what is beneath the mask, it is noted that when someone starts treading on thin ice, he goes cold in a manner that reminds Harry of Loki and drops the Gratuitous French and all the mannerisms (though Word of God suggest that he really is fairly Camp Gay). He also proves capable of performing an almost absent minded Sherlock Scan on someone he barely knows and in a fight, unhesitatingly uses his speed to throw a rock at mach speeds into the eye of a giant werewolf.
  • Carol projects a spiky aura to people she doesn't know — this is mostly reported rather than seen, as Harry befriends her pretty quickly — but underneath she's got a natural Big Sister Instinct and she's generally softer and kinder (relatively speaking).
  • Harry himself is noted as coming out from his repressed shell and being freer with his emotions following his being reclaimed by Thor, as well as becoming notably more assertive and confident, with a pronounced temper (though as McGonagall observes, it was always there, just very well hidden). However, he still generally defaults to endearingly dorky.
• Been There, Shaped History: As near immortals, Odin, Thor, Loki, Sif, and the Warriors Three have all done this.
  • The Lady Knight. An involuntary time traveller who trained every great hero from Sif and Fandral to William the Marshal and Cuchulainn. Exactly who she really is is something of a mystery.
  • Natasha is this on a smaller scale, having fought at Stalingrad and been a key player in the Cold War.
  • Ditto the Winter Soldier.
  • Apparently when the Manson family went after Sharon Tate, they ran face-first into Magneto. Needless to say, it did not end well for the Manson family.
• The Berserker: Diana. Normally, small, pretty, smart, and while she's a very capable combatant, she is also one of the loveliest people you will ever meet. She also possesses latent Blood Knight tendencies that she tries to control and as a grown woman is / will be absolutely terrifying in full flow.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Played for Laughs. Dumbledore muses that once the Marauders had enchanted all the post owls that they could lay their hands on to swear loudly at random intervals. Dumbledore found it very funny until an owl was blown up after calling Aberforth 'goat-fucker' several times in a row.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As the author puts it, 'Bruce is small, sweet and cuddly... until, suddenly, he's not.'
  • Fitzsimmons explain to Skye in chapter 40 exactly why it is best not to annoy the lovely, warm-hearted and somewhat motherly Wanda Maximoff. She can and will drop meteors on your head. And worse. You don't want to know what the worse is.
  • Loki muses that Reed Richards is far too absent minded to stay angry for long. But if Sue, Johnny, or Ben Grimm were hurt... then, to use Loki's own words, 'the Nine Realms would tremble'.
  • Diana, in much the same fashion as Bruce. She can and will rip you in half.
• Bewildering Punishment: the Ravenclaw Quidditch team are on the receiving end of this from Harry after he finds about their role in the bullying of Luna Lovegood. The fact that they didn't know or understand is simultaneously presented as a reason that it was wrong that Harry attacked them and as an instance of Moral Myopia on their part.
• Big-Breast Pride: Darcy is, in a possible nod to 2 Broke Girls, perfectly happy with her breasts and is mostly amused when others notice them, and then, usually, try to hide it.
  • Carol Danvers, however, is rather Younger than She Looks (she's 14/15 and could comfortably pass for 20), a Statuesque Stunner and implied to be, like her comics counterpart rather buxom. This, however, gets her a lot of unwanted attention from boys and grown men alike, something that she is profoundly unhappy about. On the other, she does, off screen, use her looks to distract a waiter in order of Harry to pull off a little karmic vengeance in the form of a Laxative Prank, which suggests that she doesn't entirely hate them or is at least aware of the advantages.
  • Diana averts this after her temporary Plot-Relevant Age-Up, mostly considering them to be an uncomfortable inconvenience at best, and seems to be quite relieved when they disappear after the reversion.
• Big Brother Instinct: Thor to Loki, and surprisingly, Clint to Harry.
  • Lex to Carol, to a nigh Knight Templar Big Brother extent. Boy refusing to take no for an answer? Simple! Put him on a plane to Guantanamo Bay and only turning around when the boy in question swears not to touch/bother/breathe in the direction of Carol ever again.
  • Harry develops this towards Diana, and Jean towards him.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Chapter 60, Wanda and Thor play this, combined with The Cavalry.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Wanda pulls Harry Dresden into one at the end of Chaos Reigns, also serving as UST resolving Smooch of Victory.
• The Big Gal: Among Harry's friends, while Uhtred fits the classic big guy mould, Carol and Diana are arguably more along these lines, with the former being an Amazonian Beauty, and the latter being a Cute Bruiser who is well on the way to becoming an Amazonian Beauty literally, in fact.
• Big Good: There are several.
  • Dumbledore functions as this for the Wizarding World, protecting Hogwarts in particular and being the main point of unofficial authority.
  • Nick Fury functions as this for the rest of the world, rallying intelligence organisations worldwide to stand against HYDRA's threat and both supporting the Avengers and preparing a back-up in the form of the Shadow Initiative.
  • Odin functions as this for the rest of the Nine Realms and, to a lesser extent, the Universe as a whole, keeping order within the Nine Realms and administering retribution for the destruction of Krypton.
  • Charles Xavier serves as this for the mutants - while Magneto, even more or less reformed, functions as the iron fist, he operates as the velvet glove, protecting mutants and guiding them in understanding their powers.
• Big Red Button: Tony hits one to overload the Tower's Arc Reactor in chapter 74.
• Bilingual Bonus: Occasionally. Some of Jean-Paul's French dialogue, the odd Asgardian spell (rendered in Old Norse, where possible, Icelandic or Norwegian where not) and Sean Cassidy's odd outburst in Irish Gaelic.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Seems to have drifted into this, with the darker side of the forces of good being put on show, and the author's application of realism, but equally, there are a few Pillars of Moral Character, such as Steve, Harry (sort of, in a Children Are Innocent sense. Though this does not take into account his dangerous temper and occasional, admittedly vague, resemblance to a young Magneto) and Clark Kent.
• Black-and-White Morality: appears to be this at first, before progressing into Black-and-Gray Morality (though Steve is probably solidly in the White section of the moral scale - but then again, the SSR did some fairly dodgy things in the War...) with the forces of good having a fair share of Anti Heroes, Magnificent Bastards, and Manipulative Bastards. That said, it is a fairly light shade of grey, lightened further by Harry's Children Are Innocent (but not, in this case, naive) and the hinted presence of Clark Kent.
• Black Comedy: Gravemoss gets this, every now and then, in between being a Humanoid Abomination, due to his penchant for accidental pop culture references (to the point where Harry Dresden actually remarks on it a couple of times) and the fact that he is completely insane.
  • Lucius Malfoy's point of view sections often contain elements of this, as he is, along with Baron Zemo, the Only Sane Man in the evil alliance and running it, as of Chapter 50 and something of a Deadpan Snarker to boot.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The veidrdraugar, as "piranha-zombies" to quote one reviewer, that were created by necromancy from the Darkhold.
• Black Magic: mixes the Harry Potter and The Dresden Files versions of this, and it is repeatedly underlined as being incredibly dangerous, corrupting, and addictive, with one of the main villains being an absolutely terrifying Axe-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac Necromancer and borderline Humanoid Abomination. However, a distinction is made between wandless and wanded black magic, with wanded practitioners able to get away with much more since their wands serve as buffers against the fallout, sort of like the Black Staff, so they're not likely to go insane (or at least, do so anywhere near as quickly as their wandless counterparts). Equally, though, it is pointed out that if you're willing to use that sort of magic, you've got a dark streak, and if you're using it often, you're unlikely to be very nice or very sane, so it's a fairly moot point.
  • The reasoning for why mind magic affects wandless practitioners in a way that it doesn't non-magical telepaths is that magic is slightly alive in a way that psychic energy isn't, and doesn't respond well to being twisted like that. However, again, it is mentioned that a telepath who routinely screws with people's heads is unlikely to be nice or sane, to the point where there's basically no difference between a rogue psychic and a warlock (a wizard gone bad). In Chapter 68, Betsy Braddock tells Harry that the White Council has executed rogue psychics in the past. Not often, but they've done it.
  • Being able to handle Dark Magic without being changed by it is a requirement of being the Sorcerer Supreme, and both Strange and Wanda (his former apprentice and heir apparent) are mentioned as being capable of it, though Wanda says that she hates doing so.
• Black Site: Porton Down, a Real Life example of this (it's essentially the British Area 51, but with a much creepier reputation (one that, as far as human experimentation goes, is based in fact), appears towards the end of the book, with James Bond being resurrected there as a 'techno-zombie' by the Mad Scientist department of MI13. It's also indicated to be the base of the British version of Project Rebirth, and Wisdom specifically warns Betsy to keep her Psychic Powers on a tight leash because of what horrors she might stumble across if she lets them wander.
• The Blank: The Slender Men have blank white mask-like faces. Somehow, they can still shriek. And yes, men. There are thousands of them, and for added Nightmare Fuel, they can shapeshift, they can fly, they travel by shadows, they're mercenaries from the Winter Court, and implied to be the children of something even worse.
• Blatant Lies:
  Snape: Mr. Potter, are you mocking me?
  Harry: No, sir. I would never do that.
• Blood Knight: Hippolyta and Hercules, according to their daughter, Diana, who pointedly averts this trope.
  • Thor, formerly.
  • Uhtred as well. When partaking of the Final Battle, he happily throws himself into it.
    Carol: He has problems. Useful problems, but problems.
  • Harry himself has hints of this; though he won't go looking for a fight, it's noted by multiple characters, including himself, that he enjoys a good fight far more than, say, Ron and Hermione.
  • Dane Whitman gets some of this-how much is due to the effects of his Cool Sword is unclear, though.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: John Constantine and Harry Dresden, though less so in the latter's case than usual due to his association with the Wayne family, who he saved from Joe Chill.
• Body Back Up Drive: Zola, thanks to Brain Uploading, has many, many back-up bodies. Though the sequel implies that Magneto's destruction of the Dreadnought prevented him from getting off.
• Body Horror: semi-regularly. Gravemoss is almost invariably involved, even trapping a HYDRA mook inside their own stomach out of sheer boredom, and Lucius hates going down to brief him because he never gets the stains out of his robes.
• Bond One-Liner: Deconstructed. Pausing to make a quip doesn't work when you don't have Rule of Cool on your side - even if you are James Bond. Against someone who knows what they're doing, if you get the drop on someone and fail to use it, they'll just take you down instead, especially if they're an incredibly experienced and ruthless Super-Soldier assassin.
• Boys Have Cooties: A minor example when Diana says "Mother tells me that one day I'll enjoy the sight of two handsome boys wrestling, but for now, I really can't see the appeal."
• Brain Uploading: Zola.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Winter Soldier.
• Brave Scot: Sean. Sort of. He's technically Irish-American, but he's spent the last decade or two living in Scotland and the last couple of decades before that living in Ireland so 'Brave Generically Celtic' might be more accurate.
• Breaking Speech:
  • The mysterious voice that is heavily implied to be the Phoenix and/or Lily Potter temporarily borrows Harry's mouth to deliver an absolutely vicious one the reason you suck variant to Hera.

