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Fury let out a slow breath.
"This isn't some street-corner fortune-telling booth, Tony. This is a wizard's prophecy. We can't just ignore it."
Tony sat bolt upright, heat already climbing into his voice.
"So what?"
"Just because these backstabbing bastards, probably looking to get back at Hermione, tossed out some convenient 'prophecy,' we're supposed to start doubting her?"
"They just got done colluding with Hydra, wrecking your S.H.I.E.L.D., and nearly blowing both of us sky-high. And now, because of what's probably a revenge play and nothing more, you're switching sides?"
He jabbed a finger at his own chest.
"How many times has Hermione pulled us through? New York. London. And now this. She has never once turned on us."
"Now she's buried in trouble, at the exact moment she needs backup, and you're the first one jumping up, ready to swallow the enemy's story and put a knife in her back too?"
Fury's jaw tightened, his voice dropping low.
"That's not what I meant, Tony."
"I trust Hermione. But preparing for the worst is my job. You always need a contingency."
Tony shoved to his feet, both hands flat on the table, looming over Fury.
"Then your contingencies don't have much to show for themselves, do they? They barely did a damn thing. You almost got turned into Swiss cheese. S.H.I.E.L.D. was crawling with moles. And in the end, it was Hermione who cleaned up the whole mess. Alone."
"She, alone, under an Anti-Magic Array, tore apart three Magic Helicarriers, dropped eighteen wizards, and personally dealt with that pretentious jackass Tom Riddle."
"And now someone drops a half-baked 'Witch's Prophecy' on your desk, and you're shaking?"
"You're already back to plotting your 'preparations'?"
"Preparing for what, exactly? Preparing to go after her?"
The conference room went dead silent.
Banner shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Steve's brow was furrowed deep, like he was somewhere else entirely. Natasha's expression hadn't moved a millimeter.
Everyone understood why Tony had gone off like that.
Among the leaked files, it had come out that Tony's parents were assassinated by Hydra. His contempt for a Ministry of Magic that had gotten into bed with Hydra was obvious. And of everyone in that room, Tony was the one closest to Hermione.
Steve was barely present.
After the S.H.I.E.L.D. battle wrapped up, that little chrome-dome Jasper Sitwell had quietly tracked him down and handed over a set of classified files.
He hadn't been right since.
Because those files were about the mysterious man, the one who kept coming up again and again.
Right now his whole head was full of his best friend. There was no room left for anything else.
If Tony ever found out it was Bucky who killed his parents... Steve couldn't even let himself finish the thought.
He didn't dare say a single word. He was doing his best to disappear into the furniture.
Banner didn't have strong feelings about the argument either way. Of all the people in this room, he had the most ordinary-person instincts.
Still, the Ministry of Magic crowd, colluding with Hydra, stabbing people in the back, they didn't exactly look like the good guys from any angle.
Watching that unhinged Ministry of Magic in action, he kept coming back to the same conclusion: Hermione was the better option.
Sure, she'd once made him eat slugs. But she'd also fought right alongside him. They were teammates.
And she was good-looking. That counted for something.
Natasha finally spoke, cutting cleanly through the argument.
Her voice wasn't raised. It reached every corner of the room anyway.
"Regardless of the prophecy, the Ministry of Magic crossed a line this time. They broke their own rules. They openly interfered in mundane affairs. They got into bed with Hydra."
"This is not a simple conflict anymore."
Tony let out a low sound of agreement.
Natasha kept going.
"If this is genuinely the precursor to a Third Wizarding War, and if it doesn't stay contained to the wizarding world the way the first two did..."
"Then there's no staying out of it."
Her gaze moved across the room, and settled on Fury.
"We don't have the luxury of neutrality. We pick a side, or we get buried. Those are the options."
Silence.
Natasha looked at Tony, then back at Fury.
"Arguing over whether the prophecy is real is a waste of time. Even if it is real, stopping it is not something we get to decide. That's above our weight class."
"However you 'prepare,' Fury, we only have one actual choice. Support Hermione. Isn't that right?"
