Heroes Assemble!

While The Wizard's Away

"Come in!"

At Doreen's call, Ted opened the door and looked around the small suite that Doreen had been given for her use. It was just like Teddy's – a moderate size sitting area with a small kitchenette against one wall, a table that could barely accommodate four people in front of it.

Doreen herself emerged from one of the two doors off to the right, from the look of it, the bedroom as opposed to the bathroom.

"Hey, Ted," she greeted before she paused and began to frown. "That's what you're wearing?"

Ted automatically looked down at himself. He couldn't see anything wrong with the jeans and black shirt that he was wearing, but then, as he'd been told numerous times by his grandmother, he was a boy and boys tended to have an atrocious fashion sense.

"What's wrong with it?" he asked cautiously.

Doreen finished shrugging on her old bomber jacket and pulled her fingerless gloves from her pocket before standing with one hand on her cocked hip and her head tilted slightly.

"Well, it's not exactly gonna do anything to hide your identity, is it?" she asked before quickly ploughing on. "Unless that's what you're going for? Like Clint and Thor and Nat. Steve, too, really, although he does wear a helmet when he's out."

Ted shook his head. He was sure that he'd walked into the wrong half of a conversation somewhere and was currently having to play catch up.

"I should be hiding my identity?" he asked slowly.

And then he noticed Doreen's dark brown domino mask sitting on the table as though it was waiting for her.

"Hang on! Are you going out fighting crime?" he asked.

"Sure," Doreen grinned. "Me and Peter. We figured that you'd want to come, too."

"But what about Uncle Harry?" Ted asked.

"What about him?" Doreen shrugged. "We've been out plenty of times without him. Although usually Matt shadows us when we do."

"Matt? Is he going with you?" Ted asked.

Once again Doreen shrugged. "Who knows. We never tell him when we are, he just usually shows up. Peter's the one who normally senses him first, lurking about on the rooftops. So, you are coming with, aren't you?"

"I'd love to, but I, ah, I don't have a suit," Ted replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "And I'm not allowed to do magic anywhere but in Uncle Harry's basement because it's warded so that the magic can't be detected by anyone, including MACUSA."

"No magic at all?" a despondent-sounding Doreen asked.

Ted shook his head. "Nothing with my wand at all."

"Nothing with your wand," Doreen repeated, her eyes narrowed and a mischievous grin on her face. "We can work around that. I've seen Harry use plenty of things on crooks that he doesn't need his wand for."

"You mean his Weasley products?" Ted asked, his voice gaining in excitement as he realised what she meant. "I know where Uncle Harry keeps them and I can definitely use those without using my wand. Well, most of them. I couldn't activate the swamp, but the rest, I could."

"Right. That's that part sorted. Now you just need a suit. Do you own anything made from the same stuff as Harry uses?" Doreen asked. "That stuff is wicked!"

"Dragon hide," Ted informed her. "And no, unfortunately not. I've never been allowed to buy anything made from it."

"Where can you buy it?" Doreen asked.