• Break the Cutie:
  • There are several candidates, most of them pre-broken, but Diana stands out. From infancy, she had to endure murder attempts from Hera simply because of her heritage, was blessed with Empathic abilities from a very young age which she cannot turn off (and mean that she's somewhat prone to getting the classic Psychic Nosebleed and catching psychic backlash), contributing to her Wise Beyond Their Years demeanour. After that, her parents managed to get sent to Asgard as a Ward of the Throne, on the grounds that Hera wouldn't dare to cross Odin (or perhaps more accurately, Frigga), under the partial guardianship of her aunt Athena. Oh, and there's Blood Knight tendencies that are literally In the Blood, and she has to struggle against them, or they could turn her into The Berserker. Then, after briefly being aged up and being battered by the psychic impressions of some fairly vile monsters, she sees most of her few friends almost killed by a Killer Robot, one of them nearly incinerated by it. She steps in and nearly goes the same way, snapping. Mercifully, she's given a cool-down hug, but it's close. This isn't an exhaustive list. And she's about 12.
  • Carol also comes pre-broken, having physically developed, as it were, at a young age and by the age of 14, looks like a hot college student, leading to considerable harassment from guys her own age and much, much older. Most guys who try to befriend her are just out to get in her pants, other girls tend not to like her for the same reason, her excelling in the sports that she loves leads to her being tested for steroids and prior to meeting Harry she only has two close friends, Jean-Paul and Lex. The latter is her self-appointed Knight Templar Big Brother and as a result, she sometimes has to act as a Morality Chain for him. And then she gets swept up with Harry and company and ends up pulling what nearly becomes a Senseless Sacrifice, barely surviving, nearly being eaten alive by a giant werewolf. Needless to say, she has Trauma Inducing Nightmares afterwards.
  • Ditto Jean-Paul. He's gay, a mostly closeted mutant and his twin sister is apparently insane and only really responds to him, is visibly discriminated against because of this, and what little he reveals of his considerable Hidden Depths suggests that he's a Stepford Smiler under the happy-go-lucky camp Chivalrous Pervert persona.
  • Harry himself is something of an example, shown more clearly by the fact that his coming into the care of a loving family means that he starts to open up, stop repressing and sometimes, show how much damage the Dursleys really did. A couple of examples are an apparently throwaway comment to the Avengers that he's not used to 'normal people' being nice to him and his tear jerking rant at Odin for, as he saw it, abandoning him (the truth is considerably more nuanced). It becomes even worse when it's revealed that Jean's family, who visited when Harry was about seven, had every intention of adopting him and raising him in a loving family with Jean showing every sign of being a Cool Big Sis / displaying a considerable Big Sister Instinct towards Harry, and would have done if not for the telepathic intervention of Sinister, who preferred to have Harry at his immediate disposal at Privet Drive. As Dumbledore laments when he hears about this, 'so much sorrow could have been averted'. And that's all before you take into account the periodic murder attempts he endures.
    • Chapter 71 breaks him very thoroughly indeed.
• Break the Haughty: Chapters 75 and 76 break Lucius and Gravemoss utterly. The former has his empire collapse around his ears, while the latter is on the receiving end of one Curbstomp Battle after another, including losing an arm to Harry Dresden's Soulfire Lightsabre, which his Healing Factor fails to repair, suffering a Villain Override from Chthon in between.
• Bully Hunter: Deconstructed. As Harry finds out, violently going after those that have harmed you or others ends up not actually helping anyone, especially since he doesn't bother to inform his targets why he's doing it. In fact, it arguably makes things worse.
• Bullying a Dragon: As Krieger finds out when dealing with T'Challa, this is a very bad idea.
  • Pointedly averted early on by Draco Malfoy; upon finding out that Harry is in fact a demi-god, and with his godly relatives still around and active in his life, he promptly tells Harry he won't be antagonizing him anymore. And thus far he hasn't. The mysterious voice Draco keeps hearing in his head probably had a large part to do with this.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • The Warriors Three. Though they may be 'famed for their strange and spectacular mishaps' as Thor puts it, they are equally famed for being the best of the best, so they know when to get serious. And when they get serious, everyone knows about it.
  • The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office is implicitly referred as such, when a couple of British coppers stop to watch Thor, Loki, Sif, and the Warriors Three disguised in professional suits trying to squeeze into a red phone-box (to get into the Ministry of Magic) on Whitehall - the road which most of the British Civil Service's departments are arranged along. They speculate briefly on what department they might be from, before coming to a unanimous conclusion of "Foreign Office" when they hear an angry "I SAY THEE NAY, BROTHER!" According to Word of God, the son of two career diplomats, this reputation is based in reality.
• Burn the Undead:
  • Loki, when hunting the veidrdraugar under London.
  • Harry Dresden, naturally, takes this up a notch when hunting them under Paris, as it's his go-to tactic with everything.
• Butterfly Effect: The entire story is effectively an exploration of this, with Doctor Strange having carefully arranged for each flap of the metaphorical Butterfly's wings.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Averted as regards to Carol. Being both buxom for her age and Younger than She Looks, she finds the unwanted attention it gets her rather wearing.
• Byronic Hero: Loki, post Heel–Face Turn - no longer 'bad', he's hinted to still be a little 'mad', and is definitely 'dangerous to know'.
  • Snape, technically, being grim, brilliant, deeply embittered, but nevertheless on the right side (though he's rather pettier than most examples).
  • Agent Wisdom (later Director Wisdom), who fits "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" like a glove, having a Dark and Troubled Past, a grim demeanour, a razor-sharp intellect, and a streak of darkness a mile wide.
  • Warren is explicitly referred to as being 'more Byronic than Byron' - beautiful, mournfully depressed most of the time, an intelligent and deeply tragic figure, who is nevertheless formidable.
• Call-Back: Loki at the end of chapter 37 uses the same Discworld quote ("Do not let me/us detain you.") on Fudge as Dumbledore did.
  • 46 has one all the way back to chapter 3, with Thor mentioning that he had, as James, compared Lily to a Phoenix, and notes that Odin's favourite thing to hunt is Bilgesnipe.
  • Chapter 49 calls back all the way to a throwaway line in chapter 2 when it brings in Alan Scott.
  • There are repeated references to Goblins investing in the muggle world.
  • In Chapter 62, Steve quotes Tony's 'genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist' line back at him as a short pep talk after Tony opens up about how he felt helpless facing down the Winter Soldier without his armour and pointed out that he was the most physically vulnerable member of the team.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Harry to Odin in chapter 30, for abandoning him after James!Thor's death. While the situation was a bit more complicated than that, there's enough validity to it that Odin takes it on the chin.
• The Call Put Me on Hold: Harry compared to Asgardians and more powerful heroes — he's restricted to some third year magic, and unless he's being amped by Loki specifically to survive overenthusiastic Asgardian kids, that's it.
  • It's all but stated that Harry has a strong connection to the Phoenix force. Exactly how that connection will manifest, however...
• The Cameo: Bob, Agent of HYDRA briefly appears during the Final Battle.
• Camp Gay: Jean-Paul Beaubier, to an extent. Very gay and very obvious about it, with some camp mannerisms that make him appear harmless, but he's far more observant and on the ball than his act would have you believe.
• Canine Companion: Freki and Geri tag along with Harry after the Christmas Holidays. So far, they haven't done much beyond acting like gigantic pet dogs (albeit ones that are considerably smarter than they pretend to be), it's hinted that Odin sent them down as Harry's bodyguards for very good reason. Chapter 70 stops hinting about it and demonstrates it.
• The Casanova: Fandral.
  Ladies, ladies, calm yourselves. There is more than enough of Fandral the Dashing to go around.
• Casanova Wannabe: Thor when puberty hit, according to Loki. Then puberty really hit, in a He's All Grown Up sort of way, and he became far more successful.
• Cast from Hit Points: The God Blast. Loki lampshades the unimaginative nature of the name.
  • A wandless Wizard's 'Death Curse' as ably demonstrated by Harry Dresden.
• Cast Herd: The large cast tends to be divided up into different groups. With the exception of a few free agents like Wanda and Sirius, the cast is generally separated out as follows: the Avengers, Harry's New York and Asgard friends, Harry's Hogwarts friends, the Hogwarts staff, the Xavier Institute, Peter Wisdom and MI13, Team Coulson/Team Dresden and the villains.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: The kids lapse into this a lot in chapter 60 and chapter 61. This is repeatedly lampshaded and observed to be a way of coping with stress.
  • It happens again in Chapter 76.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The fic starts out as a Lighter and Softer blend of fluff and Fix Fic that's chock full of snark. Then the Winter Soldier turns up, Lucius Malfoy takes several levels in badass, and things get serious. Then they lighten up for a few chapters, before descending into a chapter of pure Nightmare Fuel, before going into a lighter subplot, before getting darker again, though the Lemony Narrator is pretty much omnipresent and even the villain chapters tend to have a fair dose of Black Comedy. Really, the tone varies on a chapter by chapter basis depending which of the Ensemble Cast (while Harry is the chief protagonist, his age means that his role in the action is — usually — limited) is being focused on, occasionally leading to quick switches within chapters (considering that some of them can top 20,000 words, this isn't surprising).
  • Chapters 70, 71, and (to an extent) 72, have taken it right into the deep end again, and even deeper than before, with the first permanent deaths of important characters, the first real setback for the good guys that isn't followed by an immediate and violent response to even the score, and HYDRA figuring out that the Winter Soldier broke his programming and taking steps to rectify that.
  • Chapter 74 is referred to as 'The Darkest Hour' for good reason.
  • Then chapters 75, 76, 77, 78 and the two part epilogue sharply swing it back into the light end of things as the good guys hit back, win and celebrate - though things take a turn for the darker at the end of chapter 77 and in chapter 78, as well as an ominous prophecy at the end of the epilogue but matters are ultimately resolved.
• The Chains of Commanding: Odin. He isn't exactly fond of it.
  • Nick Fury, to a lesser extent.
• Changeling Fantasy: Strangely zig-zagged. Sure, Harry's really the son of Thor... who also just happened to be incarnated as James Potter. Also, the changes screw him over every bit as much as they help him, if not a lot more.
• Character Development: Thor and James Potter are essentially blended together, after a few chapters of the two being semi-distinct personalities. The entire premise of the fic is based on the consequences of Thor's first shot at this.
  • Harry slowly begins to adjust to his new status and assert it, revealing a significantly snarkier side (and blaming it, not unreasonably, on Tony).
  • Uhtred, going from a Jerk Jock with an Inferiority Superiority Complex over being overlooked, to a thoughtful Humble Hero and a loyal friend.
  • Loki has developed from a bitter, cruel, ruthless and possibly insane megalomaniac into a remorseful, Reformed, but Not Tamed version of The Spymaster, as well as a Cool Uncle to Harry.
• Character Focus: Harry Dresden gets a decent amount of this between chapters 42 and 45, narrating most of the chapters. He then gets his own side-story, Chaos Reigns. The author has admitted that Dresden is his favourite character.
  • Loki got a lot of attention between chapters 15 and 45, becoming the Spotlight-Stealing Squad. According to Word of God, this was why he was pushed Out of Focus afterwards.
  • Carol Danvers gets increasing focus after chapter 50 or so.
• Characterisation Marches On: At first, Lucius Malfoy comes off as something of a joke, in keeping with the fairly light tone of the first eight chapters. Starting with chapter 9, however, he quickly evolves into, arguably, the most dangerous character in the entire setting, a Magnificent Bastard and a near unrivalled version of The Chessmaster (even Fury admits that Lucius is better than he is. While Loki and Odin both have claims, the only character seen so far who can be definitively stated as being better at it is Doctor Strange, if only because absolutely no one knows what he's really up to).
• Chekhov's Army: there are lots and lots and lots of Chekhov's Gunmen.
• Chekhov's Armoury: Utterly revels in this trope, maybe even enough to rival J. K. Rowling herself, littering the story with ChekhovsGuns - most, but not all, scattered by Doctor Strange, all of which fire off in the finale.
• Chekhov's Gun: Oh so many. So very, very many. One example is the Shadow Initiative, mentioned a grand total of once, in chapter 14. It proves a key part of the endgame in chapter 75, 61 chapters, over 700,000 words and most of three years later.
• Chekhov M.I.A.:
  • Lily Potter, who is, it seems, Not Quite Dead.
  • The first Spitfire, who had a case of Never Found the Body, being the Winter Soldier's first confirmed kill. One theory is that she was actually blasted back in time and became the mysterious Lady Knight.
  • Regulus Black, who turns out to be both alive and secretly Peter Wisdom.
• Chekhov's Skill: As it turns out, a blink and you'll miss it moment of Harry being taught how to sharpen a weapon by magic comes in very useful about 30 chapters and a couple of hundred thousand words later.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Harry. He picked it up from Loki.
• The Chessmaster: Loki. Dumbledore. Fury. Odin.
  • Lucius Malfoy sees himself as this.
  • Doctor Strange, who gets bonus points for playing all of them, and more besides.
• Chivalrous Pervert:
  • Jean-Paul. Happily flirts with Harry, but backs off immediately and apologises when he sees that Harry's a little bothered by being hit on.
  • Sirius, with more emphasis on the chivalrous as he gets his marbles back (his emotional trauma and the return of his best friend from the dead having caused a reversion of sorts to his teenage years). As a result, he happily spends a lot of, ah, time with Darcy.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Steve and Thor, as is repeatedly demonstrated for both - in Steve's case, he actually rescues kittens from trees.
  • Tony has his own Knight in Sour Armour variant, thanks to a determination to make up for all the damage his weapons did to the world.
  • Harry, with this being repeatedly lampshaded, both by others and Harry himself.
  • Harry Dresden can't turn away from innocents in trouble/being hurt - something that Coulson plays on to get him involved with SHIELD's war against HYDRA.
• Clarke's Third Law: Applied (on Earth in regard to new Bifrost technology, which is borderline Magitek) and inverted (on Asgard, which extrapolates Magitek more or less as far as it will go).
• Clever Crows: Huginn and Muninn, who are a lot smarter and more dangerous than they pretend to be.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Sirius occasionally gives off this vibe - he's quite clearly not entirely there, but he's also a lot more on the ball than he pretends to be.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: The Winter Soldier, minus the hat (though the mask is a set of goggles).
• Cold Sniper: The Winter Soldier, before his conscience and mind start returning.
• Collateral Angst:
  • Played Straight with Arthur Weasley in a Rare Male Example, with Word of God hinting that his death will shape Ron's character development. And, since he was killed by the Winter Soldier, even though it was out of mercy, the next book is largely about waiting for the other shoe to drop.
  • Played With in regards to Luna Lovegood. While her death catalyses Harry's development, she's shown becoming the new Delirium/Delight of the Endless and Word of God has said that she'll be involved later on, in her own way.
• Colony Drop: Apparently Wanda makes a habit of this, enough for it to be used as an example of why not to piss her off by Fitzsimmons. We get to see her do this at the climax of Chaos Reigns. Dresden is impressed and awed both by the power on display, and how easily she pulls it off.
• Combat Pragmatist: SHIELD's hat in general.
  • Loki, involving a lot of teleporting and illusions in his fighting style.
  • The Winter Soldier. Fighting a Physical God and his Badass Normal partner? Just get out your Abnormal Ammo and, Boom, Headshot!.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Showcased in Chapter 56 is a well documented list of casting choices; and reasons as to why the author feels is suited to play the characters within the story.
• Compelling Voice: Gravemoss, whose voice is noted to be "strangely lulling", and which he exploits to calm his targets. It's unclear whether it's an intentional affectation or simply a natural skill.
• Complexity Addiction: Loki.
  • Probably the author too.
  • Apparently the fatal flaw of the Malfoy family — they're rather fond of misdirection and distraction, introducing lots of false leads for investigators to follow while they go to work. The Fatal Flaw part comes in when they do it even when a simple course of direct action would be more appropriate.
• Composite Character:
  • Agent Wisdom combines Marvel's Agent Peter Wisdom with Regulus Black.
  • Many of the Marvel characters have elements of this, with different character traits/bits of backstory being drawn from different sources.
  • The Phoenix is also Destruction of the Endless.
  • The unnamed British Prime Minister has shades of both real life Prime Minister John Major and his successor Tony Blair, having the former's well-meaning but beleaguered nature, and the latter's ambitious Chancellor.
• Connected All Along: Lots and lots of this, to the point where the series could be called "Six Degrees of Doctor Strange" - who is intentionally arranging this as part of his grand plan to oppose Thanos.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Consciously averted, with the thermal bloom of Harry's fireblasts being every bit as dangerous as the fire itself.
• Condescending Compassion: the Prime Minister resents being on the receiving end of this from Fudge and takes a certain degree of vindictive pleasure in how Wisdom is making Fudge's life a misery.
• Continuity Nod: Due to the nature of the universe, it can be a little hard to separate one of these from a Shout-Out.
  • Wanda's habit of using the Colony Drop and her general badassery without resorting to outright reality warping calls back to Steve Englehart's depiction, which also tended to pull a Colony Drop or two with meteors.
  • The entire premise of Thor having been incarnated as a mortal prior to his more recent banishment and siring a child could be considered a Call-Back to an obscure part of his comics history, in which he was incarnated as first Siegmund, then his son, Siegfried.
  • The White Council's base at Archangel, Russia, and their Brute Squad are mentioned a couple of times.
• Continuity Porn / Shown Their Work: One of the main villains is a reworking of a minor villain from an Excalibur comic in the Nineties. This should give you a general idea.
  • The list of Asgardian ranks, all of which are drawn from Norse history.
  • Even down to the food which Thor buys Sirius, all of which was eaten by the Norse.
• Contrived Coincidence: Exaggerates it, then, remarkably, explains it in a fashion that actually makes sense, Chapter 48: At the behest of Stephen Strange, Wanda casts a blessing on her godson, Harry, which means that 'he will never be alone and he will always have someone to turn to', causing Harry to having something of Winds of Destiny, Change! effect (which is somewhat ironic, considering the Trope Namer is the one that causes it). And one gets the impression that this is all part of Stephen Strange's grand plan...
  • Wanda specifically name checks this trope in Chapter 62 in reference to the Knights of the Cross.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Stephen Strange has a wicked sense of humour, as does Tony. The former notably once enchanted a former British Minister of Magic who tried to coerce him into being a subordinate to vomit on cue whenever he heard certain words. One of them, for some reason, was "parsley."
• Cool Big Sister:
  • Sif is regarded as this by the Warriors Three, despite the fact that Volstagg is probably older than her, being the one to act as resident cat-herder for the lot of them. She acts somewhat like this to Harry as well.
  • Jane to Harry, after a while, once they get over their initial awkwardness (given that she feels too young to be a Parental Substitute - in the sequel, Harry refers to her as being something like a younger aunt to him).
  • Carol to Diana, with Harry noting that it's something of a trend in the sequel.
  • It's heavily implied - and confirmed by the sequel - that Jean would have been this to Harry if she could.
• Cooldown Hug: Harry gives Diana one of these in chapter 60. She had been forced into a temporary Plot-Relevant Age-Up, been attacked by a selection of monsters whose evil she could feel, thanks to her empathic powers, then saw Harry himself, one of her few friends, being slowly incinerated by a Killer Robot, before it turned on her and she ripped it in half with her bare hands. All that, combined with Blood Knight tendencies being In the Blood — her dad's the trope image for good reason — and the fact that she's freaking 12 caused her to lose control and most definitely need it.
  • He also gives the Hulk one of these, though the big guy wasn't out of control at the time — Harry just wanted to thank him.
  • He gets one from Thor in chapter 72.
  • Then gives another one to the Hulk in chapter 76.
• Cool Ship: the SHIELD Helicarrier. A British version, named the Valiant, is apparently in the works.
  • In an evil sort of way, the Dreadnought, HYDRA's Destroyer armed, vibranium-hulled, and teleport capable helicarrier. It's basically an Earth-bound Death Star.
  • MI13's interim counter-measure, 'Project Wolftrap', mentioned in chapter 44. When it finally appears in chapter 76, it turns out to be the re-armed and re-fitted HMS Belfast also armed with Destroyer-based weaponry and capable of engaging the Dreadnought in an extended duel.
• Cool Sword: Amoracchius (a.k.a. Excalibur) and the other Swords of the Cross.
  • Baron Zemo's incredibly sharp sword, which also happens to be infused with garlic and silver nitrate, capable of punching straight through vibranium weave clothing like it isn't even there.
  • Harry Dresden's accidentally created holy lightsabre in chapter 76. Yes, holy lightsabre.
• Cool Uncle: Tony, with an added dose of pure crazy thrown in, to the point where future Harry remarks that Tony's pretty much the coolest person he knows (his dad is the most awesome).
  • The other male Avengers largely qualify.
• Cosmic Plaything: Athena suggests that Harry might be this, in thoroughly cryptic terms. Karnilla's prophecy/warning and the developing machinations of Doctor Strange may bear this out.
• Costume Porn:
  • Harry's Asgardian formal wear.
  • All of the kids during the temporary age up.
• Crazy Enough to Work:
  • Harry's plan in Chapter 34. It requires truly epic amounts of Refuge in Audacity, and the title of the chapter itself is 'Fool's Gambit'.
  • Arguably, the culmination of Strange's grand plan in chapters 75 and 76.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • Loki and Harry Dresden, the latter going from a 3 chapter arc to getting his own two shot spinoff.
  • Carol Danvers has developed into this.
• Creepy Basement: the basement of the last HYDRA basement, now that Gravemoss has set up there like some sort of phenomenally evil Basement-Dweller. Largely Played for Laughs, in a Black Comedy sort of way, as Lucius mainly regards it as a) preferable to the alternative, b) an inconvenience, due to the drain on minions. Certainly a Mad Scientist Laboratory to a degree, especially since Zola has no problem working with Gravemoss (they actually get on in a profoundly disturbing sort of way). Probably also a Room Full of Zombies, but no one's quite sure — and, frankly, no one really wants to know. Those who go in very rarely come out and those that do don't do it in the same shape as they went in.
• Creepy Child: Diana, whose empathic abilities make her uncomfortably knowing, which along with her purposefully calm demeanour, frequently creeps people out, until they get to know her at least.
  • Harry himself, being thirteen, can occasionally come off as this. His demeanour during his apology/warning to the Ravenclaw Quidditch team following their collective discharge from St. Mungos (he'd put them there via creative flying and use of bludgers because of their bullying of Luna Lovegood) is considered by the team to be a) unsettling, b) slightly inhuman. He's also known to have intuitively mastered wandless fire magic, occasionally literally Playing with Fire, be a powerful psychic, have intermittent Super-Strength and have a strange 'double voice', which he can use at will and is intimidating enough that it shuts up the Weasley Twins without so much as a smart remark. Being followed around by the wolves of Odin and, occasionally, his ravens, only exacerbates this. And then there's the frequent comparisons to Magneto, the warnings that he could just as easily go from a hero to becoming something horrific. Notably, he's aware of all of these and their effect. Except for Freki and Geri, who he treats like giant pet dogs, and the ravens, who he likes, they freak him out just as much as they do everyone else. That said, he isn't shy of using them and his growing reputation to his advantage.
• Creepy Good: the story has a fair few, particularly if you don't know them all that well. Prominent examples include:
  • Loki, post Heel–Face Turn, who for all his genuine nature as a kindly uncle, benevolently snarky brother and good friend, retains a capacity for ruthlessness with no equal on this Earth, a willingness to use Cold-Blooded Torture and psychological warfare.
  • Doctor Strange is, on the face of things, a Gentleman Wizard, Deadpan Snarker and generally a fairly genteel fellow who makes a point of never lying. He's also a deeply mysterious figure who comes and goes as he pleases, often out of nowhere with absolutely no warning, never lies, yet is almost never honest, sometimes appears merely as a shadowy figure amongst a swirling cloak with a pair of Glowing Eyes staring out of the darkness, seems to know quite literally everything and due to his justified reputation as the Magnificent Bastard, the very possibility of his involvement is Paranoia Fuel among good guys and bad guys alike. In short, he is a profoundly unsettling man.
  • Agent (later Director) Peter Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black of MI13 fits this trope to a T. He's a good guy, but he's also got a reputation for making 'Inspector Javert look like Mother Teresa' and the rest of the British intelligence services don't trust him because they don't know anything about him. He's also a member of the Trenchcoat Brigade, almost exclusively wears black and is The Unfettered, being entirely indifferent to both morality and the prospect of his own death when it comes to doing what needs to be done. One incident showcases this, when he lures a HYDRA assault team into an ambush and sneaks up behind the last surviving member of the team and hisses 'I'll let you in on a secret, sunshine. That intel? It wasn't good', before opening the man up with his 'hot knives', blades of burning hot energy, which he's using as Wolverine Claws.
  • In a flashback, Harry Dresden remarks on this about himself, noting how he's NBA tall, clad in a long black duster and carrying a staff that is six feet of solid oak, which makes for a very intimidating first impression. Also, there's the fact that he almost never meets anyone's eyes because of the whole Soulgaze thing - but only a very few ordinary people know that - and knows far too damn much. The ability to roast horrifying monsters from the netherworld is a mere courtesy detail at this point.
  • Harry Potter/Thorson. On the face of things, he is a genuinely sweet, warm-hearted and friendly young man with Undying Loyalty to his friends and who steadily learns to open up and express his emotions more. However, after chapter 45, he develops a presence that isn't quite human and is consequently unnerving, the ability to use a strange 'double voice' that can shut up the Weasley Twins and Psychic Powers that mean he tends to be uncomfortably knowing. And that's leaving aside the eyes that are far too old for his face. He's also got a hatred for injustice and bullies which, combined with over a decade of suppressed rage, fear and trauma from life at the Dursleys and several Near Death Experiences, can manifest as a kind of cold and borderline homicidal rage that is uncomfortably reminiscent of a young Magneto (to whom comparisons are made) and often features unnerving speeches that make it very clear that it is a very good thing that he's got people holding him in check and that he's downright terrified of what he's capable of. Any doubt about this is dispelled in chapter 74 when Jane just about manages to persuade him from executing a HYDRA assault team with their own weapons after that team put Thor in a coma with a magic bullet, tried to kidnap the three of them, then took a child hostage to try and force their compliance and chapter 76 when he snaps at Gravemoss, who is undoubtedly pure evil, and telekinetically opens his ribs up like a book and rips his heart out. Gravemoss being Gravemoss, he's fine, but Harry's friends and allies, though understanding, are both worried and disturbed and disgusted, because it's kind of gory. He's a good guy, he's very kind to pretty much everyone and he'll do anything to protect his friends, even someone he barely knows. That last part is kind of the scary part.
• Crossover Relatives: Of course the fic offers a lot of this:
  • The central premise of the story is that James Potter was an incarnation of the Mighty Thor. Additionally, Lily's mother's maiden name was Grey, which makes Jean Grey Harry's second cousin.
  • Agent Coulson is revealed to be "Molly's accountant squib cousin", tying him to their family tree and making him one of Harry and the Weasleys' extended relatives.
  • Emma Frost's family is descended from a squib of the Malfoy family.
  • The Phoenix is one of the Endless, specifically Destruction, making it siblings with Death, Destiny, Dream, Despair, Desire and Delirium.
  • Diana is the daughter of Marvel's Hercules and Hippolyta (which additionally means that that was a consensual and happy encounter, unlike the one in DC canon), and adopted as a Ward of the Crown by Odin and Frigga to protect her from Hera.
  • All pantheons are descended from Gaia's children with the various Allfathers; for instance, the DC Zeus and Marvel Odin are cousins through their mothers. In addition to making Diana and Harry third cousins, this means that they're relatives with, among other people, Jesus.
  • Odin is the father of Donar Vadderung from The Dresden Files, the current holder of the mantle of Santa Claus.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The Warriors Three, particularly Fandral. They appear to be a bunch of harmless oddballs, but they are Asgard's best and Wisdom explicitly notes that though Fandral seems to be a harmless dandy, he is, in fact, one of the most dangerous men in the entire universe. He's also hands down the best swordsman in the Nine Realms, matched only by Sif.
  • Jean-Paul is a lot sharper and, it is implied, much more dangerous, than his Camp Gay harmless façade would have you believe.
  • While they appear to be comic relief, there are definite hints that even Gods tread lightly around Huginn and Muninn for very good reason.
    • As it turns out, they're Avalonian gods themselves.
  • Warren is oft underestimated, with most seeing him as simply being Sean's pet project and a mopey Pretty Boy. However, he is more than capable of taking out giant undead dragons solo in moments and is more than willing to square up to various members of the Hogwarts staff, despite being fully aware of what they're capable of, if he feels that it's necessary.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Sean's trick of resonating bone, shattering it, reducing the victim to a briefly alive bag of fluids and pain. When he uses it on HYDRA Agents, however, he executes them quickly.
  • Gravemoss ripped out Sif's heart with his bare hand, then showed it to her. Thankfully, she got better.
  • In revenge for the above, Harry Potter tries to do something similar to Gravemoss, telekinetically spreading his ribs like a book (or like an inverse of the semi-mythical Viking execution technique, the 'Blood Eagle') and ripping out his heart. He's horrified immediately afterwards, as is everyone with him, due to the sheer savagery of the method - not that it puts Gravemoss down for long thanks to his ridiculously powerful Healing Factor - and it's later used by Carol to explain just what Harry's capable of.
• Crusading Widow: Sean Cassidy is a surprisingly cheerful, happy go lucky variant, a Cool Teacher and a Reasonable Authority Figure. However, it is stated that he's had over a decade to grieve, whatever he did with his Compelling Voice during his Roaring Rampage of Revenge still occasionally gives Nick Fury nightmares and he's got a taste for Revenge, one that he does his bet to keep a lid on. Also you ''really'' don't want to cross him.
• Cuddle Bug: Harry quietly develops into this, out of a mix of the free offer of such affection and a hefty dose of Author Appeal.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:

• The Winter Soldier vs Clint, Natasha and Steve. Clint narrowly avoided getting a bullet to somewhere vital, Natasha saved him and both promptly got buried by a manufactured mini avalanche. Steve got a few decent licks in, but despite his advantages (both are super soldiers, but he's bigger, stronger and thanks to Loki's magic, could walk on the snow like it was earth), he ended up being beaten with his own shield.
• The aged up kids plus a little help from the Hulk vs the car/tank sized super werewolves. One was practically vaporised by a 'small' fire blast, another was half incinerated, half pummelled into mush, one was practically ripped in half by its jaws and frozen, two others went the same way and one was killed by Carol, who blinded it, beat it up and buried an axe in its skull.
• Project Ultimatum as controlled by Baron Zemo vs the aged up kids. Five on one, with two of the five being Omega Class entities, one a solidly Alpha Class Physical God, one a Super-Soldier and the third a powerful Fragile Speedster, all backed up by a powerful Genius Loci, and it tears through them in ten very detailed seconds, very nearly killing several of them and putting two out of commission. The worst any of them manage to do to it is stun it and slow it down until Diana goes into a berserker rage and rips it in half. Even then, it still nearly managed to kill her, badly injured a number of them and set them up for...
• Gravemoss' Slender Horde vs the aged up kids. Following on from the last one, Gravemoss remotely controls several thousand Slendermen, moderately powerful Faerie mercenaries, manages to utterly No-Sell Harry's attack and cuts them off from their power supply, turning them into kids again, rendering them helpless, forces Carol to make what she believes will be a Heroic Sacrifice (thankfully, she survives, though considering what would have probably happened to her if she hadn't been rescued...), and nearly splits all of them for easy capture. It takes a Big Damn Heroes from Thor and Wanda to bail them out.
• Gravemoss' Slender Horde vs Thor and Wanda. Takes about five minutes - Wanda breaks them apart, cutting the psychic connection that Gravemoss has and Thor wipes them out with Razor Wind and Lightning bolts.
• Warren vs the HYDRA aerial assault force in chapter 70. The former is in pyjama bottoms and the latter, all two dozen or so of them, are wearing pirated Falcon suits and armed with Destroyer based weaponry and backed up by a Quinjet. They don't stand a chance.
• Harry vs Daken in chapter 75. This time, Daken doesn't get into hitting range because Harry uses his telekinetic powers to ram him all over the place.
• The kids' team (Carol, Diana, Harry, Jean-Paul and Uhtred) vs Gravemoss. After Gravemoss almost kills them, Carol becomes the new Green Lantern, Harry opens Gravemoss up like one would do with a can, Uhtred cuts off his head, and when Gravemoss seems to be about to recover, Harry and Carol punt him through Battersea Power Station, landing him next to Harry Dresden and Wanda Maximoff.
• Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three vs HYDRA. Not only do they curbstomp the HYDRA agents (all of whom, it must be said, are armed with Deity-class guns), but Fandral wonders if humans have become weaker with time.
• Harry Dresden vs Gravemoss. After accidentally combining his Force and Fire spells with Soulfire into a lightsaber, Harry goes to town with Gravemoss and actually cuts off his arm, only this time it does not grow back. And he also takes the time to deal with the undead spectre that Bellatrix Lestrange has become.
• The kids' team vs Gog and Magog, two enormous, almost unbeatable giants that the Avalonian Gods were barely able to kill, so they buried them well underground and diverted the Thames just to avoid them being found, and Gravemoss has awakened them to buy some time and get away. Carol blasts a hole the size of the Channel tunnel through one of them, Diana uses Mjolnir to call a huge thunderstorm that gravely injures the second giant, Jean-Paul drops several explosives into the second giant's injuries and throws Uhtred into the first to do the same, and the explosions utterly dismember the giants, whose remains Harry then gathers into a burning ball which he telekinetically hurls at the battered HYDRA Helicarrier. All of this happens in 30 seconds. Unsurprisingly, Fury is left speechless. Strange, who arranged it all, is left smug.

