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Hermione said no more. A flick of her wand.
An invisible force rippled outward.
"Hey, wait—!"
Tony barely got half a shout out before something like a giant invisible hand swatted him sideways, armor and all, hurling him hundreds of meters back.
Hermione looked up.
Above her hung that massive canopy of runes, the Anti-Magic Array, vast and humming, woven from nothing but sigils and stolen light.
She raised her wand and pointed it straight at the sky.
A beam erupted from the tip. Unlike anything she'd cast before, it was every color at once, a churning column of raw magic that shrieked upward into the array above.
Not at an enemy. Straight up. Into the array itself.
HUM,
The magic circle shuddered like something had been injected straight into its core. Its rotation slammed faster. The deep blue glow turned blinding.
The moment the multicolored beam made contact, the array devoured it, greedily, desperately, pulling every lumen of color into itself and swallowing it whole.
The energy readings climbed. Visibly. Second by second.
On the deck, the wizards maintaining the array went very still.
She was giving up resistance. Voluntarily feeding them her power.
Hermione's lips curled. "You like absorbing? Fine. Absorb your fill."
They were drinking her dry, and she opened the tap wider.
The beam thickened. Magic poured upward in an unbroken torrent, slamming into the array in relentless cascading waves.
Below, across the city, thousands of people stood frozen on streets and rooftops, necks craned back, watching a pillar of light punch through the sky. Dazzling even at midday. Impossible to look away.
Time passed.
On the deck, the wizards' faces began to change.
Sweat broke cold across their foreheads. The hands gripping their wands started to shake.
Tom Riddle's brow pulled tight. Then, something shifted. His pupils snapped to pinpoints.
"Impossible!" The word tore out of him. "How can your power be this strong?!"
Hermione smiled. Her voice carried to every single person in earshot.
"You like absorbing, don't you?"
"Then let's find out, do you Aurors burst first, or does my magic run dry?"
The words had barely landed.
Across the surface of all three Sky Carriers, the alchemical array-lines erupted in blinding white light, stuttering, surging, flickering wildly like faulty bulbs about to blow.
Then came the sounds.
CRACK. CRACK.
"Stop!" Riddle's composure shattered. The calculation in his eyes vanished, replaced by pure horror. "Cut the absorption — stop NOW, cut it—!"
He screamed it hoarse.
Too late.
Fractures raced across the hulls of all three carriers at once, spreading in an instant like shattered glass.
BOOM!
The sound hit before the light.
Then the light took everything.
All three Sky Carriers detonated simultaneously in midair, tearing themselves apart in massive overlapping explosions. Burning metal fragments blasted outward in every direction, wreathed in wild surges of blue energy. The shockwave swept the sky clean, clouds vaporized, debris scattered for kilometers, and for one moment the whole world was nothing but roaring, rolling fire and a rain of falling steel.
Tony was already moving. He punched through the turbulence, caught Steve with one arm, and pulled him clear of the worst of the debris field.
"Okay. Just unconscious. Good."
He let out a slow breath.
Steve shook his head, blinking. The explosion had rattled him thoroughly. He came back to himself mid-air, disoriented, and found he was being cradled against Tony's armored chest, face to face with that oversized iron mask.
"...Thanks."
"Don't mention it. Wire the rescue fee to my account when you're feeling better."
In the wreckage where the Sky Carriers had been, the Ministry wizards who'd been so untouchable minutes ago were now writhing in midair, convulsing, twisting on themselves. Threads of black mist coiled around them like something alive, sinking in, not letting go.
Their screaming carried a long way.
"So." Hermione watched them with an easy smile. "How does it feel? Being backlashed by my own magic?"
Riddle's face was ugly. Then, with visible effort, he smoothed it back to calm.
"Miss Granger. Your growth has exceeded my projections." He let the admission sit for a moment. "Single-handedly backlashing eighteen senior Aurors and three specially-built alchemical carriers, the witch from the prophecy lives up to her name."
A pause. Something sharp moved through his eyes.
