23 June 2016
After Hermione had left Steve, Bucky, and Wilson in the garage, she Apparated back to her hotel room. She sorted out what she would wear for a fight against super soldiers and added an Undetectable Extension Charm to one of the pockets stitched on the front of her jacket. Then she sought out the magical enclave in Berlin. With a Featherlight Charm on her suitcase, she posted it back home. The poor owl would have to make a few stops along the way but she couldn't see the point in buying two more Portkeys to get her home and then back here just to take her suitcase home. At the apothecary, Hermione purchased some Dittany and a few other first-aid potions. Any of the more deadly potions or poisons she could think to use against five super soldiers were too complicated or would take too long to make.
She then went into their darker shops and inquired about buying a Boggart. The shopkeep looked at her like she'd lost her mind but she was sure he probably had one in one of the cupboards in the back. With the right amount of gold, she was able to convince the shopkeep to part with the Boggart and an empty black glass jar. She enlarged it near the cupboard and ushered the Boggart out of the cupboard and into the jar without giving it a chance to change into anything. She then shrunk the jar and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket. She knew a Boggart wouldn't slow anyone down for long but it might give a super soldier pause seeing as how they wouldn't be able to kill it. She had no idea what a HYDRA super soldier would be afraid of.
She knew her own fears.
Not that she could defeat a Boggart in the traditional sense. She could, however, muster up enough courage to contain the amortal creature back in its new home if need be.
As she laid down for the night, she cast a Point-Me Spell for Bucky. Her wand spun on her palm, so she knew they were out of the city. She hoped they would find a place to bed down for the night and didn't sleep in whatever car they had decided to steal.
It was early in the morning when Hermione checked out of her hotel with an illusion of a suitcase so as to not attract attention. She used her phone to check Google Maps and picked a spot near the airport where she was meant to meet Steve's crew. With a quick glance around to check for cameras or people, she Apparated to the spot she picked. At her new location, she again checked for cameras before determining that she'd done well with her Apparition choice. Google Maps were so much easier than topography maps.
She headed for the parking garage to wait for the rest of the team.
She was sitting against a yellow bollard near the entrance of the multi-story car park under a Disillusionment Charm when an unmarked white van drove up and parked on the end of a row. No one got out. She wondered if this was Clint and Wanda.
Half an hour later, a dark blue Volkswagen drove in, taking the corner fast. They parked two spaces away from the van. Steve got out at the same time the van's driver side door opened. As the group were exiting the vehicles, Steve looked up and around. When his gaze stopped to rest on her invisible form, she pursed her lips. She was going to have to ask him how he did that. He tipped his chin up and she stood and walked closer, letting the Disillusionment Charm fade as she did so.
The four other people turned to look at her and Wilson said, "You're going to have to tell me how you do that. Is that your superpower?"
The woman was looking at her with her head tipped to the side. "I can't see inside your head." She sounded nervous.
"Be thankful for that," Hermione answered her, ignoring Wilson. He still looked peeved with her. She supposed she should apologize for disappearing on him whenever she got the chance. "So what's the plan?" she asked, looking at the team Steve had pulled together. Her gaze caught on Bucky. He looked better, cleaner. He was staring at her warily. She took a deep breath and returned her attention to Steve. He was looking at her oddly as well, almost like his big heart was breaking as he realised Bucky didn't recognise her.
She hadn't truly expected him to, she'd even told herself so in Romania when she'd sought him out. It didn't hurt any less to see it.
"I've got a chopper lined up," the older man, Clint, said.
Steve was nodding, "We'll get in battle gear to be ready in case the doctor has the Winter Soldiers awake by the time we get there."
There was a click and the loudspeaker in the car park turned on. The airport was being evacuated. Bucky translated the German for everyone else.
"Stark," Steve said, sharing a look with Wilson.
"That changes the game plan," Clint said. "They'll have come on a Quinjet, most likely."
"And that helicopter you lined up will be a diversion. We just need to find which hanger has the Quinjet," Steve said. He looked at Wilson and then back over his shoulder at Bucky. "Suit up. We'll split up. You two, Clint and Wanda, and I'll spring their trap."
"And me?" Hermione asked, grinning.
"You'll be beside me, Millie," he gestured with his hand, "With that invisible trick if you will."
"Whatever you need, Captain."
While Steve changed into his battle gear in the van, Wanda and Clint stood outside, still staring at her with thinly veiled distrust. "So, who are you? What's your schtick?" Clint asked as he handed her a comms device for her ear.
She answered as she put it in place. "Mildred Carter. Espionage, among other talents."