• Cursed with Awesome: Warren. Thanks to his father trying to suppress/cure his mutation, he got Razor Wings that severely inhibit his social life, since one involuntary twitch could slice a loved one to pieces, and McGonagall notes with sympathy that he's probably had them for so long that he can barely remember what life without them was like. However, those Razor Wings, as well as being made of some kind of alien/magical metal that is essentially indestructible and impossibly sharp, come as part of a package that includes a Healing Factor on Wolverine's scale, an unspecified degree of Super-Strength, Super-Toughness sufficient to shrug off being hit by a car and, in flight, the ability to comfortably break the sound barrier. In essence, he's a low level Flying Brick and as chapters 44, 70 and 76 show, exactly as deadly as you would expect.
• Curves in All the Right Places: in Chaos Reigns, Dresden notes this about Wanda, before noting the hackneyed nature of the line.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The attack on Godric's Hollow, most particularly Lily's death and the fallout (Harry being given to the Dursleys, Sirius being wrongfully imprisoned) was a fairly epic one for Nick Fury. Losing his eye to Lucius Malfoy probably didn't help matters. When he returned to the US, he devoted all of his energies into becoming Director in order to avenge Lily and protect people like her, managing it in under a decade. Everyone who knew him during the days of the First Order, when he was SHIELD's liaison to the Order and the protégé of Lily's parents ('the Black Widow and Hawkeye of their day'), as well as John Constantine and Sirius Black's drinking buddy, is shocked by the change.
  • Chapters 70 and 71 look as if they're going to prove to be this for Harry.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Daddy had an excellent reason for abandoning Harry - he was Thor, incarnated as a mortal, whose violent death and grief had driven him stark raving mad, and Odin had to block off his memories to ensure that he stayed sane and Britain remained in one piece. As soon as he remembers, however, he comes in like the cavalry.
  • Wanda had an excellent reason for abandoning Harry and her daughter, Hermione. She was Doctor Strange's apprentice and her Rogues Gallery was chock full of one kind of Eldritch Abomination or another, while simultaneously having made enemies of Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy in particular, both of whom were still on the loose when Harry's parents were murdered, and one of whom commanded unparalleled political influence. As for her daughter, the situation was even worse. It was about two years before, the good guys were losing and Voldemort was at the height of his power. Plus, Hermione's father happens to be John Constantine, who is a) not exactly prime father material, b) public enemy number one for every hell dimension in existence. And in both cases, one has to take into account her father's enemies... Also, Doctor Strange said so and people tend to do as Strange says, if only because not doing it tends to make you wish that you had (not because of anything he does, but because the consequences of not doing it tend to be pretty horrible).
  • It's hinted that Jean Grey's family, Harry's maternal cousins, tried to adopt Harry when he was about seven or eight, and were stymied by a certain person who was very interested in keeping Harry at Privet Drive. This force has all but been confirmed to be Mister Sinister.
• Dare to Be Badass: Agent Wisdom gives a speech along these lines out to Betsy Braddock.
  But in the end, Miss Braddock, it comes down to this. Are you the sort of person who would let something like this pass? Are you the sort of person who would let evil win? And above all, Miss Braddock: are you ready to serve your country?
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to both Harry Potter and The Avengers.
  • Also in comparison to The Last Son, to which it arguably serves as a Foil.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Several, including, surprisingly enough, Johnny Storm.
• Dawn of an Era: Repeatedly suggested, with Harry being a major figure in it. As McGonagall has noted, this isn't necessarily a good thing.
• D-Cup Distress: Carol and, after a brief Plot-Relevant Age-Up, Diana, largely because of both inconvenience and the unwanted attention it draws.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Odin has his moments of deadpan humor, such as this one from Chapter 34:
    Thor: *after Harry's escape from the Disir* Well, I think this calls for a celebration, don’t you?
    Odin: And we don’t even have to worry about inviting guests. How fortuitous.
  • The Winter Soldier gets in on the act, after his Bucky personality starts coming through.
  • Really, pretty much every character gets in on this to some extent, with Tony, Loki, Darcy, and both Harrys being prime examples.
• Death-Activated Superpower: at the end of chapter 70, Harry is killed by Daken. At the start of chapter 71 the Phoenix resurrects him and promptly goes on a rampage.
• Death by Irony:
  • Loki hid his pregnant lover away from the feared - and non-existent - wrath of his parents, or rather, his father. If he hadn't, she would still be alive. And he knows it.
  • James Bond at the hands of the Winter Soldier. If he hadn't stopped for the Pre-Mortem One-Liner... well, the Soldier knew he was there, so he only might have survived, but it would have been a chance at least.
• Deconstruction Crossover: Elements are beginning to emerge.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Takes this approach to most aspects of Harry Potter fanfiction, particularly the ideas of Super!Harry, Lord!Harry, God!Harry Genius!Harry and Sex God!Harry. All of them are systematically subverted, and instead Harry is presented as reacting much as in canon when faced with fame (only magnified to match the circumstances), with justifications introduced for any change in character.
  • This all designed to remind people that though Harry is The Hero, he's still human (relatively speaking) and he's still a kid.
• Defense Mechanism Superpower: Harry's protection from his mother, which takes the form of a connection to the Phoenix, combined with Death-Activated Superpower - whenever he's in mortal danger, dying or dead, the Phoenix protects him, usually fairly subtly (relatively speaking). First by protecting him from Voldemort's killing curse as a baby, then by incinerating Quirrell, the by ensuring that Fawkes came to his aid in the Chamber of Secrets and then by giving his Psychic Powers the nudge they needed to activate and send a distress call, triggering the events of the story, and in chapter 58, scaring off Hera. And then, in chapter 71, subtlety is dispensed with by resurrecting him, possessing him, and going on a rampage that kills at least a couple of dozen HYDRA Agents and several hundred Dementors. In chapter 76, She speaks through him and temporarily breaks Chthon's hold on Gravemoss to make him easier to handle.
  • His Super-Strength also qualifies, activating when adrenalin hits his system i.e. when he's in a fight or flight situation.
• Denser and Wackier: Played With. Much, much denser than either of the two base canons, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Harry Potter, but after the first nine or so chapters, it loses most of the wackiness for a decidedly Darker and Edgier approach. That said, elements of wackiness still persist.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Harry, in a very quiet, reserved sort of way.
• Determinator: Harry.
  • The Winter Soldier.
  • Carol to a nigh ridiculous degree. She never, ever gives up. Given who she's descended from, one can understand why.
• Deus ex Machina: Doctor Strange resurrects both Harry Dresden and Sif, underlining the facts that he is both obscenely powerful and has his own agenda.
  • Fury quotes the trope in reference to the above incident.
• Deuteragonist: For all that Harry is supposedly the main character, the book is primarily about Thor, the revelation that he used to be James, and the ripple effects thereof.
• Disappeared Dad: Thor. Very definitely not by choice.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Lucius Malfoy (apparently).
• Dissonant Serenity: Luna, as per canon. Diana also gets this sometimes.
  • Harry is somewhat less than freaked out upon confronting the Disir. As he notes, given his experiences with the Dementors and various other monsters, he's fairly used to it by now.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Carol uses this (offscreen) to give Harry time to spike the drink of Bolivar Trask.
  • Scott is distracted by Jean's sexy when she's bending over and wearing tight jeans.
  • Harry is distracted by the sexy of Lily, the Summer Lady.
  • Jean-Paul is distracted by the sexy of a man who is very heavily implied to be Doctor Strange.
  • Everyone is distracted by Warren's sexy.
  • Hermione is distracted by Sean Cassidy's sexy.
  • Wanda was distracted by Clint's sexy - specifically, his arms. She is his ex girlfriend.
• Divine Conflict: Asgard and Avalon went toe to toe in times gone by. Asgard pretty much won, but then the Frost Giants attacked, leading to an Enemy Mine situation. However, with the exception of Huginn and Muninn, formerly known as Bran and Bard, the Raven-Lords of Avalon Harry is warned to avoid Avalon at all costs, as its inhabitants have no fondness for Asgardians.
• Door Stopper: Book 1 reached 823,956 words. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy reached somewhere around 450,000 words.
• Dope Slap: Pepper to Tony, on a regular basis.
  • Warren to Sean in chapter 68.
  • Frigga to Thor when the latter drops a Precision F-Strike.
• Dork Knight: Steve, Thor and Harry all have their moments.
• Dracolich: Gravemoss first pulls a Familicide on pretty much every Hebridean Black dragon available, then resurrects them as aerial troops, on a direct course for London as part of HYDRA's counter-blow to SHIELD's Operation Overlord, meaning that there are hundreds of Draconic zombies to deal with. Thankfully, their relatively slow flight speed counts against them and they're intercepted by the RAF, War Machine and Warren Worthington III a.k.a. Archangel.
• The Dragon: Gravemoss and the Winter Soldier are Co-Dragons to Lucius. Baron Von Strucker is probably supposed to be a third, but he really hasn't got any screen time.
  • And when he has, he's shown up as more of a Smug Snake, leading to being comprehensively Out-Gambitted by Nick Fury and humiliated, which in turn leads to Lucius deciding to that he's more of a hindrance than a help and killing him.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Gravemoss eventually proves to be this, though not entirely of his own will, thanks to the Darkhold. Von Strucker also intended to be this, or at least to take command of the Big Bad Duumvirate - Malfoy struck first.
• Dramatic Irony: The audience, Hank McCoy and Charles Xavier know that the real name of Tony's mother was Tessa, as in Sage of the X-Men and that Howard was the White King of the Hellfire Club - which he joined to keep an eye on it and feed information to the X-Men. Tony doesn't.
  • Played for Laughs: Lifting Mjolnir is an incredible feat, one which proves beyond doubt the wielder's Worthiness. Of the entire cast, the only ones known to be able to lift it are Thor and Diana. Steve has absolutely no idea of this, and uses it as a doorstop.
• The Dreaded: The veidrdraugar. Since they nearly wiped out the Asgardians in the distant past, their mere mention terrifies Loki (and for good reason) and Odin went to great pains to obliterate them so thoroughly that all that remains are nursery rhymes and rumours and have so far lived up to the hype, they fit this trope very neatly. Given that a veidrdraugar's strength and speed is multiplied by a factor of 5 to 10, the dark magic in their bites and scratches can No-Sell the Healing Factor of Asgardians, their incredible stealth in the dark, their lack of pain, and their pack telepathy which allows them to coordinate flawlessly, Fandral and many others are justifiably glad that the veidrdraugars they faced were of mortal humans and not veidrdraugars of Asgardians or similar, which would've been hundreds of times worse.
  • The Winter Soldier. So feared, that even into the modern day, the age of superheroes, he is still considered to be the most dangerous man on the planet, despite being, for all intents and purposes, a low level superhuman like Steve (if even as strong as that) and an, admittedly very skilled, assassin. Loki even tells Sif that he may even by the most deadliest assassin in all of the Nine Realms.
  • The Darkhold. Loki had a Not So Stoic Oh, Crap! moment once Fury told him it was stolen. Normally, a book would not incite such a reaction, but then again, this is a book that contains the knowledge to create the veidrdraugar. To put this in perspective, Loki described the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings as an extremely watered-down version of the Darkhold. The scariest part is that the book is impossible to destroy, being untouched by time and referred to be Loki as a brother to entropy, it is essentially in the same state it was when it was first created. When Chthon finally appears, this reputation is shown to be in every way justified.
  • Magneto. Everyone even vaguely acquainted with the dark side is terrified of him, including, so far, Sebastian Shaw II, all of HYDRA (as Fury notes, "They won't cross him. They wouldn't dare.") and Narcissa Malfoy. Even the good guys, Loki and Fury in particular, speak of him with a certain respect. Since he apparently destroyed three successive Inner Circles of the Hellfire Club, among very many other things, this is unsurprising.
  • The Red Room. They scare even HYDRA.
  • Harry Dresden. Chapter 62 reveals that after the battle of Paris, when Gravemoss has nightmares, they're about Dresden - and with good reason. Meanwhile, many of the White Council and quite a few of the vampires are nervous around him.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Gravemoss lives and breathes this trope, especially after he gets hold of the Darkhold.
  • Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, and wielder of the Ebony Blade, has a hint of this when he wields it in battle. It very nearly gets him killed.
• Dumb Blonde: invoked by Sean to annoy Warren.
• Ear Ache: Pepper is known for twisting Tony's ear when he does something stupid. Clint too, sometimes.
• Eaten Alive: Chapter 21 (several readers claimed to feel physically ill after reading it) has the introduction of the veidrdraugar a.k.a. the Hunting Dead, which moderately graphically (the use of the Gory Discretion Shot somehow made it more horrific) depicted the horrific death of a baby and a young family. Unsurprisingly, this chapter served as a Wham Episode and the character that instigated was established as a Knight of Cerebus and an Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Peter Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black narrowly avoids this after a couple of the above mentioned monsters get the drop on him. He'd taken out one of their number, but unfortunately, they hunt in packs.
  • You know that part in Norse Mythology were Fenris bites off Tyr's hand? In this verse it happened to Sif (she managed to get it reattached, but still has the scars) after going after Fenris, seeking to test herself against him. Then, after biting it off, Fenris (described as being about the size of a house) swallowed her whole. She managed to cut her way out from the inside, with one hand, retrieve her other hand, and make her way to safety, all while being covered in digestive fluids. Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth indeed.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Full of these, usually via an offhand reference. So far, we've had:
  • Reed Richards and Susan Storm
  • Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne
  • J. Jonah Jameson and Marla Jameson
  • Mattie Franklin
  • T'Challa
  • Coulson and his team
  • Charles Xavier and Hank McCoy
  • Sebastian Shaw
  • Wanda Maximoff
  • Magneto
  • John Constantine
  • Doctor Strange
  • Harry Dresden
  • Gwen Stacy
  • Peter Parker
  • The Silver Surfer
  • Flash Thompson
  • The Kent family (who Clint is related to by his mother's adoption)
  • Betsy Braddock.
  • Albus Dumbledore refers to, among others, Brian Braddock and Virgil Swann.
  • And many, many more.
• Earth Is the Centre of the Universe: Not quite yet, but as Thor stated in The Avengers, "the Earth is signalling that it is ready for a higher form of war." With the repulsion of the Chitauri and the genesis of the Avengers, the renewed intensity of Asgardian interest in Earth, the incipient mutant population explosion, the likely imminent unveiling of the Masquerade, and, of course, the reveal that the second in line to the Asgardian throne is half human, Asgard being the universe's resident superpower, it is likely that more alien races are going to be taking an interest. Furthermore, alien races have previously shown interest, with previous Jotun invasions, a war between the Asgardians and the Avalonians, frequent Kryptonian visits and the Kree posting Mar-Vell as a 'Protector'.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Krypton, as per usual.
• Easily Forgiven: Zig-Zagged with Loki. As he notes, the general population loves him, despite it only being a few years since his attack on New York. That said, it is perfectly clear that he hasn't forgiven himself and there are at least a few people who hold a grudge.
  • Wanda is also a zig-zagged example. As Harry's godmother, she could and perhaps should have taken him in. However, she didn't have anyone to turn to for advice, she'd just lost Lily, her best friend, and a number of other friends, and as Apprentice to the Sorcerer Supreme, she had a Rogues Gallery that could and would have killed Harry. Or worse. Thor didn't take it well at first, nor did Sirius, nor, as it happens, did Harry, but the former gets over it quickly, Sirius is persuaded to drop the issue by Thor and Harry, though it takes him a little while, does forgive her. Thor also observes in chapter 62 that he has encountered some of the entities in question and fully agrees with the assessment that Harry would have had a limited life expectancy in her care. It is also very clear that, as with Loki, she has not even come close to forgiving herself.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Sirius has shades of this. Bellatrix too, presumably, though the short scene in which she appears doesn't really describe her in detail before Gravemoss has the veidrdraugar eat her alive and turns her spirit into a spectral hound.
  • The Winter Soldier.
  • Wanda, sort of.
• Eldritch Location: there are several examples owing to the fic's mixture of canons:
  • As per The Dresden Files, the NeverNever, which as its entry on the trope page states, is approximately twenty times the size of Jupiter. It contains, among other things, the Faerie realms of Winter and Summer, which are quite bad enough to begin with.
  • Hogwarts is a milder example, owing to the fact that the stairs move and the building is actually sentient. And possibly dating JARVIS.
  • The Dark Levels of Strangeways prison, which is like a high tech Azkaban, minus the Dementors. It's humming with countermeasures both magical and mundane and the air within tastes rather strange, thanks to its processed nature. The whole impression is somewhat unnerving. And that's before one takes into account the inmates...
  • MI13 seem to have acquired one for their new base, suggested to be a disused part of London's underground system. It's dark, it's dank and it's full of portals to the Nevernever.
  • Asgard is, apparently, also sentient and likes Jane. It's also an Adventure-Friendly World in the most literal sense - it's a World of Badass because you've got Everything Trying to Kill You and not being a badass is a good way to end up as lunch.
  • Project Pegasus is now one, thanks to whatever the people working there, who were experimenting with magic to gain an edge in the Cold War and create a new Super-Soldier. According to Ward, they got close to creating a new Super-Soldier. According to Coulson, who was there when all hell broke loose, that was the problem. Whatever was down there, it was bad enough that Alan Scott, a Green Lantern at the very height of his powers, barely managed to subdue it and seal it off from the world.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Clint, Natasha, Steve (technically), Zemo, T'Challa and the Winter Soldier.
• Enigmatic Minion: Lucius notes this about the Winter Soldier: He has no idea what motivates the man (and isn't entirely sure if he's actually a man) and thus has no levers on him.
  • Jason Todd. We don't really know much about him beyond the fact that he's Zemo's protégé and Lucius considers him to be very, very dangerous. Considering the fact that Gravemoss is showing a lesser degree of the kind of creepy interest that he shows towards the Winter Soldier and Lucius' own well developed sense of self preservation, he's probably right.
  • The motives of Zemo himself are less than transparent. Chapter 75 suggests he's The Social Darwinist, but that's probably not all there is to it.
• Eldritch Abomination: Lucius Malfoy practically quotes the trope in respect to Gravemoss, who is more properly a Humanoid Abomination. Chthon, however, fits this like a glove, with reality screaming at his every word and his mere existence disintegrating reality.
• Ethical Slut: Fandral, Betsy Braddock and Darcy (being more debatable, since she's only mentioned as sleeping with Sirius). All three are very moral, decent people (though Darcy isn't above cheating at poker), all three get around considerably, and both Fandral and Darcy are noted to have considerable Hidden Depths. For instance, Darcy gives Harry a basic tutorial on Feminism off the top of her head, the same thing that Smart Girl Hermione did with Ron (though Hermione's was considerably more Anvilicious, judging by Ron's reactions) and Betsy and Fandral are commented to be 'made for each other', in that they share the same outlook on sex.
• Establishing Character Moment: The Winter Soldier makes his entrance in complete silence, carrying the heads of Lucius Malfoy's guard animals - a Chimera and a Nundu. Both possess Nigh-Invulnerability. One has only successfully been killed once (Bellerephon and Pegasus) and the other takes at least a hundred wizards to bring down. He doesn't take a scratch, or, apparently, even slow down. And he doesn't say a single thing as he does it.
  • On a lighter note, the first thing Jean-Paul does is decide that Harry is cute, hit on him, then immediately back off when it's clear that Harry isn't interested.
  • Arguably, Harry establishes his more assertive, more protective personality, which has steadily been coming to the fore, in chapter 34. The Disir threaten to kill Diana and Uhtred. Harry promptly tells them that if they do, they'd better kill him to, because it doesn't matter if it takes until he becomes the King of Asgard, one day, he will see them burn.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Lucius may regard muggles as animals and pests, but there are some things that you don't do even to animals. Gravemoss has no such compunctions.
  • Even Gravemoss thinks that unleashing Chthon is crazy.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Warren.
• Everyone Can See It: Loki/Sif. Even Fandral can see it.
  • It gets to the point where the post-script of a letter from a future Harry contains a rather irritable exhortation for Loki to open his damn eyes.
  • Scott Summers being hopelessly in love with Jean Grey. Even Harry Dresden, who was only at the Institute for telepathic therapy (though known for being fairly observant), sees it.
• Everyone Is Related: Harry is second cousin to Jean Grey and Maddie Pryor.
  • Clint is Minerva McGonagall and Bucky Barnes' grandson and related to the Kent family by his mother's adoption.
  • On a non-biological level, Charles Xavier is Tony's godfather and Nick Fury was Lily's surrogate big brother.
  • Brigadier Jack O'Neill is the nephew of Peggy Carter, and Carol Danvers is his niece (making her Peggy's Great-Niece).
    • There are clues that Carol's grandmother is actually Peggy's daughter by Steve... which would make Carol Captain America's great-granddaughter. This is confirmed in chapter 75.
  • By Chapter 45, it's all but been stated that Hermione is the daughter of Wanda Maximoff and John Constantine.
  • Chapter 80 implies that a lot of this has been arranged by Doctor Strange.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: seemingly played straight at first, in regard to Lucius and HYDRA in particular, but averted as it turns out: Von Strucker's playing his own game, Gravemoss is an Ax-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac and Lucius essentially used his fellow Death Eaters as decoys, keeping them in line with the threat of the Winter Soldier.
  • Utterly obliterated by chapter 50, as Lucius Malfoy enslaves Baron Von Strucker for long enough to find out how to control the Winter Soldier. Afterwards, he is disposed of.
  • As of Chapter 60 the Winter Soldier has wrestled back control of his mind and body and is planning to act as a double agent for the good guys - but even most of them don't know it.
  • And in chapter 77, Pierce cheerfully stabs Malfoy in the back, leaving him to his fate.
• Evil Sorcerer: the story has a number, with the most prominent examples being Voldemort and Gravemoss, the latter a specialist Necromancer and terrifyingly dangerous even before he got hold of the Darkhold. Pretty much anyone else who uses Dark Magic is this. Prominent examples past and present include:
  • Grindelwald - who apparently did a number of deals to amp himself to power levels generally described (by Loki, who would know) as 'god-like'. Strange stripped him of most of this power, flattening most of Berlin in the process, and left him and Dumbledore to fight on more even terms.
  • Kemmler, a mortal wandless Necromancer of immense power and evil who returned from the grave so often his coffin should have had a revolving lid. He engineered World War I to get raw material for his work, then popped up again during World War II, reanimating mass graves under Grindelwald's command. He was finally destroyed in 1962, triggering the Buin Zahra earthquake as a side-effect, killing over 12,000 people.
  • Baron Mordo, in this canon a wayward apprentice of Doctor Strange, and one of considerable power.
  • Doctor Doom might be this - no one's quite sure if he actually uses dark magic or not, but the aforementioned Mordo is his teacher...
• Evilutionary Biologist: Zola, the Red Room, and Gravemoss, in a weird sort of way.
  • Sinister, who taught Zola everything he knows.
• Exact Words: Charles Xavier very carefully states that Maria Stark had no superhuman powers. However, since she was just an alias for Sage of the X-Men, who helped Howard spy on the Hellfire Club for him, this is only accurate in the most technical sense.
• Expospeak Gag
• Expy: Gravemoss is a curious example - he's based on an Excalibur villain, but his death fixation and Omnicidal Maniac tendencies resemble Thanos (who he implies he has something of an acquaintance with), yet he also heavily resembles Malekith the Accursed in being a white haired sorcerer elf and a complete lunatic, particularly as he appears in The Accursed, about a year after Gravemoss was first introduced.
  • The descriptions of Krypton's power, influence and isolationist nature, most particularly being a nominally mortal world with power and technology to stand as a peer with Gods, carry more than a hint of Gallifrey about them.
• Eyeball-Plucking Birds: The talking ravens Huginn and Muninn are very fond of eating eyeballs... and marshmallows.
• Eye Colour Change: This happens a lot.
  • Harry's eyes go solid gold when seriously accessing his psychic abilities, or sometimes just flash gold briefly if it's something small, red when possessed by Chthon and white when possessed by the Phoenix.
  • Jean Grey's eyes go amber-red under similar circumstances or when Harry is accessing the Phoenix.
  • And Maddie's eyes go bluish-white under the same circumstances.
  • Thor's eyes go electric blue when he's really pissed off.
  • Gravemoss' eyes go red when he's possessed by Chthon.
• Eye Patch Of Power: Nick Fury. The man wears an eyepatch and commands the loyalty of SHIELD, the grudging respect of the Avengers and their allies, and the fear of more or less everybody else.
• Eye Scream: Nick Fury, courtesy of Lucius Malfoy. His response is why Malfoy actually has to use his Classy Cane, and it's implied that he did something else that was permanent but not visible.
• The Fair Folk: Lily and Fix from The Dresden Files make an appearance during the Asgardian party chapter and give Harry their take on going from mortal to superhuman. Maeve is also mentioned.
  • In chapter 68 Lupin talks a little about them, noting how the Wizarding World doesn't really believe in them because they tend (for whatever reason) to leave them alone. He also emphasises how incredibly dangerous they are and Harry gives a brief run-down of the structure of the Courts.
• Fairy Tale Motifs: These frequently crop up, with Harry being frequently referred to as something of a Knight In Shining Armour.
  • Harry himself calls Warren a 'Knight in Shining Feathers', accurately judging him to be a Knight in Sour Armour.
  • Leaving aside the appearance of The Fair Folk in the form of the Winter and Summer Courts, the basic premise of the story is an inverted Changeling Fantasy, with the reveal that James Potter was really Thor incarnated as a mortal. Furthermore, Harry is also described as being 'fey' on an increasingly regular basis, coming off as inhuman more and more often.
  • The finale of Book I starts off as a Storming the Castle scenario, with a twist - all the captives are male, locked away by a serpent (Lucius Malfoy, often described in serpentine terms) and a number of the key players in the storming are female (especially Jane Foster, who reveals 'the castle', HYDRA's HQ, forcing it out of its pocket universe, to rescue Thor and Carol, who is going in to rescue her great-grandfather, Steve - though he doesn't know of the relation and she's only just found out.)
• Famed In-Story: Aside from the obvious, the Winter Soldier.
• Family Eye Resemblance: Harry who, as per canon, has his mother's eyes. These become more significant when it is revealed that Jean Grey is his second cousin and she shares the famous eyes.
  • Ironically, just about the only feature Hermione didn't get from her mother Wanda was her eyes.
  • In a more retroactively observed case, Carol Danvers is noted to have her great-grandpa Steve's cornflower blue eyes once the relationship is observed, along with his hair and build.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: has this at the centre of one of its key reveals: Peggy Carter wasn't Alison Carter's older sister. She was her mother. The crucial parts, however, are the identity of the father, Steve Rogers, and what this means for Alison's granddaughter, Carol Danvers.
• Fantastic Racism: A degree of this is behind Uhtred's dislike of/rivalry with Harry and is discarded as part of his Character Development.
  • And then there's the usual Pureblood thing in the Wizarding World.
  • One of Harry's key traits is that he completely averts this trope. And really doesn't get why other people don't.
• Fantastic Science: Asgard tends towards this, thanks to its Magitek technology.
• Fatal Flaw: For Loki, mistrust.
• Fiery Redhead: Lily Potter. Takes on a whole new significance with her repeatedly teased connection to the Phoenix Force.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Carol, Harry and Jean-Paul fit the archetypes - Carol's a straight-up brawler, Harry's most apparent abilities are magical or similarly ranged, and Jean-Paul is initially a Fragile Speedster with a trickster's mentality.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Wisdom specifically averts with Excalibur when it's brought up, pointing out that the Avengers all ended up living together because a) the unifying influence and leadership of Captain America, b) Tony Stark had a very large tower, c) Steve and Bruce had nowhere to go and Thor - then, later, Loki - were always going to adventure on Earth, with or without the Avengers. He may have a point, especially considering that he apparently blackmailed his ace in the hole, Wanda Maximoff. Or he could be lying to assuage the worries of British politicians, who saw just how off-script the Avengers went and know that the same thing could happen again.
  • Harry specializes in this trope, judging by the examples of Ron, Hermione, Uhtred and Diana.
  • In the epilogue to Book I, Strange reveals this is the motivation behind all the manipulating he has been doing. On a planetary scale.
• Flaw Exploitation: owing to its proliferation of manipulators and bastards, uses this a lot.
  • Daken exploits Harry's rage and grief after Luna Lovegood is killed in HYDRA's attack on Hogwarts, jumping up and down on his Berserk Button to ensure that he loses it and attacking head on - something which brings him into range of Daken's claws. Of course, it could be said that despite Daken's success (in temporarily killing Harry), he came to regret that - the Phoenix resurrected Harry and went on a rampage.
  • Doctor Strange is most prone to it, thanks to his profound insight into people's personalities and his vast precognitive abilities. All of his plans exploit his enemies' flaws and his allies' need to know what is happening, even if they know that he's using them (because they also know that he a) knows practically everything, b) for all his use of Exact Words, he Cannot Tell a Lie). A notable example is how he defeats Chthon at the end of the first book; he arranges for Chthon's host to take a vicious beating, then dangles Wanda under his nose, in close proximity to Harry, knowing that Chthon will go for the former, and that Harry will get in the way. Considering that Harry also has a fragment of the Phoenix living in his head, there is no way even Chthon's going to win the resulting psychic cage-match.
• Flying Brick:
  • Tony and Rhodey in their respective armours.
  • Mar-Vell.
  • With the confirmed existence of Clark Kent as Harry's contemporary, another example of this trope is approaching faster than a speeding bullet.
  • Loki, technically, as he can apparently fly when the mood takes him. Played with, however, as he isn't shown flying in combat, and, in any case, it's likely to be his last resort in battle, since Harry notes that he's probably not very good at it.
  • Harry and Diana during the temporary age ups. Harry combines it with Flying Firepower.
• Flying Firepower: Tony and Rhodey again, via their armour.
  • Thor, tangentially speaking - he flies and throws lightning bolts around, if not exactly from his hands. Usually.

