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Seeing the three of them staring at him like he'd completely lost his mind, Malekith exploded. His eyes burned with raw fury.
He drove the Aether to its limit. A black-red torrent surged outward like a tsunami, roaring toward the three professors with crushing force.
The three exchanged a glance. They split apart instantly, each flying to a different point along the Aether's edge.
Wands aimed inward. They began to chant.
Three blinding beams of light erupted from the wand tips, converged in midair, and expanded in a heartbeat. An enormous curtain of light spread across several kilometers of sky, sealing the Aether inside.
The black-red torrent froze. Locked in place by some unseen force, it could not move a single inch no matter how savagely Malekith drove it.
The arrogance drained from his face all at once. He screamed:
"This is impossible!"
Hermione drifted over to him, perfectly at ease.
"Nothing is impossible." She smiled pleasantly. "The Infinity Stones are powerful. They're not invincible."
"Three professors are more than enough to hold the Aether."
Malekith stared at her. He could not process it, that he, wielder of an Infinity Stone, had been boxed in by a handful of Midgard natives.
Hermione raised her hand and pointed her wand at him.
The black-red armor the Aether had formed across his body began to shudder violently. Something invisible was tearing it free, layer by layer, stripping it away against his will.
"What have you done?!"
Malekith screamed in terror. He clawed for control of the Aether. It was useless.
The armor peeled off in sheets, revealing the Dark Elf beneath.
"This." Hermione's smile stayed sweet. Her tone did not. "Is. Called. Magic."
"Never seen it before, country bumpkin?"
Clatter.
The last piece hit the ground.
Malekith stood exposed, stripped of every scrap of the Aether's protection. He stared at Hermione, his whole body shaking.
"Avada Kedavra!"
She didn't hesitate. A flash of green, clean and final.
Malekith's eyes went wide, disbelief, fury, despair all at once. Then his body locked up and dropped from the sky. His life was gone before he hit the ground.
"Done."
Hermione clapped her hands and turned away.
The three professors moved without a word. Explosions, fire, and ice swept across the battlefield in overlapping waves. Every Dark Elf on the field was gone in moments, swept aside like kindling.
Below, the crowd watched in stunned silence. The magic unleashed was on par with the Chitauri invasion, no, it was something different entirely. That had been a disaster. This was annihilation carried out with perfect calm. And there were three other wizards besides Miss Witch who could do this.
With Malekith dead, the Aether came apart. Black-red energy erupted in every direction, wild and uncontrolled, hammering everything it touched.
Hermione's brow creased.
"Feisty little thing." She flew to McGonagall's side. "Professor, going to need a hand here."
Professor McGonagall nodded once. "Leave it to us."
All four raised their wands together.
The rampaging Aether began to compress. Slowly at first, then faster, contracting, collapsing in on itself until it condensed into a single red gem that hung silently in the air.
The darkness consuming the surrounding area receded. Color and light crept back across the land.
Crisis over. Done.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. team surged forward immediately.
Professor McGonagall paid them no attention whatsoever. She looked straight at Hermione.
"That's settled, then. We're heading back. You?"
"Go ahead, Professor." Hermione waved her off. "I'll make my own way back later. Oh — could you bring the Reality Stone back to Hogwarts?"
McGonagall nodded. "Of course. And take care of yourself out here."
She paused. Something held her back for a moment, and then she said it anyway.
"You've repeatedly ignored the Ministry's travel restrictions and slipped out on your own. There are people who are very unhappy about it. Especially after New York — using Forbidden Magic in front of that many witnesses..."
She let out a slow breath.
"The Ministry has held off for now, out of deference to Dumbledore. But this can't go on indefinitely. Sooner or later, something will break."
"Your situation, you understand it better than anyone. And your power has been growing at a rate that matches the old prophecy far too closely. If there's no restraint, the entire wizarding world will come to fear you."
Hermione blinked up at her, expression perfectly guileless.
"I know, Professor. I'll be more careful next time. I promise."
McGonagall looked at that cheerful, unbothered face and shook her head. There was nothing more to say. She turned, and together with Snape and Flitwick, walked into the spatial rift.
Before she passed through, her wand moved once, gently.
The rift sealed itself. Hogwarts Castle faded slowly from view, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but open blue sky.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel stared at the spot where the red gem had vanished.
The Reality Stone. Just like that, gone.
They all knew it was too dangerous to touch, knew they had no claim to it. It didn't stop the hollow ache. They stood there with their envy and their helplessness and not a single thing they could do about either.
The weight that had pressed down on them, Hogwarts, the three wizards, everything, lifted as the rift closed. They could breathe again. But the air felt strangely thin.
Their contact with the wizarding world had lasted only hours. Until today, the only wizard any of them had ever met was Hermione. They had known it existed. They had been told, in theory, that the world was larger and stranger than they had any framework for. Today they had finally, briefly, seen proof of it. Just the surface. Just a glimpse.
Coulson turned McGonagall's parting words over in his mind.
He thought back to something Hermione had mentioned in passing when they first crossed paths, the Ministry of Magic, placing restrictions on a teenage girl. At the time it had seemed strange. Now it sat differently.
Hermione wasn't simply an unusually powerful witch. She was something the entire wizarding world had reason to be afraid of.
A world that could field three people like those three professors, a world that powerful, that far beyond anything on Earth, and even they feared her? What did that make Hermione?
The rate of her power growth, probably. And whatever was in that prophecy.
In the space of a few seconds, Coulson and Fury had independently constructed several different versions of the same story. None of them were reassuring.
Hermione walked over to where Thor lay unconscious and gave her wand a quiet wave.
The jagged wounds across his body began to close, pulling together at a speed visible to the naked eye.
A moment later, Thor grunted and opened his eyes.
"Coulson?" He stared. "You — aren't you dead?"
He scrambled upright, nearly falling over himself. His eyes looked like they might actually leave his head.
Coulson rubbed the back of his neck. He had not figured out a graceful way to explain this particular wrinkle.
"Thor, hold on. Let me walk you through it."
He kept it brief, the key points, nothing more. Thor listened, and when Coulson finished, he exhaled. Then he thought of Loki, and the relief drained out of him.
"I need to return to Asgard." His voice came out low. "My father needs to know what happened to Loki."
Hermione nodded. She stepped in front of him, raised her wand, and swept it in a smooth arc.
A golden portal opened from nothing, steady and waiting.
➤ Next: Why Don't You Just Be the Dark Lord Instead
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