He frowned and asked, "Do you have body armour or anything you need to change in to?"
"I'm pretty good at not being touched."
The van door slid open on its track and Steve stepped out. His uniform was darker than she remembered. He stepped aside and Bucky climbed in the van and pulled the door shut behind him. When he emerged Hermione couldn't help but look him over. He was thicker than he was back in the war. Arms, chest, even his thighs were heavy with muscle. When she happened to look back up at his face he was watching her again.
"All right, let's do this," Steve said.
Hermione Disillusioned herself and moved to stand beside him. He watched her for a moment and she caught a glimpse of Bucky looking in her direction as well. Something about her was giving away her position. She'd have to ask later. She walked in time with Steve out towards the helicopter and sped up when he started jogging. He didn't flat out run; she didn't think she would be able to keep up with him if he did.
As predicted, Iron Man—Stark—and one of his buddies stopped Steve from reaching the helicopter. Their robotic suits looked heavy even as the landed nimbly on the ground. Stark made a quip about running into people at the airport and Steve tried to explain what they were up against. Stark ignored him and continued his highspeed rambling, talking about how someone named Ross had given him thirty-six hours to find them.
Steve, again, tried to explain but was interrupted when two others joined Stark. The man in black that had given chase in Bucharest and the redheaded woman Hermione recognised from Avengers footage as the Black Widow. "You know what's about to happen," the Black Widow said. "Do you really want to punch your way out of this one?"
Before Steve really had a chance to answer, Stark mumbled something about patience and called, "Underoos!" A thin, petite man used something to snatch Steve's shield. Whatever it was, he used some to also bound Steve's hands.
"You've been busy," Steve said to Stark.
"And you've been a complete idiot. Dragging in Clint, rescuing Wanda from a place she doesn't even want to leave—a safe place!—I'm trying to keep—" he paused, seemingly overcome with emotion, "I'm trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart."
"You did that when you signed," Steve said. Hermione thought of all the Magicals that the Accords could—would—effect. She agreed with him.
"You're going to turn Barnes over! You're going to come with us now because it's us!" Stark demanded. Hermione was focusing on the way the man in black was shifting on his feet and the way the Black Widow was shifting into a fighting stance behind Steve.
The comms device in her ear crackled to life and Hermione heard Wilson in duplicate from both hers and Steve's, "Found it. The Quinjet's in hanger five, north runway."
Steve raised his arms and an arrow broke through the material keeping his hands bound. "All right, Millie," he murmured.
Hermione summoned the SHIELD from the small man who had taken it. The active magic interrupted her Disillusionment Charm but it didn't seem that any of the others noticed. Stark's helmet had snapped back onto his face and Hermione heard his tinny voice through the Black Widow's earpiece behind her.
He must have used his suit to see through the garage because he was able to identify Wanda without visual contact. He flew up and in their direction. His partner, in the grey metal robotics suit, must have had a similar feature because he spotted Wilson and Bucky.
"Barnes is mine," the man in the black catsuit, said, running in their direction.
Hermione decided he was her target. She sent an Impediment Jinx his way. It fizzled out on his suit. It didn't escape his notice though. He turned his attention to her and changed course. She tried two more spells, a Trip Jinx and a Knockback Jinx and when neither of them did more than tink against his armour, she changed her plan of action.
He was almost on her now and as he jumped to launch himself at her, she liquefied the tarmac and pulled it up between them, spreading it thin and solidifying it just before he brought his fist down. She Apparated behind him as the thin sheet of tarmac burst into dust. She conjured water, then banished Transfigured ice spikes at him. They struck but didn't seem to do much more than annoy him.
At least he wasn't going after Bucky.
The sound of a fight elsewhere—punches being traded, missile explosions, cars being pulled out of the garage and dropped several stories—it all filtered into her ears and her bloodstream. Suddenly she felt warm and alive again like she'd been asleep or out in the cold. She didn't feel cocky as much as playful. This was dangerous but it was only a warm-up. Her faux-enemy came at her again and she conjured birds, great big hawks, to swarm and peck at him. He kicked one out of the air and it landed in a crushed heap to her right.
"Steve, we're tied down in here," Bucky's voice rang through her earpiece. He sounded slightly frustrated. "Wilson's suit is trashed."
"Well, it's been fun," she murmured at the man in black. She used her wand to liquefy the ground again and her other hand moved like she was dipping her fingers in water. The tarmac pulled up and around the cat-suited man, creating a cage to hold him with thick solid bars of tarmac that went above his head. It looked almost like black flower petals folded around him. He scratched at the bars but even his destructive claws didn't do much to the black, tarred barriers.
