His suit was wrecked. The engines weren't responding.
Tony's face went pale. He wanted to swear, but the words died before they reached his mouth.
Hermione had done it to save him.
"Guess I really am just a guy flying through the air now..." He forced a bitter smile, voice cracking at the edges.
Steve stared at nothing in particular.
"Are we... going to crash?"
Even Captain America , brave, fearless, infuriatingly unshakeable Steve Rogers , sounded a little unsteady. Clearly, something about the word crash had triggered a memory he'd rather not revisit.
Crash PTSD. Lovely.
"Relax, you're Captain America. The fall won't kill you." Tony was still running his mouth, but his heart was hammering. Whether this battered tin can he was wearing would survive the landing was a genuinely open question.
"Alright, Bald Egg, settle down. This thing isn't going anywhere."
Hermione finally spoke, cutting through Bald Egg's impotent roaring.
She dissolved into a whirlwind of black and red, shot straight out of the Helicarrier, and reformed in open air. Azure light blazed across her skin. Even her pupils had gone a pure, solid blue.
One gentle point of her wand.
The Helicarrier, which had been screaming toward the earth, lurched. Slowed. And then , impossibly , hung motionless in the sky.
Inside the control hub, the moment people realized what was happening, they stopped breathing. Everyone scrambled to the windows. Their faces said it all.
This was the Helicarrier. The entire Helicarrier.
Being held up by a person.
Then Hermione leveled her wand at the smoldering wreck of Engine Three and said, quietly, "Reparo."
Time ran backward.
Shards and shrapnel and twisted metal fragments came streaking in from every direction, snapping back together piece by piece, until the engine stood whole and untouched, exactly as it had been before the explosion.
Engine Three coughed to life.
Hermione let the levitation go and breathed out slowly. Even for her, that sequence had taken something out of her. Lucky the other two engines were still running , she wasn't entirely sure she could have held the whole weight otherwise.
The Helicarrier went quiet.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. People just swallowed hard and stared.
Steve's eyes were as wide as they could go.
He finally understood why Fury let Hermione wander the Helicarrier however she pleased, like she owned the place, with no one daring to say a word.
Because she did own it. She was the real authority here.
Then a memory surfaced , Tony saying Hermione was their last resort, the fail-safe to bring down the Hulk if it came to that.
Turns out Tony had been telling the truth. Not even exaggerating. If anything, he'd undersold it.
"What..." Steve turned to Tony. "What exactly is that ability?"
Controlling fire. Flight. Force mastery. And now rebuilding a destroyed engine from scratch with two words.
He didn't understand any of it. But he felt it in his bones.
Right now, Steve Rogers really, sincerely wanted to swear. Was this Earth? He'd gone to sleep , just slept , and woken up in a world that made absolutely no sense. He was starting to miss the era when he was the most advanced thing science had ever produced.
Tony's grin was insufferable. "Not understanding it is exactly right. I told you — Hermione is a witch. It's magic. Magic. Does that word mean anything to you?"
He was using Hermione's own words from the first time she'd explained it to him, lobbing them back at Steve.
He looked proud enough to burst. Like he'd personally cast the spell himself.
Then Natasha's voice crackled in their earpieces, tight with urgency: "I've got Barton under control, but he hasn't shaken the mind control. He's still fighting me. What do I do?"
Hermione Disapparated.
She reappeared beside Natasha an instant later.
"Let him go," Hermione said, glancing at Barton , arms pinned, still thrashing.
Natasha blinked. Then she released him.
She didn't entirely understand the plan, but she trusted Hermione, so she let go.
Barton was free for half a second before he lunged straight at Hermione.
"Watch out!" Natasha stepped forward instinctively.
"Imperio."
Hermione's voice was almost bored.
Barton stopped dead. His eyes emptied. He stood still and mechanical, waiting.
Natasha stared. "What are you doing?"
"Loki used the scepter to control him," Hermione said. "I'm using the Imperius Curse to overwrite it. Then I lift the curse, and he's free."
She lifted it.
Barton's eyes came back slowly, clarity returning like fog burning off. He looked around , blank, lost , and finally found Hermione's face.
"Miss Witch?"
He sounded confused, like he wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up standing here.
"Natasha, what happened?"
He pressed two fingers to his temple. His head felt packed with wet concrete.
Natasha exhaled and let her shoulders drop. She gave him the short version.
Barton listened in silence.
So either way, he was getting his mind hijacked. That was just his life now. Loki's scepter or Miss Witch's curse , take your pick.
"Thank you, Miss Witch."
He had thoughts about the method. He kept them to himself. The gratitude was genuine.
They had something of a teacher-student history, the two of them. Back in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Mystical Countermeasures Unit, Hermione had walked him through more magical theory than he'd ever expected to need.
Then something crossed Barton's face. He smacked his hand to his forehead.
"The scepter."
Fury's expression shifted the moment those words landed. Something cold dropped through his chest.
He sent people to check anyway.
The scepter was gone.
Almost the same instant, Hermione Disapparated and reappeared in the control hub.
She stood still and looked at Fury. Just looked at him. Cold and level and very, very unhappy.
Fury felt his scalp tighten. The air pressure in the room had plummeted. Cold sweat was crawling down his back.
We're done. This is actually bad.
Anything else would have been manageable. Anything else, and they might have talked their way through it. But the Mind Scepter , Hermione's Mind Scepter , was a different problem entirely.
Technically, the scepter had been handed over to her. Losing it should have been her problem to deal with. Except the only reason it wasn't in her hands was because she'd been too busy saving every single one of them, running from crisis to crisis, cleaning up their messes. She'd had no chance to guard it herself. The enemy had walked right through the gap S.H.I.E.L.D. had left open.
This one was on them. There was no arguing otherwise.
Hermione's voice came out like each word had been bitten off separately. "Where is my Mind Stone?"
"My Mind Stone. The large one. Where is it?"
"Is this how S.H.I.E.L.D. looks after things for me?"
Whatever color Fury's face normally ran, it was gone. Replaced by something distinctly liver-adjacent.
He had never wanted to be somewhere else more than he did right now. This was going to cost him. Badly.
He forced his face into a smile that looked worse than a grimace. "Miss Witch. I assure you , S.H.I.E.L.D. takes full responsibility. Complete, total responsibility."
"We will find that scepter. Every resource we have."
"Effective immediately, every division, every subordinate agency , around the clock, twenty-four hours, until we locate it."
"And anything you need — materials, equipment, anything — just take it. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bill."
Hermione listened to all of it.
Then she snorted once, cold and flat, and conjured an orange whip of crackling magic in her hand.
CRACK!
It hit the floor two inches from Fury's feet. He flinched hard enough to nearly leave the ground.
"Then why are you still standing there?" Hermione said.
"Go work."
➤ Next: The Great Battle Begins
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