• Foil: Diana to Harry. He's a quiet and reserved boy who's learning to open up and free his emotions (which can be unfortunate, since he's Hot-Blooded) and she's a quiet, calm and reserved girl who is learning to restrain and control her emotions and her empathic abilities. They're both demigods, one adjusting to the mortal world, the other to the divine. One's powers are developing slowly, causing him to rely more on guile and trickery, while the other already has their abilities and is periodically hamstrung by them and/or over reliance on them. Both have dangerous tempers that they need to work to keep in check. And while Harry takes more after his mother (he takes a lot after his father, but as has been noted, his mannerisms, temper, empathy and emphasis on fire are very much traits that he gets from mummy), some of which cause him trouble, the figure in his life that he's most separated from, Diana takes after the figure in her life who SHE is most separated from, her father, some of which cause HER trouble.
• Follow the Chaos: Where trouble is to be found, Harry is rarely far away.
• Foreshadowing: Bucketloads of it. We've so far got Harry's blood connection to Jean Grey, Charles Xavier and Beast having an interest in him, Wanda Maximoff and John Constantine having a child, the voice in Draco Malfoy's head, the references to Magneto...
  • Harry's tendency towards forming a Power Trio, his association with imagery of a very particular cosmic entity, his strong affinity for fire and Karnilla's prophecy, all hint at his possession by the Phoenix.
  • Fury seems to be implying to Coulson in recent chapters that he's looking to 'take a leaf out of Xavier's book'. In other words, he intends to set up something along the lines of the Young Avengers/Avengers Academy and put Coulson in charge.
  • A very, very, very sly one. Jane mentions in one throwaway line in a filler chapter that her foster-brother is 'a real daredevil' and Thor, in another throwaway line, mentions his name: Matthew.
  • In chapter 34, Harry makes a big speech to the Disir, who've kidnapped him, Diana and Uhtred, saying how if they're going to kill his friends, they'd better kill him too, or he'll see them burn. It's a bluff, if a fairly effective one. Then, in chapter 70, Luna, Harry's friend, is killed by HYDRA and despite killing him, thanks to his immediate resurrection and possession by the Phoenix, he does indeed see them burn.
  • Angels exist, with Thor and Loki having befriended a pair of them named Aziraphale and Crowley.
  • In chapter 59, Natasha strips to get changed, and when Steve blushes, she brushes it off by remarking that she knows for a fact that it's nothing he hasn't seen before. At first glance, it seems like a friendly jibe and nothing more, but later on, it's revealed that Steve and Peggy had sex, resulting in Alison Carter, who was passed off as Peggy's much younger sister, but whose origins were deduced by the Red Room, leading to her kidnap by an early iteration of the Winter Guard, one that Natasha was part of, decades prior to her Heel–Face Turn. So of course she knows that Steve's seen a naked woman before - she knows his daughter.
• For the Evulz: an effective summary of why Gravemoss does anything, beyond his usual Omnicidal Maniac tendencies, with the addition of a twisted scholarly interest and an apparent worship of Death itself. This is the guy who enslaved a bunch of Dementors and sent them into a cancer ward for kicks, after all.
• Four-Star Badass: Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, who is the reason that Lucius Malfoy is on his second wand, walks with a stick and a lot of Malfoy Manor isn't much more than ten years old...
  • Peter Wisdom, on his appointment as Director of MI13. He went toe to toe with the Winter Soldier and got away with his life, also taking down one of the veidrdraugar single handedly.

