"Is everyone here?" Harry asked, his eyes swept over the crowd of people practically sitting atop one another in the cozy, but cramped living room of the Burrow "I don't see Ginny, where is she?"
"Africa" Bill answered, he smiled at Fleur who smiled sweetly back at him "You know she took over my old job and was sent into the field before she could change jobs"
"I need to contact her" Harry said absently "Okay" He held his hands up and everyone quieted down "You all know that I wouldn't call you all here unless it was an emergency...and it is"
"What's happening, Harry?" Arthur asked, he put his arm over Molly's shoulder.
"It's bad, isn't it?" Neville asked "If it was good news, we'd be outside"
"There is a new threat to not only our world but the muggle one as well" Harry told them, instantly tears fill Fleur's eyes and she cuddles closer to Bill's side "I've brought it up to the Minister and he wants to close off the magical world and let the muggles suffer alone...but that's not right"
"What is this threat, Harry?" Bill asked.
"His name is Thanos" Harry answered, he told them everything that he knew about the new threat and as he did so he looked from face to face of the members of the D.A., his Auror buddies, his family members and everyone else he loved and trusts. When he stopped speaking, they all looked at him in shocked fear.
"He's an alien" George explained "Loki explained it to me, according to one of the others that are at Hermione and Tony's house, he jumps from place to place, wipes out half of the inhabitants and moves on"
"But why?" Molly breathed "At least Voldemort had a reason...as horrible as it was, it was a reason"
"He seems to think he's doing them...us a kindness" George explained "He sees this world as overpopulated, which the muggle side is, he thinks he will come into this world, wipe out half of the populace and then pollution will be all but gone, the homeless with get homes because they'll be opened to them, the jobless will work and the hungry will be fed...it's not a bad thought really...but he's not..."
"God" Harry finished for him "It's not his decision who lives and who dies"
"So" Arthur said with a sigh "You want us to fight?"
"No" Harry answered "I want you to be safe, to keep an eye out..." He frowned a little "I have no right to ask you to fight, but I am going to fight and if you want to, you can join me" Silence met his words and he offered a smile so no one thought he was upset.
"I told Loki that I would fight, and I will" George said "At both your sides"
"I've never backed away from a fight" Dean said with a grin "I'll talk some others into it as well" Slowly, one by one, each of Harry's friends said they'd stand by his side, again.
"Mrs. Weasley" Harry called to her as she went into the kitchen to get more snacks for everyone "You don't have to fight, I mean you're..." Her brows went up "You've already fought enough, and you've lost...a lot"
"And if I don't fight" Molly said, smiling happily at him "I will lose so much more"
"But..." He started and she cut him off with a grin.
"Harry, my dear boy" She smiled "Bellatrix didn't survive me...do you think Thanos can?"
~~~/ /~~~Malfoy Manor~~~/ /~~~
Narcissa watched the unusual people walk past her, she stood in the front sitting room. Lucius would have rolled over in his grave to see all these strange people in his family home. The thought made her tear up and she sniffed delicately into her initialed, laced handkerchief and she looked at her feet. The sounds of the people started to fade away, with the exception of a young woman with light brown hair wearing a red jacket, she stopped at the bottom step and looked at Narcissa before she kept going up the steps.
"Mr. Malfoy" Wanda spoke softly and slowly because she wasn't sure how easily he could understand her through her accent "Is your mother okay?"
"She is" He answered shortly, he opened a door "This is to be your bedroom"
"Thank you" She said, smiling softly "What happened?" Draco stopped as he'd been turning away to leave "What happened that hurt her so much?"
"My father just died" He whispered, he turned his beautiful grey eyes to look into hers, he was struck by her again. Her beauty, intelligence and the secrets that she kept hidden in those captivating eyes, he found himself wanting to tell her everything he could think of "They knew each other when they were kids, engaged by thirteen and married by seventeen and he just up and dies, we knew it was going to happen but the memories that haunt her are the ones of him being sick and weak none of them are good"
"I am so sorry" She whispered "I know loss...my twin brother was killed a while ago and before him my parents died in front of us"
"I'm sorry" Draco whispered back to her, they were standing very close, in his eyes Wanda was able to see his hurt, anger, fear and worry "You need to rest, I will leave you"
"I doubt I will see you again tonight, I am very tired" Wanda told him "Sleep well, Draco"
Draco, who had been walking away from the woman when she spoke his name, he stopped and turned to look at her again, but her door was quietly being closed. His name rolling off her tongue was almost erotic, he wanted to hear her say it repeatedly. Instead of knocking on her door like he wanted to, Draco visited with his mother until it was late and, after seeing his mother off to bed, Draco walked by Wanda's room again. He leaned towards her door, listening carefully, wondering if she were awake.
