~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
Thor shot Hermione a grateful look and stepped through the portal. Jane wanted to say something, but Coulson patted her shoulder and shook his head.
"Let him have some time alone."
A flash of golden light. The portal vanished, and Thor's figure vanished with it.
After a moment, the strange phenomena of the Convergence slowly faded.
The sky returned to what it had always been, as if everything that had just happened was nothing more than a fever dream.
But the scorch marks, the ruined ground, the wreckage of ships, the bodies scattered everywhere: all of it said otherwise.
Hermione stretched, rolled her shoulders, and cracked her neck.
"Phew. Finally done."
The beautiful and powerful Miss Witch had once again saved the world.
As for what, exactly, she'd saved it from, don't ask.
...
Tom Riddle lurked in the shadows, watching from start to finish, quietly seething.
Easy for Hermione. All she had to do was open her mouth and perform. He was the one who actually did everything.
After they'd left Svartalfheim, she'd tossed him the pendant with the Reality Stone and told him to go "build" Hogwarts. Just like that.
First, he'd used the Space Stone and the Undetectable Extension Charm to carve a Pocket Dimension out of nothing. Then, with the Reality Stone and Transfiguration, he'd molded Hogwarts Castle into existence from thin air. And then — as if that weren't enough, he'd had to personally settle each and every one of Hermione's magical creatures into their proper places.
All of it under a brutal time crunch. Even he had found it exhausting. Thankfully it came together in the end, and the spectacle had landed well.
At least the fake Professor McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick, and that pitiful wretch Malekith hadn't required him to perform in person.
The Horcrux resurrection experiments conducted on Coulson, and the proven stability of Coulson's soul afterward, had confirmed that the method worked. Consciousness injection, memory modification, the full procedure from start to finish: the results were indistinguishable from the real thing.
These "actors" weren't vague, wispy illusions. They were genuine, fully functional people.
Every one of them was a dark wizard Hermione had personally hunted down. She'd used Horcrux techniques to seize their soul fragments, then resurrected those fragments in new bodies, gave them new faces, and turned them into what they were now: semi-artificial wizards.
Tom Riddle shuddered at the thought.
That girl. Her methods were genuinely vicious.
Those dark wizards, their bodies had been used to pad Lockhart's battle record, and now their souls were being pressed into service as actors. Thoroughly, efficiently used.
Utterly diabolical.
God, just go ahead and become the Dark Lord yourself.
But it was precisely that ruthlessness that made the performance so convincing. He had to give her that.
"I want to be onstage too..."
Tom Riddle sighed and went back to work.
Still, all things considered, this "performance" had gone remarkably well. Looking at those S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, every jaw hanging open, every face blank with shock, it was obvious they'd been completely taken in.
He knew what that meant. With this debut a success, more wizards would start appearing in this world. More and more of them, all of them under Hermione's control.
As for Malekith, he'd always been a one-time asset. The moment he finished his role as the villain, Hermione had crushed his Horcrux and absorbed it herself.
Just then, Hermione's voice surfaced in his mind.
"How are preparations for the next act coming along?"
"Everything's ready," Tom Riddle replied. "With 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' from the 'Ministry of Magic' lending his assistance, HYDRA's side has the script and actors in place. We're just waiting for Alexander Pierce to make his move."
...
News of the Convergence broke across the globe and sent shockwaves through every nation.
The world grew more uneasy by the hour.
This was the second alien invasion Earth had suffered, the first being the Chitauri.
And the World Security Council had once again contributed absolutely nothing, watching from the sidelines the entire time. After the nuclear incident, most people already had little faith in them. Now they were considered outright useless.
The one who had turned the tide was, as always, Miss Witch.
And this time, the world learned something else: Miss Witch wasn't alone. She had kin. There were other wizards.
There was one difference from before, though. Last time, Miss Witch had kept her face hidden. This time, she'd stepped right in front of the cameras.
That face, beautiful, youthful, almost absurdly pretty, instantly won over a massive wave of admirers.
"Long live Miss Witch!"
"Miss Witch is my god!"
Chants like these rang out in city after city, country after country.
A significant portion of the population had become devoted to the idea of magic. Some went further, founding bizarre new movements, building shrines, treating Hermione as a literal deity.
On the other side, plenty of people were deeply unsettled. If wizards were always going to protect humanity, fine. But what if one day they decided to rule instead? Wouldn't that be more terrifying than any alien fleet?
That argument spread fast. Panic followed close behind.
But on one point, the world was unanimous:
Thor, the self-proclaimed God of Thunder, had performed terribly against the Dark Elves. The damage extended to the Avengers by association. Doubt had set in.
Miss Witch's power had already placed her in a category entirely beyond theirs.
...
Hermione wasn't paying attention to any of it. Right now she was aboard the Bus, Skye attached to her side, gripping her hand, talking at full speed with no signs of stopping.
"Hermione, Hermione — you're actually Miss Witch? That is so cool, oh my god!"
Skye looked like she'd discovered a new continent. Her eyes were bright, practically vibrating, as if she wanted to take Hermione apart and examine every piece.
Unlike the others, learning Hermione's identity hadn't made Skye awkward or guarded in the slightest. If anything, it had made her worse. She'd grabbed Hermione immediately and started firing questions.
"So can you conjure things? Like, can you make a unicorn appear? Can I see one?"
Hermione pressed her hand to her forehead.
Skye showed no sign of running out of material.
"I want to learn magic! I'm going to be a hacker-witch!"
Hermione's mouth twitched.
She knew what a dark wizard was. What on earth was a hacker-witch?
"Skye," Hermione said, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but wizards are born, not made. It comes from bloodline. It's not like hacking — you can't learn your way into it."
"What? Bloodline?"
Skye blinked. Her face fell.
"So... I'm never going to learn magic? Not ever?"
She looked at Hermione with wide, mournful eyes.
Don't worry, Hermione thought. You have a different kind of bloodline waiting for you.
But she kept that to herself.
Skye bounced back a second later, clapping her hands together.
"You know what, forget it! Even if I can't do magic, I can still be your number one fan!"
She threw her arms around Hermione and yanked her in, burying Hermione's face directly into her chest.
During her time with the Rising Tide, Skye had spent months trying to figure out who Miss Witch really was, she was practically the definition of a superfan. The fact that her idol had been right beside her the whole time was almost too much to handle.
➤ Next: The S.H.I.E.L.D. Team's New Mission
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
Enjoying the story?
Read 130+ chapters ahead on Patreon.
Join the free community tier for early access to the latest updates:
patreon(.)com/DarkGolds