She started to turn to Apparate to get inside the terminal where she thought Bucky and Wilson still were but got caught by the weird web-like material the petite man had flung at Steve earlier. It stopped her spin and distracted her long enough for Black Widow to land a kick across her face.
It had been a long time since Hermione had been hit in the face and it disoriented her as if it were the first time. The goop only caught her in the legs and arms, though; her hands were still free. A quick twitch of her wand dissolved the bonds and she rolled to her hands and knees. Widow landed another kick to her stomach. It winded her and knocked her back over.
"I know what you are," the redhead said.
"And what is that?" she wheezed, trying to drag air into her temporarily frozen lungs.
She hissed two words in a language that Hermione recognised only as Russian before darting away. Hermione looked up to see that Clint was approaching to engage with her. Hermione finally sucked in a half breath of air.
Clint went toe-to-toe with the Black Widow. They tumbled and somersaulted around each other, trading blows. It looked more like friendly sparring than actual fighting. They ended up behind some trucks and Hermione could no longer see them. After another few moments she heard Clint through her earpiece, "Shit, my bow's in pieces."
She spotted the small man in red and blue mere moments before he used his goop to snatch her wand out of her hands. Losing it didn't actually disarm her or disable her in any way but it did spark a memory of Kruger taunting her over losing her first wand. She saw red.
* . * . *
Steve was still trading blows with Tony when he heard an angry English-accented voice over the comms and across the asphalt. "Give that back, I took down Nazis with that!"
Through the Iron Man suit, Steve heard Tony's reaction demanding of Spiderman, "Whatever that was, break it!"
The kid's voice came back in that rapid-fire ramble, "I don't know, Mr Stark, I mean, it seems harmless—ahhhh!" Tony abandoned the fight with Steve to fly off and investigate. Steve had to give him a little credit for that, even though the idea of bringing a kid to a fight like this grated on his conscience.
"Who are you?" Tony demanded, having lifted his faceplate. Steve knew he should head to the jet. That was the goal, of course, but he hesitated when he heard her answer him.
"My name is Hermione. I was born in 1979 and my government sent me back in time when I was five. I was a spy in World War Two," she said. Steve looked back in their direction just as she made a ball with her fist and flung it towards Tony. Chunks of tarmac and softball-sized hail seem to appear from thin air and fly at him. He shot missiles back at her and she made a motion of swatting a fly away. They turned and exploded away from her. Her movements didn't have a red light, like Wanda's talent, but there was no denying the power she wielded. She raised her right hand up, twisting it before closing her fist and pulling down. A windstorm seemed to come out of nowhere and tug at Tony's suit.
"Fuck, what was that?" Tony asked as he got twirled around in the windstorm before he used his repulsors to stabilize himself.
By way of answer, she said, "I drank an experimental super soldier serum in '44."
Steve interjected, "You drank it?"
He saw her shrug. "When you're trapped and dying of thirst, anything wet starts to look appealing."
"Steve, the Quinjet's open," Sam said in his ear. "You might have to do this one without some of us."
Steve finally turned and started jogging towards the hangar.
"Great, another one," Tony muttered. Steve didn't know how he heard Tony's voice until King T'Challa launched himself at him. He must have heard Tony through T'Challa's comms. He traded blows with the man, feeling his skin and muscle bruise and start healing with every punch. T'Challa must have been enhanced too. It was a shame, they could have used his help to stop the other Winter Soldiers.
Bucky joined him, swinging a punch with his metal arm at T'Challa's back. The punch was enough to wind him and Steve only felt a little bad when he put his weight behind the shield-swing and double-punch he landed on his head. He heard Wanda scream in pain for a few short moments and mentally figured she might be down but he didn't see her.
Tony's voice was angry when he next said to Millie, "Then you should register with the Accords too. Don't need another idiot weapon of mass destruction with an ego complex just wandering around without oversight!"
"Holy shit!" Clint said in the earpiece and Steve glanced back to see Tony's Iron Man suit break apart while he was midair. In the distance, Rhodey seemed to just fall out of the sky.
The Spider-kid asked. "Did she just evolve?" His voice sounded strange. Steve looked over to see he was trapped in what looked like a bubble of ice. The kid didn't look upset or hurt, so he pushed through the shivers that raced up his spine at just the thought of being trapped in ice again. He kept running toward the jet and Bucky joined him.
"I got captured," Millie said. "Do you know what Nazi Wizards do to POWs?"