"I'd be careful, if I were you" Nick Fury warned "Wanda is very powerful, but she is also very young and reacts with her emotions and not always her brain"
"I'm not afraid" Draco sneered slightly, he hated it when people told him what to do and this man was no different.
"I didn't say you were afraid" Nick pointed out with a smirk "Just to be careful" He turned back to his bedroom before he stopped and looked back at the blonde that was looking at Wanda's door again "It's a foolish man that jumps off the high dive, without even looking to see if the pool has water in it"
"What does that even..." He looked back to the man, but he was gone, and his bedroom door was firmly shut "Mean?"
"I think" Peter told him, peeking out from his own bedroom "He means you should probably move slowly and make sure she feels the same before falling in-love"
"Who the bloody hell are you?" Draco snapped, he was horrified to see that the speaker was just a kid.
"Peter Parker" He grinned "You know...Spiderman" His grin got even bigger.
"No, I don't know" Draco answered, he was wondering why he was still talking to him "Go to bed, it has to be past your bedtime" With that he walked off with an annoyed scoff and made his way to his bedroom.
It was just after dawn when Wanda deemed it okay to leave her bedroom. She'd been up for a few hours now but didn't want to wake anyone else up, so she stayed in her room. She marveled over the bathtub, it was the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool and she could swim laps through the bubbles and that just made her whole night. She tiptoed through the house and down the stairs, surprised to find that she wasn't the only one awake. Standing by the sitting room door was Mantis, she was watching the tall, willowy blonde woman that was lying on the couch in distress. She was crying and from the look of it she'd been doing that for a while now.
"Is she okay?" Wanda asked the other woman.
"Mr. Malfoy told me she doesn't sleep anymore" Mantis answered in her soft, sad tone "She is getting weaker...she is not long for this world, I feel"
"Oh" Wanda muttered, she thought about the beautiful blonde-haired man two floors above their heads. He knew such sadness, maybe even more than she and Pietro ever did. Least their parents died quickly, but Draco watched his be tortured, beaten and hated repeatedly before his father got sick and now his mother was dying, and he didn't even know. It made her heart hurt, she wanted to run in the living room and demand the woman to not give up and give in to her sadness, that she still had a son that loved and needed her "Mantis...help her"
"But..." The woman looked at Wanda before nodding her head. She walked quietly into the room, she looked around before gently placing her hand on the woman's head and whispered "Sleep" Narcissa initially reached up to push her hands away, but they fell limp at her sides as she fell into a deep slumber "She will sleep for a while now, what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to attempt to stop what some may say is inevitable" Wanda answered her, she knelt down next to the couch and held her hand in front of the older woman's face, her red magic started to form between her fingers when sobbing broke her concentration, she looked up and found Mantis on her knees crying uncontrollably, hugging her middle with one arm as if she was in pain with her other hand on Narcissa's arm "Mantis?"
"She's in so much pain" The woman sobbed "She's lonely and there is no one there for her, no one at all...her best friend is gone, and her family is broken"
"Let her go" Wanda insisted, and she did, moving away from the two to sit alone, hugging her knees to her chest. She'd never actually experienced a loss and sadness like that one before and even being away from the woman did nothing to stop the ache in her chest.
Wanda took another deep breath and then reached her hand out again. The red magic, like before, danced between her long fingers that she reached towards Narcissa's face. She sifted through the memories, most of them were sad memories so Wanda took them and painted them with a kinder paintbrush. She brought forth the truly happy memories to the front of her mind and then there were different memories that were good or as happy as she ever seemed to be. When she was done, Wanda sat back on her heels and looked over at Mantis with a smile that slid away immediately when she saw Draco lying on the floor.
"What did you do?!" She crawled over to him.
"He came downstairs and thought you were attacking his mother" She answered, smiling down at his prone body "He was starting to get very loud and stomped over to you but I put him to sleep before he got to you" There was an eerie sort of glee shining on her face as she turned to look back at the Scarlet Witch "I did okay, right?"
