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Earth. Sokovia.
A ship hung motionless in the upper sky, its cloaking engaged, dissolving smoothly into the surrounding atmosphere.
Hermione stood on the bridge with her eyes closed, sensing for the diary Horcrux, its location, its state.
The signal pointed down. To the war-battered Eastern European city below.
Her figure vanished from the ship.
An instant later, she reappeared without a sound near an abandoned church in Sokovia. She pulled every trace of her presence inward and fixed her gaze on the church's interior.
The dome had caved in. Sunlight fell through the wreckage of stained glass and painted three figures across the floor.
A middle-aged woman in purple robes, her hair fanned out loose like a broom's bristles, hovered in mid-air. Dense violet magic surged around her like a tide, crashing relentlessly against Tom Riddle on the ground below.
Black mist coiled around him, holding stubbornly against the purple energy's erosion. Where the two forces met they crackled and hissed.
Behind him stood a young woman in a red leather coat, slender, lovely, and clearly terrified. She had both hands locked around Tom Riddle's arm, her body trembling, her eyes fixed on the floating woman with naked fear.
"Give it up, young man," the purple-robed woman said. "Your resistance is pointless. You are no match for me. Hand over the girl behind you, and I'll let you walk away."
The woman in red gripped harder.
She didn't understand any of this. She was no one. An ordinary girl. So why had this terrifying woman come for her?
"Please." Her voice shook. "Don't hand me over to this madwoman..."
Tom Riddle didn't look back. He simply laid a hand over hers — easy, unhurried — and patted it once.
"Don't be afraid." His voice held no urgency at all. His eyes, fixed on the woman above, were full of contempt. "I can already feel the real madwoman getting closer. Compared to her, this one here..." He let the pause breathe. "Probably doesn't qualify for the title."
He let that land, then his gaze sharpened.
"In all my years, no one has ever dared threaten me quite like this." A slight pause. "Well. I should be precise. One person has. And she succeeded. But that person is definitely not you."
The purple-robed woman's brow creased.
This young man's endurance was beyond what she'd expected. She could feel the formidable power contained inside him, but it was unlike any magical system she'd encountered. Nothing she could categorize. And no matter how hard she pressed, she couldn't draw it out the way she did with other sorcerers, couldn't absorb a single thread of it. His energy existed as a closed system, refusing any outside assimilation.
No matter. She wasn't worried. She could see him depleting. All she had to do was keep pushing. His defenses would break, it was only a question of when.
"Talking tough won't save you." She snorted and pushed more power into the stream.
The black mist around Tom Riddle shuddered, thinned. It was nearly gone.
The moment the purple-robed woman decided victory was secured and drew back to launch the finishing blow, Tom Riddle dropped all resistance at once. The violet energy washed over him unchecked.
She blinked. "Finally giving up?"
A smile crossed her face. He'd reached his limit at last.
But Tom Riddle's expression held no despair. What it held was a slow, strange smile that mirrored her own.
"Giving up? Yes," he said quietly. "Because the person who's going to handle you just arrived."
"What?"
Alarm rang through her. She snapped her gaze upward.
A cool voice dropped from above, calm, and carrying the faintest edge of amusement.
"You touched my people. Did you think to ask me first?"
A figure had materialized in the open air above the church, positioned directly overhead. A black witch's robe moved without any wind. Beneath the hood, a pair of quiet eyes looked down at her, steady, and very deep.
The instant the purple-robed woman saw the face, her pupils shrank.
"The Dark Witch?!"
Hermione heard that and paused.
Dark Witch. Someone had given her a new nickname.
Still, she thought. Better than Cabbage Witch.
The corner of her mouth lifted, her voice unhurried. "So you know me. Good. That makes this easier..."
"Agatha Harkness."
The name hit Agatha like a physical blow.
Not only did this woman know her, she had said her true name without a moment's hesitation.
Agatha's gaze dropped to Tom Riddle below, and understanding clicked into place. That was why he had been so impossible to break. He wasn't some self-taught amateur. He belonged to the same mysterious, powerful clan of witches as the Dark Witch above her.
Witches.
After that cataclysmic Convergence event, after the battle between S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA that followed, this group, hidden for centuries, had finally been dragged into full view. The entire world now knew they existed.
Agatha had lived for hundreds of years. She had always believed she understood every magical power on Earth. The rigid sorcerers of Kamar-Taj, the scattered independent practitioners, she knew them all. But this witch clan had appeared as if from nowhere, as if they had simply not existed until the moment they chose to be seen. She had felt nothing. Not a trace.
And their power. Looking at this Dark Witch, looking at that infuriatingly resilient young man, the strangeness of their magic, the sheer scale of it, sent a chill through her. She was beginning to suspect that even Kamar-Taj's orthodox sorcerers couldn't match what this clan possessed.
"You..." Agatha forced her composure back into place. "How could you possibly know—"
"You actually showed your face," Hermione said evenly. "Aren't you afraid of Rio and the Salem Coven coming after you?"
Agatha went completely still.
Salem. Rio.
Names buried in the deepest part of her memory. Names that belonged to her darkest past. This witch had said them the way someone might comment on the weather.
Agatha had lived centuries. She had spent them believing she had scrubbed every trace of that history clean, that she had hidden herself among humanity without a seam. And yet here was a girl who looked no older than fifteen or sixteen, peeling back her most buried secrets without any apparent effort.
"How do you know that?"
The purple magic around her flickered. Just slightly. Just enough to see.
Hermione's eyes were calm.
"Your history is not a secret to the Ministry of Magic. Did you actually think you were hidden?"
For a long moment, Agatha felt the figure before her, and the clan standing behind her, become something she couldn't measure. Something that didn't have a bottom.
She stopped asking. The answer didn't matter now.
This woman was standing between her and the girl she needed. There was only one thing left to do.
➤ Next: The Darkhold
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