• Freudian Trio: Harry's female friends fall neatly into this dynamic. Hermione's The Spock/Superego (setting great store by logic), Diana's The McCoy/Id (being the youngest, most obviously idealistic and a freaking empath to boot), and Carol is The Kirk/Ego (being the most mature and most pragmatic).
  • A reviewer pointed this out in a case of Viewers Are Geniuses and the author has admitted that it just happened.

• From Nobody to Nightmare: once, there was a little Jewish boy called Erik Lehnsherr. Then, his family got sent to Auschwitz, his mutant powers manifested, and his mother was murdered in front of him. On that day, Magneto was born.
  • Harry's a heroic variant. For years, he's just the freak nephew of the Dursleys. Then he finds out that he's 'the Boy Who Lived'. And then, more recently, he finds out that he's Harry Thorson, Prince of Asgard, and starts both coming into his powers and asserting himself.
• Functional Magic: mixes things up considerably. The most prevalent kind is Inherent Gift, but you have Device Magic in the form of Mjolnir, the Darkhold and the Green Lantern Ring, Force Magic and Theurgy are mentioned, with, apparently, Magic being a fundamental force of the universe, and there's an all encompassing element of Wild Magic, with many characters noting that magic is just a tiny bit alive.
  • Of the sub schools, Elemental appears when Loki manipulates water and it Harry turns out to favour fire (both of them do, as it happens), Necromancy appears more often than anyone would like, Mentalism, Transmutation, White Magic and Black Magic. Considering the canons drawn on, Blood Magic is also likely to make an appearance.
• Funetik Aksent: Baron Zemo, occasionally. The text notes that its presence depends largely on his mood and desire (or lack of) to suppress it.
  • Sean Cassidy, at first quite strongly, then a great deal less - his powers make it very easy to mimic voices and switch between accents at will, which he does in order for his students to understand him.
• Funny Background Event: Just after Jane has asked for and been given permission to throw a book at Loki (it bounces off) because he's being an Insufferable Genius, Fandral starts giving a chair and Loki's head speculative looks, as if wondering if he can get in on the fun. Sif doesn't even have to turn around.
  Sif: Fandral, stop that.
• The Future Will Be Better: A letter from a version of Harry who's two years ahead — but written most of fifty years in the past — says that this will be the case, for Harry at least.