No one objected. She continued.
"Hermione has changed a lot over the years, it's true. From that fairly straightforward, idealistic girl she used to be, she's become..." Natasha paused, reaching for the word. "...difficult to read."
She hadn't been able to say unhinged. Not out loud.
"You could even say — a little frightening."
She added it as a quiet footnote, acknowledging what both Tony and Fury had been thinking without saying.
"Maybe it's the influence of dark magic. But she hasn't changed toward us. Not once. Whatever else is true, we shouldn't be the ones pulling back from her."
...
Greenwich. Inside the hidden pocket of the "Hogwarts" secret realm.
Hermione, Luna, and Tom were gathered.
"So." Tom wore the expression of a man who had just given the performance of his life and knew it. The excitement on his face was barely contained. "How was my acting?"
He was clearly still savoring every moment. The whole thing had gotten under his skin in a way that surprised even him, this feeling of pulling strings, of dangling the world on a thread and watching it dance.
So this is what it's like to play the puppeteer. Standing in the shadows, moving pieces.
Wasn't this infinitely more satisfying than being some Dark Lord out in the open?
And even though the script called for his character to lose face, he'd been playing the Ministry of Magic, those insufferable, self-righteous fools he'd always despised. Watching them eat dirt through his own performance? That felt like a personal victory. Dream, officially achieved.
Hermione rolled her eyes. She hadn't even gotten a word in before Luna tilted her head to one side and said, quite simply:
"But Tom, you look like a villain. Right away."
The smile on Tom's face locked in place and died there.
That one landed.
Luna's words had no malice in them whatsoever, just that breezy, guileless delivery that made it completely impossible to be angry at her. The observation floated out of her like she was commenting on the weather.
Tom coughed twice, suddenly finding something very interesting to look at in another direction.
He had years of experience handling the brooding, resentful type, Helena, the Grey Lady, all of that. That was a known quantity.
But Luna. Luna was something else entirely. She operated on a frequency he couldn't locate. Completely unpredictable, naturally strange, no social patterns to predict against. He genuinely had no idea what to do with her.
As for Hermione, Tom glanced at her, sitting composed and unbothered beside him, and quietly buried any passing thought of trying to charm his way past her.
That woman's ambition ran deeper than anything he'd ever encountered. The handsome-man approach would get him absolutely nowhere. If someone genuinely tried their luck with her, they'd probably have their skull caved in before they finished the sentence. No exceptions. No second outcomes.
"Ahem." Tom changed course, looking at Hermione with something between confusion and genuine curiosity. "Seriously, though. Why go to all this trouble manufacturing a factional divide?"
"With the power you have right now, you could just sweep through everything. Establish order. Rule the world outright. Why all this effort?"
The corner of Hermione's mouth curved upward. She turned to explain it to her number-one general.
"Direct rule sounds efficient. It isn't. If I step into the center, every pair of eyes in the world locks onto me. All the discontent. All the resistance. It all flows straight at one target."
"Even if I hold it together through sheer force, the people below will drag their feet, do the bare minimum, and secretly start building coalitions the moment my back is turned. Always looking for the crack to push through."
She paused.
"But if I create two factions, two sides that hate each other, that see each other as an existential threat that must be destroyed?"
"The conflict stops being them against me. It becomes them against each other."
"I exist as a symbol. A banner. What's actually happening is a human civil war, same as always."
"For their own survival. For profit. Because they're terrified of being purged if the other side wins, they'll pour themselves into strengthening their faction. Willingly. Desperately."
"They'll fight for themselves. Work for themselves. Push with everything they have because they believe it."
Hermione's voice stayed even throughout. But underneath the calm was something cold, something that had looked at humanity and understood it from the outside in.
"Tell me, which approach gets more out of them?"
"Which one makes them willing, even fanatical, about being useful to me?"
"In reality, both factions are mine. Every person on either side is working for me. But the second approach —" a slight tilt of her head, as if the answer were obvious, "— isn't it far more efficient?"
➤ Next: Thor's Earnest Invitation
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