Over his own heavy breathing, Steve could hear Bucky's breath hitch, like those words were familiar somehow. He glanced over but couldn't make out his expression. He didn't dwell on it for long, smashing his hand against the button to open the Quinjet bay door. As soon as he and Bucky were in, it was closing and Steve was starting the turbines. They were airborne in less than a minute.
"Millie..." Steve warned. He didn't know what he was warning her of—that Bucky might remember her this way? That she shouldn't lay out exactly what happened to her in the war in front of the kid? In front of strangers, like this? Maybe he didn't want to remember the way Peggy had cried in his arms about how someone had tortured her baby sister.
She didn't seem to heed his warning. "They get inside your head. Show you what fear looks like." Her voice was flat, like the way he remembered Bucky's being when he'd got off that table in Kreischberg, like the way hers had been in the few words he'd heard her speak to Peggy when she returned.
There was a sudden scream over the comms that caused both he and Bucky to flinch where they sat. It wasn't Millie's timbre.
"Natalia," Bucky said just as the comms cut out. The Quinjet had already taken them out of range. The name seemed to fall from his lips unbidden and the look on his face was full of confusion and something like pain.
* . * . *
Hermione's breath stopped when she heard Bucky's strained voice whisper the other woman's name. She wasn't sure if it was jealousy she was experiencing but she knew she didn't like it. A quick glance around showed her that Clint had snuck close to the Boggart and pulled the Black Widow away from it. There had been a little girl, her neck broken at an odd angle, staring at the redhead. Hermione couldn't see her face but she suspected the girl had worn a look of accusation.
Now the Boggart was just spinning endlessly, trying to find the fears of the next closest person.
The Quinjet, with Bucky and Steve its only occupants, was a small dot in the sky before someone ventured close. Beyond the hearing of the others, Hermione could just hear sirens heading their direction.
The Boggart seemed to finally decide which person to latch on to. It spun and extended itself to show a snowy ravine with a frozen river sluggishly moving through it. There were evergreens thick with snow on either side, blinding Hermione to anything beyond it. In the middle was a young man wearing a blue winter coat and brown trousers. The way Hermione had pictured Bucky's body to look when she'd first learned how he'd died. Now, though, she'd had more information and the Boggart took it greedily from her mind. His body was twisted at an angle so she could see both the mangled bit of what remained of his left arm and the terrified, pain-filled look on his young face. He was close to her, or she had instinctively moved closer to him. He was muttering something. Suddenly the scared look on his bare baby-face wasn't because of the lost arm. He was looking at her. "What... what are you? No, no! Get away from me!"
Hermione stood frozen. She knew she should do something about the Boggart but it had been ages since she'd had to deal with one and the way it played so well with her emotions left her stuck in place.
It was Wanda stepping a little closer to Hermione that snapped her out of her haze of fear. "What is that?" she asked in a whisper. The spell broke, just a little, and through the illusion Hermione could see the Black Widow finally standing up, still looking anxious and fearful, but watching the scene playing in front of Hermione.
"It's a Boggart," she answered. "It shows you your worst fear."
"How do you defeat it?" Wanda asked, her voice a little louder.
"Take the image it gives you, make it funny, and then say the incantation," Hermione said. She was still staring at the young, scared boy in the snow.
"How do you make that funny?"
Hermione sighed deeply and conjured a wardrobe-sized black glass vial near the body of the boy. She wordlessly and wandlessly—the kid still had her wand—banished the Boggart into the vial. The scene disappeared in a swirl of colour, and she shrunk the vial and summoned it. She tucked it in her pocket and turned to look at Wand beside her. "When I figure it out, I'll let you know."
She looked around at the state of the airport. She should go about starting to repair the damage. Wanda was beside her, across from them was Clint and the Black Widow. Stark had somehow got the kid out of the bubble of ice. Coming out of the terminals was Wilson and the other man who'd been in the black armour before she'd removed it from him and stopped his fall from the ground.
The man in the catsuit was missing. She made to turn around again when she felt a blow on the back of her head.
* . * . *
Before they were too far out, they got a call on the Quinjet communications. It was Stark. "When I figure out what she did with my armour, I'm coming after you. You should know—"
Steve turned it off. He finished plotting the course in the Quinjet's autopilot features to the coordinates Bucky had given him for the bunker where the other Winter Soldiers were being kept. He wanted to ask more about that—to learn if that was the bunker he had been kept in—but he wasn't sure if he could. When he glanced back up at Bucky, it seemed he had a question of his own.
"Who was she?"
"Who, Natasha?" Steve asked. He had a feeling she wasn't who he was asking about.
Bucky shook his head and the look of confusion was still present on his face. "No, I remember Natalia. Who was the other one?"
"Millie Carter. Your best girl."