• Gale-Force Sound: Sean's voice can shatter anything, largely by hitting its resonant frequency.
• Gambit Pileup: gleefully takes this trope and runs with it.
  • First off, we have a post Heel–Face Turn Loki, who's got a world wide spy network and is continually scheming for the good of Asgard and the Nine Realms while watching his brother's back.
  • Then we have Baron Von Strucker, who wants to restore HYDRA to the status it possessed during WWII. He is eliminated in chapter 50 for incompetence and threatening Narcissa by Lucius Malfoy.
  • Lucius Malfoy, who is sick of being afraid and wants to make everyone else afraid of him, while protecting his family. Oh, and he wants revenge on Fury. To this end, he seeks to bring down the Avengers and fuse HYDRA and the Death Eaters into a gestalt entity under his sole command. In chapter 50, he succeeds and prepares for the next step - the destruction of any and all potential threats to HYDRA, starting with the Avengers.
  • Gravemoss wants to kill everything and rule over a universe of the dead. Cue backstabbing.
  • Alexander Pierce, meanwhile, seems pretty comfortable with just going with the flow. For now.
  • Dealing with all of these is Nick Fury, who's trying (and, to be fair, mostly succeeding) to crush HYDRA and is gunning for Lucius Malfoy in particular, because he has a score to settle, while simultaneously trying to limit Loki's influence (it's not that he thinks that Loki's evil, it's just that he's got a job to do. And he doesn't trust him).
  • His protégé, Agent (later Director) Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black, is masterminding the defence of Britain and, seemingly, the creation of a British Avengers team in the form of Excalibur, occasionally black mailing Wanda Maximoff into helping out. He's also trying to ensure that MI13 supplants the Ministry as the prime handler of matters supernatural and superhuman, poaching staff members and seeking to bring it to heel. On top of that, he's implied to be after the Department of Mysteries.
  • Dumbledore is rapidly rearranging his plans to bring down the Death Eaters and prevent Voldemort's return in response to the ever changing Status Quo.
  • Professor Xavier is holding off the Hellfire Club with one hand and keeping Harry away from his maternal cousin Jean for some unspecified yet crucial reason with the other. It's a case of I Did What I Had to Do, as it's shown that he's very much unhappy with it.
  • Magneto is lurking on the edge of things and keeping an eye on events.
  • Mister Sinister has been all but stated to be the mysterious force that kept Harry at Privet Drive, messing with Mrs Figg's head, heading off investigations and the like, having developed an interest in Harry because of his mother being related to Jean Grey.
  • Wanda Maximoff is trying to keep a lid on the incursions caused by the Darkhold's weakening of the borders of reality, to protect her godson and to keep her daughter's existence secret and safe.
  • Odin is mostly operating on a hands off basis, leaving his sons to do what they do best, but has put a number of his servants into play, with Freki and Geri (his wolves) protecting Harry, Huginn and Muninn occasionally advising him and Sif and the Warriors Three taking part in a little monster hunting, while keeping an eye out for an opportunity to get even with Thanos for what he did to Loki (it wasn't mind control, but it wasn't pleasant) and to Krypton.
  • The Phoenix Force, meanwhile, has decided that she likes Harry for reasons that are as yet unexplained, and is implied to be the source of Harry's protection.
    • It is further implied that Lily Potter isn't quite dead and has some kind of connection to the Phoenix and wants to protect Harry.
  • Meanwhile Chthon schemes to bring about his return to the universe through the Darkhold.
  • And, as of Chapter 60, the Winter Soldier has shaken off his brainwashing, performed a Heel–Face Turn and is now acting as a secret mole inside HYDRA for the good guys.
  • And then there's Doctor Strange, who seems to be manipulating the hell out of everyone and is unequivocally 'up to something', but no one has even the faintest idea what that something is. Confused yet?
• Generation Xerox: Clint ended up becoming a skilled marksman (possibly the most skilled in all of the Nine Realms) and assassin, just like his grandfather, Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier. While no one knows about the whole "Winter Soldier" part, Steve is able to deduce Clint's heritage from an offhand comment by Minerva (Clint's grandmother) and Clint's resemblance to his grandfather. The fact that Bucky is/was almost as good a shot as Clint himself helps as well, and it's implied that the only reason Clint's a better marksman than his grandfather is because of his magical heritage, which is enough to empower him with Improbable Aiming Skills but not enough to make him a full-fledged wizard.
  • Sebastian Shaw II, son of the version that appears in X-Men: First Class.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Played straight as an arrow, ever since Captain America turned up. It's been implied that some factions i.e. the resurrected Red Room see Harry as the key to the next step, since his body is naturally undergoing an ascension to Godhood.
• Genius Loci: London is, according to Loki, a very powerful one, and he's not entirely certain that it likes him. However, it is also indicated to have a 'Voice', and s/he gives him a tip off.
  • Asgard has elements of this, to those who can sense her.
  • The mountain that Harry and company were skiing on has proved to be a fearsomely powerful and extremely bad tempered one.

• The Ghost: Doctor Strange. He's made a couple of very brief appearances and a cameo, but has otherwise been offstage.
  • His first lengthy appearance in chapter 48 leaves more questions than it answers, too...
  • Magneto is likewise yet to make an on-screen appearance (the closest is a brief suggestion of his presence in chapter 71) until the end of the final battle, but casts a long shadow over the story.
  • Erik Selvig is often mentioned but has yet to appear in the story proper, even as of Book III.
• Gilligan Cut: Pulls one when Lucius is mulling over the good guys preparing for the battle to come... as it turns out, they're settling in for a Doctor Who marathon.
• The Glasses Come Off: Harry gets a kind of Asgardian eye surgery leading to him ditch his glasses. The reactions are broadly along the lines of He Is All Grown Up.
• Glowing Eyes: Doctor Strange tends to use this to emphasise his otherworldly nature (and/or mess with people).
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Thor's eyes tend take on an electric blue-white colour when he's really pissed off.
  • Harry's eyes have been known to briefly go a dangerous gold colour when he's angry. There's a couple of things it could be, and none of them spell anything but trouble.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: The undead warrior that the Black Knight duels.
• God of Evil: Gravemoss has power levels roughly equivalent to Loki's - and that's pre Darkhold.
  • Chthon is the God of Black Magic.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Hera, who's depicted in less than flattering terms, partly thanks to her now obsessive hatred of demigods (which she murders on a whim.
• Godzilla Threshold: Fury's Shadow Initiative, designed to gather together the most dangerous and powerful heroes around in case the Avengers were ever compromised or unavailable. It's activated in chapter 74, after most of the team are captured or incapacitated by HYDRA.
• Good Bad Girl: Darcy. She'll flirt with most things male (and, by implication, sleeps with them too), she has a knack for finding dive bars (according to Jane - Darcy does not deny it) and cheats at poker. She's shameless. She's also kind, surprisingly wise and very perceptive.
  • Betsy Braddock. Sleeps around because she can and she likes it, yet stands up to be counted when Peter Wisdom comes calling and proves a kind and understanding teacher and counsellor to Harry and Ginny respectively.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Harry is a literal reading of this trope - he knows evil exists, he knows what it can do better than most, but he quite simply doesn't understand it.
• Good Is Not Nice: Odin, as a result of being King and The Chains of Commanding, which force him to make decisions for the good of his kingdom, not necessarily the people he cares about. He doesn't like it.
  • Good Is Really Scary When It Wants to Be: Loki. Oh my god, Loki.
  • Nick Fury is simultaneously absolutely on the side of the heroes, and actually liked by only a handful of people.
  • Peter Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black, epitomises this trope, even more than his mentor, Nick Fury. Fury wants heroes for people to believe in; Wisdom wants soldiers to fight the war that he sees coming, a war he is singlemindedly dedicated to winning. Accordingly, he has no qualms whatsoever about manipulating genuinely good characters into doing his dirty work. Sometimes this manipulation can be as mild as a speech. Sometimes it takes the form of emotional blackmail when he secures Wanda as his ringer by threatening to tell her daughter, Hermione, the truth about her parentage. And sometimes it takes the form of placing Warren, a relatively innocent young man at a possible target, in order to get him properly blooded in combat by making his first human kill (something Warren had been desperately avoiding for most of his life, being absolutely terrified of hurting someone else with his Razor Wings) and then mould him into a soldier. This, as Sean (Warren's mentor) observes with utter contempt and no little bitterness, is completely successful following chapter 70.
  • Doctor Strange is, subtly, the king of this trope, being the Sorcerer Supreme and thus the magical Big Good for Earth, taking in Wanda as a child, helping her control her powers and saving her from the White Council, playing a key role in defeating Grindelwald (softening the 'god-like' Dark Lord up for Dumbledore) and is generally fairly affable and polite, always having a smile on his face. He is also an arch Manipulative Bastard and Magnificent Bastard with a reputation as an infallible Seer, using everyone as puppets and ruthlessly exploiting the Butterfly Effect. Directly, this means he specifically ordered Wanda (Harry's godmother) not to take him in on the grounds that it would be too dangerous since Wanda gave up her own daughter for exactly the same reason, he was probably right. It gets to the point where Lucius Malfoy, generally a couple of steps ahead of almost everyone else, starts fearing in chapter 72, when he's pretty much at the zenith of his power, that everything so far is part of Strange's plan, including things as minor as arranging for Nick Fury to be posted as liaison to the Order of the Phoenix years before Harry was born in order to bring about the rise of Director Fury and thereby Director Wisdom. All the evidence suggests that he might well be right and that Strange is working towards The Greater Good which is implied to be readying Earth to take on Thanos. Indirectly, this means that he knew all about Pettigrew's betrayal of the Potters, Sinister's involvement in Harry's being kept at Privet Drive and HYDRA's attack on Hogwarts which killed Luna Lovegood, to name but a few, as well as pretty much every other bad thing that has happened even probably Krypton exploding, and he did nothing because he deemed it necessary to shape the scenario and the heroes to his satisfaction. Anyway you slice it, that's cold.
• Good Parents: Thor. He may not be all that practised at it, he may have - against his own will - missed out on much of his son's childhood, but he quite clearly loves his son to pieces and does his very best to be a good father. And he succeeds.
  • Loki is a good uncle/pseudo parent to Harry as well.
  • As per canon, Arthur Weasley is an amazing father.

• Gory Discretion Shot: Occasionally used. Occasionally not.
• Grand Theft Me: Voldemort uses psychic power pilfered from Harry to pull this on Wormtail and recycle his body.
• Grand Finale: Chapter 78 in its most grand fashion, tying up every loose end.
• Granny Classic: Frigga to Harry, with a touch of The High Queen, being a kind and affectionate grandmother.
• Gratuitous French: Jean-Paul Beaubier (in this canon, actually French as opposed to French-Canadian) sort of speaks like this, though it's mostly restricted to referring to someone as mon cher or ma cherie. It's implied to be an affectation, however, along with most (but not all) the rest of his harmless Camp Gay mannerisms, as it completely disappears when someone starts treading on thin ice. It's also shown that while he's fluent in English, he doesn't always know the right word or phrase. On rare occasion, it also drifts into Bilingual Bonus.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Recent chapters have hinted that Chthon is this, getting his first appearance when he psychically speaks with Harry Dresden.
• Grin of Audacity: Harry and Loki when they're plotting something, and Thor when his James is showing.
  • Sirius Black, again, when he's up to something.
• Grim Reaper: Death of the Endless is mentioned and eventually puts in brief appearances, first on a magical Tarot card, then in person after Luna Lovegood is killed.
• Groin Attack: Feeling up Carol Danvers is a bad idea. As Krieger found out.
  • Harry to Uhtred.
• Guile Hero: Loki, Fury, Natasha, Dumbledore.
  • Harry has developed into one by Chapter 34.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Largely averted. Clint and the Winter Soldier are the two most notable marksmen and Natasha, though she wields pistols, prefers close quarters.
  • As for Harry's friends, Chapter 60 shows that it is almost entirely inverted: Harry's ranged attacks are far more effective than his physical attacks (though it is implied that his close range attacks failed mostly because he had a rush of blood to the head, didn't use it effectively and was facing someone who was much, much better at hand to hand combat), Jean-Paul, being a Fragile Speedster, resorts to throwing a rock. At supersonic speeds. Diana, by contrast, is The Big Gal and tips over into The Berserker, and is by far the strongest of the group. Carol makes up for her lack of Physical God level strength by being the Determinator. Uhtred, however, is perfectly happy to smash.
• The Gunslinger: Clint is a classic type A.
  • the Winter Soldier is a type A and a type D with a touch of C.

• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • Technically Tony since his mother's real name was Tessa a.k.a. Sage of the X-Men, a mutant.

• Half-Truth:
  • Charles Xavier very carefully says that Maria Stark was human. Maria Stark was a persona. Tony's mother's real name was Tessa, a.k.a. Sage of the X-Men, and therefore a mutant.

