After three years of writing fanfiction, I have come to the conclusion that I do a lot of really terrible things to the characters I love. Is that bad? I wanna say... no?
This story is non epilogue compliant for the Harry Potter canon. Post the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione goes to Australia to retrieve her parents, but is caught by a magic users body trafficking ring of non-specific origins and sold on to Project Koschei, an offshoot of Hydra. For time purposes, I have pushed the events of Harry Potter back by approximately two years, meaning that the Battle of Hogwarts occurred in 1996. Thus, all of the characters in canon are two years older that they would normally have been. Hope that doesn't go ruffling up too many feathers :P
So this story is pre Avengers AoU- in that it diverges from the canon and acts as though the events of the movie did not happen. It is post CACW, and the storyline diverges off from Agents of Shield S02E10- Skye has her powers, but has at some point learnt how to control them. Mack and Bobbi are still around and totes not doing anything suspicious. And we're also going to pretend that that thing at the end of ep10 with Trip absolutely never happened.
WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER AND AGENTS OF SHIELD S1
I want to put in here too, that the pairing for this is actually Hermoine/Bucky Barnes; I would have put in in the character list, but FFN doesn't actually have him in there, which is extremely frustrating.
March 18th 2016; 0236 Hours
Dresden's Hydra base is semi-abandoned, according to their intelligence.
Only it isn't, they quickly learn; and when they get out of this shithole, Bucky resolves to find out which poor bastard thought it was and give them a thorough kick up the ass. The place is crawling with Hydra operatives- which normally he'd have found odd because the facility is on the small side, but this is one of the last bolt holes left in Europe, and all the slimy bastards that have escaped their previous raids have ended up here, it seems. Honestly he's surprised (and maybe a little suspicious) that none of them worked it out before they started the raid. It would have saved Bucky the headache, at any rate.
According to the original plans, Bucky and Natalia are responsible for intel retrieval; sweeping in after an auspicious entrance from Steve and Co (there were a number of explosions involved) to wipe out remnant agents still in hiding and retrieve any information they could from the base's aged systems. Their task is forced onto the backburner for a good long while to deal with the unexpected number of Hydra agents, and neither have the chance to get to the comms room.
But that's okay; Bucky is nothing if not adaptable.
They head for the communications room almost on instinct. They've been to a lot of bases in the last ten months; it hadn't taken long to work out that Hydra has a formula that they like to stick to when it comes to base layout.
A woman lurches out of a room, eyes wide. She holds a gun; her hands only tremble slightly. She has the look of a scientist or technician, with her thick black-framed glasses and slight heels. Natalia is on her in an instant and Bucky forces his way past them into the comms room. This section of the base has been largely empty, filled mostly with labs that at this time of night (or morning) are naturally empty.
He shoots the two men inside point blank, baring his teeth at the sharp pain the spreads from his right arm- one of the techs had managed to get a shot out before he'd killed him. The wound is only a scratch, but it's annoying nonetheless.
He takes in their target; it's a control room, and the walls are covered in computer screens for surveillance (a part of him despairs at how poorly protected it was). A number of them show only static- Clint's work, no doubt. He pulls out his usb, plugging it into the first port he can find and wait for the virus on the drive to do the rest. The virus corrupts all the files and non-essential programs it can reach- irreversible by anyone not on his team and ultimately leaving each Hydra base dead in the water. It's Stark make and infallible; according to Stark, at least. He's not so sure about the infallible part, but it's worked so far.
His eyes slide over what are left of the screens. One room catches his eye, but his more immediate concern is the pack of operatives headed straight for Sam and that SHIELD girl, Skye.
"Sam, you've got five hostiles heading straight for you. Automatics, by the looks of it."
"On it." Sam hisses through his earpiece. On the screen, the pair turn and move into one an empty corridor to ambush the men. Bucky smiles grimly; he's confident in their abilities.
Natasha saunters in, dragging the bound and gagged woman in behind her, "Anything good?"
He shakes his head, but his eyes stray back to the screen, thinking. In his ear he can hear that the raid is wrapping up, and the virus takes barely a minute to cripple all of Hydra's systems.
"Most of the labs were cleared out a while ago, I think. Nonessential activities."
Natasha hums, eyes to the monitors, "That's what two bit here said too." He stands. Her eyes narrow, "Where are you going?"
He glances back at her from the door, "I wanna check something out. Shouldn't be long."
Natasha stares at him a long moment, and nods, "Don't do something dumb."
He waves a hand in acknowledgement and walks out.
He doesn't come across anyone else; most combatants have gone to seek their noisier companions, and the ones that are still left are likely battling it out with the likes of the skeleton crew of the Avengers or Coulson's posse. The room he seeks is on the level below this one; mostly store rooms and sleeping quarters. He glides past the empty rooms, checking inside each more as a precaution than anyone else.
The room is at the end of the long hall. It spans the whole of the end wall. A metal door is all that show's there is something there.
He knows what's in there. Has woken up in rooms like these for decades.
He doesn't bother with the electronic pad- just wedges his hands into the cracks of the doorway and tears it off. The hiss of ruined hydraulics is supremely satisfying. He can't even bring himself to care too much about the deafening crash of metal on concrete- there are too few Hydra operatives left to be a threat, anyway.
There is no startled cry from within. The room is empty; empty but for the tank, and the bone white operating table and the mountains of medical machinery that rest around the tank like dead insects.
A rage settles within him at the sight of it all; deep and profound, it thrums in his chest- white hot. He wonders if it had been destined for him. The thought of awakening from that cold again is as sickening as it is terrifying.
He advances- intent on dismantling it- when in a fit of horror he realises that the sarcophagi is on. He draws in a surprised breath. He should have known Hydra would have made more like him.
Bucky draws closer- memories drawing up to the surface like bloated corpses. He can feel the cold now, and his shoulder gives off a phantom ache at the observation. There is a glass window on one end, where he assumes the head is. It is covered in a thin layer of ice and he wipes away the small ice crystals with his flesh hand.
He stares. Her face through the frost-free glass that burns with cold is serene- almost friendly. He doesn't remember it looking like that in life. Eyes closed, she could almost be asleep; were it not for the unnatural stillness, the hum of machinery and the pallor of a bloodless body.
Is this what he had looked like? Frozen still, like a snapshot of a memory?
Perhaps.
All he remembers of the process is the blinding pain, as his body healed the damage the cold had rent on him. Hydra never bothered to keep him under during the thawing process, preferring instead to paralyse him as they replaced the antifreeze in his veins with blood and warmed his body. Each time he went under was like dying, to him. Dying, before being reborn in the blaze of fire, like a phoenix from the ashes.
He remembers her face; pale, thin, with dead brown eyes and hair cropped short around her face. In life it was almost as still as it is in this eerie simulacra of death. He remembers the absent face and the sharp, dead eyes, contrasting so oddly with the uncontrollable curls of brown hair that sat on her forehead, untouched and ignored. It's different now- her hair is longer- jaw length, curling behind her ears- and whatever had happened after they'd worked together had lost her an eye. The absence of scarring around her left eye socket unnerves him more than he imagines the scars would.
He remembers her.
The Morrigan.
The Morrigan, from Wikipedia: 'the primary themes associated with the Morrígan are battle, strife, and sovereignty. She sometimes appears in the form of a crow, flying above the warriors, and in the Ulster Cycle she also takes the forms of an eel, a wolf and a cow. She is generally considered a war deity comparable with the Germanic Valkyries, although her association with a cow may also suggest a role connected with wealth and the land.'