"However." His voice dropped. "You forced the Anti-Magic Array to its breaking point and took the full recoil. How much do you actually have left?" He tilted his head. "I think I'll have to see you off myself."
He raised his wand.
"Blasting Curse!"
A fireball the size of a car detonated against her shield and died.
For one instant, neither of them moved. The air between them felt solid.
Then the battle broke open.
Riddle thrust his wand forward. A beam of light ripped through the sky, aimed straight at her. Hermione flickered, there and then not there, leaving an afterimage where she'd stood. The beam punched through empty air, hit a building two blocks away, and melted a black crater through it clean.
They moved too fast to track. Each time one appeared it was accompanied by an eruption of color and force, ice slamming into fire, light crashing through shadow, lightning splitting the air, wind screaming between them. The shockwaves from each exchange pushed outward from where they fought, tearing the Sky Carrier wreckage apart further, hollowing out a vacuum zone kilometers across. The buildings below crumbled and came apart under the dispersing energy like they were made of chalk.
On the ground, every gun went down. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and HYDRA soldiers alike had stopped firing, stopped moving, stopped everything. They just stared upward.
The sky was on fire with color. Too much to process. Too much to take in.
None of them had ever seen wizards fight. Some of them had thought they'd been ready for it.
They hadn't been.
"God." Natasha had stopped moving at some point, standing beside a HYDRA operative neither of them had noticed. Both of them were just watching the sky. "So this is what it looks like..."
No S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore. No HYDRA. Just humans, standing on the ground, watching something else entirely.
The light began to fade.
When it was over, Riddle hung in the air, pale and ragged, barely managing to hold himself to a half-kneel. His breathing came in shallow bursts.
He'd lost. Badly.
"You had your magic drained by the Anti-Magic Array." Disbelief edged everything he said. "You took the full recoil. How do you still have that much power? How is that possible?"
Hermione's laugh was light, almost fond.
"Senior Riddle. People improve."
"You spent the last year entrenching yourself in the Ministry, playing politics, and you didn't bother keeping up with your actual strength?"
He stared at her. His eyes were cold and vicious and calculating even now.
"Granger." It came out low. "You're formidable. I'll give you that." A beat. "But you don't have the strength to lock down space anymore. Do you."
His silhouette twisted and vanished.
Apparition.
The sky was empty.
Hermione stood alone in the wreckage-strewn air, surrounded by smoke and falling debris and the distant sound of things still burning.
Silence.
Everyone below looked up at her. That single figure against the ruined sky. Their chests were full of something they didn't have words for, shock, relief, the bone-deep gratitude of people who'd just watched a disaster happen to someone else.
"Phew." Tony came up beside her. He looked her over once, twice, visibly relieved to find her intact. "You won. How'd you not just finish him?"
Hermione glanced sideways at him. "He was right about that part. I burned through too much. By the end I couldn't lock space, couldn't stop him from Apparating out." She paused. "He got away."
On the other side of the city, on the rooftop of the Triskelion.
Alexander Pierce watched the sky and the last color left his face entirely.
The Ministry of Magic. Even the Ministry had failed.
Despair moved through his eyes, and then was swallowed by something else. Madness. Fury. Refusal.
His hand went to his pocket. Yanked out his phone. His fingers shook over the screen.
BANG!
One shot.
Natasha had materialized behind him without a sound. The barrel of her gun still trailed smoke.
Pierce looked down at the hole in his chest with an expression that hadn't caught up to what had happened yet. His body swayed. He went down. The phone skidded from his hand.
Natasha stepped over him and picked it up.
The screen was still lit. A progress bar sat at the top, data uploading.
She read fast. Her face went still.
"Damn it." She pressed the communicator. "Before he died, Pierce uploaded every classified S.H.I.E.L.D. file to the internet. Personnel records. Agent identities. Everything."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is blown. All of it."
Fury's voice came back quiet, flat, wrung out. "I know."
"That's not the worst part."
Natasha's eyes dropped back to the phone.
"He uploaded something else. Something separate." A beat.
"It's about Hermione."
➤ Next: Luna and the S.H.I.E.L.D. Team
[FULL STORY ACCESS]
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