• Handicapped Badass: Charles Xavier. He may be in a wheelchair, but he's still the most powerful psychic on the planet and a man that even Odin regards with definite respect.
  • Arguably, Tony, thanks to his arc reactor.
  • The Winter Soldier, who's missing an arm. He simply got a better one.
  • Lucius Malfoy walks with a cane because of a limp even magical medicine can't fix (courtesy of Nick Fury) and is one of the most dangerous characters in the setting.
  • Nick Fury has only one eye, and is just about equal to Lucius when it comes to espionage and manipulation. He is, after all, the guy who trained Peter Wisdom. Odin, meanwhile, also has one eye, and makes Fury look like an amateur by comparison (which, given that Odin is millennia old, is actually kind of true).
• Harem: Explicitly, repeatedly and emphatically nixed by the author. Also occasionally mocked.
• Has a Type:
  • Harry is noted to be something of an Amazon Chaser (though, ironically, he is, as yet, uninterested in the only actual Amazon to turn up. Then again, she is about 12), and, furthermore, seems to be fond of blondes.
  • Based on the fact that he was married to Lily and is dating Jane, Thor seems to like the smart, strong ones.
  • Wanda seems to like guys who wear badass longcoats. She dated and had a child with John Constantine. Her opinion on Harry Dresden was that "He wears the hell out of a leather duster."
• Hate Sink: The story has Gravemoss, an Omnicidal, Sadistic and Ax-Crazy Necromancer and Humanoid Abomination with absolutely zero redeeming features - Lucius has style and plausible motivations, Zemo's Affably Evil and plain cool, and Zola's Laughably Evil at least. Gravemoss is doing what he does for no other reasons than his own entertainment (in the short term) and a desire to kill everything in the universe and rule over a universe of the dead. This is the guy who sent a bunch of Dementors into a cancer ward for kicks. When Harry Dresden accidentally conjures a Soulfire Lightsabre and cuts his arm off, negating his Healing Factor and eliciting a scream of horror and pain from Gravemoss, everyone rejoiced.
• Have We Met?: Double-whammy in Chapter 45: The Winter Soldier notes that Minerva McGonagall is familiar (but he does not remember why) and Thor when he realizes that Hermione looks like Wanda Maximoff.
  • He gets it again in chapter 60 with Steve and possibly Carol. Though in the latter case, it's not known exactly what he recognises about her.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: Fudge and his sycophants in the Ministry, as usual, who don't do anything useful and just get in the way of the heroes. Best personified in Chapter 70, where he (bordering on hysterics, actually) flat out denies intelligence from Fury and Wisdom that Lucius is working with HYDRA, and when Lucius admits to not only that but also gloats how he's been playing Fudge for years, Fudge seems to have a slight breakdown.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Carol Danvers, who's about 14/15, but matured early, shall we say, ending up with the body of a hot co-ed who turns the heads of boys and men alike. She absolutely hates it, mainly because boys only try to befriend her to get in her pants and grown men... well, she's seen as being the recipient of unwelcome attention and indicates that it's not the first time. This contributes to her somewhat spiky disposition and until she meets Harry, her only two male friends are her surrogate big brother Lex Luthor, a specialist in Disproportionate Retribution on people bothering her (this has been known to backfire), and Jean-Paul, who's so Camp Gay that he's pretty much a one man Pride parade. Part of the reason she almost instantly takes to Harry is, aside from a shared love of flying, that while he's aware of her good looks he considers them very much secondary to her as a person and understands better than most what it's like to be judged on appearance alone.
• Healing Factor: Wolverine, who can heal any physical wound or ailment, perusual
  • Gravemoss has a ridiculously powerful one as of Chapter 44 - Sif lops off his arm. He doesn't even seem to notice and it starts growing back immediately. He gets a nasty shock in chapter 76 when Harry Dresden's accidentally conjured Soulfire Lightsabre shears straight through his shield and his arm and prevents it from growing back.

• Daken

• Heart Is an Awesome Power: A notable example in normally C-List X-Man Sean Cassidy a.k.a. Banshee, whose power is normally limited to Super Screaming and somehow flying off that. Here, about forty years of practice mean that he's explored the full possibilities of his powers, including Super Hearing sufficient to create a sonar that Daredevil would envy, being able to extend a field of absolute silence around himself, allowing him to move in absolute silence, shoot completely silently and even nullify the sound of an exploding claymore mine, and being able to hit the resonant frequency of just about anything. This means that he can destroy almost anything. Such as wands. Or bone. Or, apparently, granite, which he once liquefied. And then there's his Compelling Voice, with which he has apparently done things which give Nick Fury nightmares. Add to this the experience of having served as in Intelligence Officer in Vietnam, then as a detective for Interpol, and you get a very scary individual.

• Heroic Sacrifice: Harry Dresden, crossing over with Dying Moment of Awesome, but he gets better (Doctor Strange has Plans for him, it seems).
  • There's a heartbreaking one in chapter 60 by Carol that comes off as a Senseless Sacrifice, since the others are rescued not a few moments later. While it is subverted, she was fully intent on sacrificing herself to save the others.
  • Arthur Weasley in chapter 70, to cover the retreat of various Ministry officials. He survives long enough to be captured, but the Soldier gives him a Mercy Kill to save him from Lucius and Gravemoss' attentions.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Bruce and Remus are going this way.
  • Sciencebros.
  • The Avengers as a whole, mixed with Platonic Life-Partners.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Magneto being the classic example - though he's mellowed by the time of the story. Averting this trope as an underlying theme.
  • Harry is repeatedly compared to the above, in that while he's a sweet kid, he's charismatic (after a fashion), a Magnetic Hero, has a very low tolerance for injustice and he is very Hot-Blooded. It is repeatedly shown that it would be very easy to take the first steps down the darker path, and if he did, well...
    • Harry himself is downright terrified of taking the left-hand path following chapter 61, which becomes a significant impediment to the use of the telepathy side of his Psychic Powers, since he's scared witless of what he might do with them.
  • Dumbledore also goes out to avert this, avoiding seeking power on the grounds that he's perfectly aware that he could become a Dark Lord who would make Voldemort look like a fluffy bunny, in large part because of his deep frustration with the insularity of the British Wizarding World.
  • The trope is also referenced in respect to Peter Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black, who is ruthless, manipulative and downright vicious in terms of how he deals with supernatural evil and in acquiring allies to do so with, stopping at nothing to achieve his aim, even - especially - considering his own life meaningless, reckoning that he should have died a long time ago and that anything after that is a bonus. At one point, Sean Cassidy, not an easily shocked man, takes a step back after looking in his eyes and seeing 'a man who had gazed into the void and made damn sure that it had blinked first.'
    • In this he takes after his mentor, Nick Fury, who is every bit as ruthless, if not as vicious.
• Hero Killer: The Winter Soldier really goes in for this. His rap sheet includes the killings of Spitfire I, Union Jack (implied to be, unlike his Badass Normal namesake, a previous Captain Britain), the Destroyer, and James Bond.
  • He also made a spirited attempt to add Wolverine to that list, and nearly succeeded. Spitfire II only escaped through her Super-Speed.
  • He even killed John F. Kennedy.
  • Fury even calls him a "hero killer." Once he sets his sights on you, there's no stopping him.
  • In chapter 60, he has Steve at his mercy, and could very easily have killed Clint at the same time, probably Natasha too.
  • In chapter 70, he snaps Arthur Weasley's neck. However, that was an act of mercy.
• Hidden Depths: Fandral. Sif notes that he's like a puddle over a pothole. He only looks shallow.
  • Jean-Paul Beaubier. He's far more observant and on the ball than he pretends, and that's just for starters.
  • The Winter Soldier. He appears to be a soulless automaton, but his brief point of view sections contain flickering hints of emotion, as well as Natasha strongly suggesting that there is far more to him than simply silent killing machine.
  • Volstagg, who immediately knows what's wrong with Harry (repressing) before he even meets him, going off an implication by Loki. Which is unsurprising since he's a father himself and Loki notes that Thor could benefit from his experience.
  • Admit it, you never saw Diana as The Berserker coming.
  • Moody, despite being a paranoid jerk, is also surprisingly perceptive and even somewhat emphatic, agreeing with Thor that Harry would naturally give up every bit of his fame in an instant to have his mother back.
• Hollywood Healing: surprisingly averted by those characters who don't have the benefit of a healing factor and/or magical medicine (and the ones that do, in the latter case).
• Honest Corporate Executive: Pepper Potts.
  • Thomas Wayne.
• Hope Bringer: Harry is specially namechecked as potentially being this (the alternative is that he could turn into a Dark Messiah on par with/beyond Magneto himself).
  • Also a certain 'Last Son'. As in Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton.
• Horrifying the Horror: you know you are doing something right when The Winter Soldier notes that the group he is leading is screwed.
  • When Gravemoss has freakin' nightmares about you, it means you are freakin' awesome.
• Hot-Blooded: Thor used to be this, while Tony still is.
  • Harry is developing into more of this than he was in canon - though it's debatable as to whether he's becoming more hotblooded or if it's simply more obvious because he's opening up emotionally.
  • Diana specifically guards against this for fear of becoming a Blood Knight. Since her dad is the page image for Blood Knight and her mother isn't much better, this is perhaps not unwarranted.
    • As chapter 60 shows, when she loses control, it is terrifying.
• Hot Witch: Lily Potter, Wanda Maximoff, Frigga, Lady Loki.
• Humanoid Abomination: If Gravemoss wasn't this to begin with, he is now.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: The fic has Asgardians, pink Kree and Kryptonians all looking very human on the outside - of course, since all three of those species are considerably older, it is probably the other way around.
  • Also, all three are considerably stronger than the average human, to varying degrees, by various means: Asgardians are living magical reactors, the Kree are evolved in higher gravity and Kryptonians absorb solar radiation.
  • This (in the case of the Kree and the Kryptonians) also probably has quite a lot to do with the Celestials and their seeding the universe with life, using the same basic model.
• Humans Are Special: Thor and Dumbledore believe this, as, it seems, does Mar-Vell (though his well-meaning gesture of handing over the so-called Mar-Vell files went very badly wrong). Considering the extremely unusual number of Gods and the vast amounts of magic Earth possesses, and the interest that entities such as the Phoenix are expressing in humanity, they might not be far wrong...
  • Most non-humans on the good guys side think this to one extent or another. To be fair, if you'd met the Avengers, you'd think the same.
• Humans Are Survivors: Dumbledore's view on humanity. Thor comes round to it once he considers the example of Tony Stark.
• Humans Are Warriors: Thor believes this. Dumbledore disagrees, thinking that we're something far more dangerous: Survivors, with all the tropes that that entails, such as Determinator, Implacable Man, Action Survivor, Gadgeteer Genius...
  • Loki also subscribes to this theory, though his ideas are closer to Dumbledore's.
• Humanity Is Superior: There are hints that while most of the universe considers Earth to be a magic and monster infested Death World, whose dominant species are a bunch of primitives happiest when killing something, usually each other, and sees Asgard's fondness for/protectiveness of Earth is a mark of Asgardian eccentricity, the Asgardians see something that they like in us, that while we are young, we have the potential to become something great, a leading light in the universe, as did a few Kryptonians, so have seen fit to nurture our potential. Besides, what with our determination and willingness to take on all comers, they kind of like our style. On top of this, a certain Captain Marvel met Agent Peggy Carter in the '50's and took a shine to her, giving her and SHIELD a massive amount of data that became known as 'the Mar-Vell Files'. Unfortunately, humanity was not ready and this well-meaning gesture went spectacularly wrong, leading to the files being mothballed.
• Humanity Is Young: Something of the general Asgardian attitude towards humanity - we're young and still finding our way, while they're the undisputed heavyweight champions of the universe, and were civilised while humanity was still evolving from monkeys, but they like our style and see our potential, unlike most of the rest of the universe, which takes the Puny Earthling approach and has no idea what Asgard sees in us. Furthermore, some of the more self aware Asgardians (Thor, for example) note that 'more advanced' does not mean 'better'.
• Human Sub Species: Several, in the form of mutants, magic wielders both wanded and wandless (the difference between the two is like being left or right handed), Atlanteans, Eternals and Deviants (neither have been seen, but the Eternals, at least, have been mentioned). It's also been observed that a considerably sized number of people of European ancestry have got a bit of Asgardian blood in them (among others), due to the fact that the Asgardians fought a number of wars on Earth and armies tend to make a contribution to the local gene pool - and, considering that they were worshipped as gods, a number would have gone out of their way to have the children of gods. And then, of course, there were the other pantheons in other regions of the world that did similar, though not in quite the same numbers.
• Human Weapon: The Winter Soldier.
• Humble Hero: Steve. The serum amplifies both physical and mental attributes, and many (including Loki and Tony) compliment and/or acknowledge how great a man he truly is. Steve is embarrassed, because he still sees himself as that skinny kid who was too dumb to run away from a fight — which, if anything, verifies what everybody else says about him.
  Steve: I'm just another kid from Brooklyn. Nothing special about me.
• Hybrid Power: It seems, on the face of it, that this will be the case with Harry. Thanks to his parentage (James was Thor) not only will he have the advantage of being a living magical reactor that all Asgardians do and develop his father's Super-Strength, he's also a relative of Jean Grey on his mother's side and inherited the vast psychic powers which, on top of everything else, will be stronger in that he can channel more energy. While this seems set to make him too OP, this is Harry we're talking about. There are caveats and really, it's more a case of Blessed with Suck. The Super-Strength comes through only in intermittent bursts meaning that he lives in mortal fear of shaking someone's hand and squashing it or similar, the Psychic Powers come through violently, are dangerously uncontrollable for a good while nearly getting him, Ron and Hermione killed and leave him open for Voldemort to play Power Parasite, and Word of God says that he'll never be as strong as Jean is (on the other hand, as Word of God admits, this is not saying much) and he lacks the skills and abilities to use those powers effectively. Oh, and Doctor McCoy theorizes that the steady altering of his body and brain chemistry by his Asgardian genes could mean that his Psychic Powers will eventually short-circuit his brain.

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