"Holy hell" Wanda breathed looking at the knocked-out man on the floor of his own house with a sigh "Tony is going to be so pissed"
~~~/ /~~~
Hermione roared with laughter as Steve read the letter from Draco aloud to the others to hear. Even he had a smile on his face, the blonde was not happy with being knocked out in his own home, he was also not happy with Wanda messing with his mothers mind. Tony told Hermione that he was in full agreement with him on that one, messing with ones mind was not something another person should do. She still roared with laughter. She'd noted that even though Draco was very upset he was angry not with Wanda (probably because he wanted to get in her pants) but with Mantis for knocking him out.
"I'll talk to her" Star-lord told them from his spot, he was supposed to be at Malfoy manor, but he'd been having a talk with Stark and missed their leaving.
"I'll talk to Draco" Hermione promised "It was wrong what...that woman" She nodded her head to Quill when he muttered 'Mantis' to her "Did but he tends to freak out easily when he's not getting his way, he didn't want to help so he's going to be a whiny little bitch"
"I'll talk to Wanda" A new voice said from the outside of their little group. Hermione looked over at him, Tony stood up with a small swear and Vision stood between the man and Luna. He was an older man with grey streaks near his temples, a cape that moved like there was a breeze when there wasn't one "I'm sure she was only trying to help"
"Who are you?" Steve asked.
"Doctor Strange" Banner answered from the couch "Brilliant surgeon that was in an accident that cost him the use of his hands...now is a brilliant wizard of sorts"
"Thank you" Strange said with a frown "Dr. Banner, you work is admirable"
"Okay" Hermione, who was suffering horribly from mood swings recently, snapped "You love him, he loves you, please save the blow jobs for later and tell me why and how you've come to be in my house?!"
"I" Strange scoffed, giving the pregnant witch a dirty look.
"Please" Tony whispered from the other side of the room, he mouthed 'don't' and pointed to her stomach.
"What were you about to say?" Hermione asked, tapping her foot angrily on the floor.
"Yeah, Stark" Steve grinned "What were you about to say?"
"Don't make me say it" He muttered "Then she'll get mad" He sent a pleading look at Strange, hoping he'd distract them with whatever he needed to say.
"Oh sure!" Hermione burst into tears and sat down on the couch "Make them think I'm a monster" She sucker-punched him in the stomach when he tried to cuddle her "I wish I never met you, never agreed to marry you and never got pregnant...apparently I should stick with my own monster kind!" Vision took Tony's spot next to her, wrapping his arms around her and whispering kind things in her ear while Luna took the other side.
"She's a witch" Bruce whispered to the newcomer "I read all the magical pregnancy books I could find. Like non-magical women, witches get mood swings with their pregnancies however, some pregnancies...like Hermione's, apparently, the witch goes through a series of magically amped-up emotions numerous times a day"
"Personally" Tony whispered as he got closer "I think it has something to do with how emotionally, tornado-like the witch was before. Hermione's always been back and forth when it came to me, mad at me, loves me, hates me, wants me, can't stand me...it's leaked into the pregnancy unfortunately"
"Is your marriage going to be okay?" Strange asked.
"We're not married yet" Tony informed "Hermione doesn't want to be a 'fat bride' so is making me wait until after the baby is born" He shook his head "I told her I could care less how she looked, 800lbs and in a burlap sack and I'd still love her as much as I did the very first time I saw her but she wants to be thin at her wedding so who am I make her unhappy..." He looked at the little witch who was now seeing more sense and was blushing as she looked at him "She is my world and I intend to make sure that she wants for absolutely nothing"
"What is it that you came to tell us, Strange?" Steve asked, pulling attention away from the now completely embarrassed witch.
"I have looked into the future" He informed them gravely "I've seen millions of possible futures. I cannot tell you the outcome of all, only that seven of them are positive outcomes for us. In order to win we're going to need unity, not just between us but between the magical and non-magical worlds and I've seen that one wizard is already working on that" Hermione racked her brain wondering who that could be "There is one constant in every positive outcome that I've seen...a woman" He looked from face to face, knowing that he couldn't tell them everything but he could tell them some things and he intended to do that "I don't see her here, I don't know her at all but I know that she is powerful, magical and has a darkness in her that attached to her at a very young age, she keeps this darkness hidden but it's that very darkness that is going to save us all"
"Do you know what she looks like?" Tony asked "Maybe we can find her, help her hone whatever skills she needs to meet Thanos with"
"I didn't see her face" Strange answered "She was tall, statuesque really, shapely and probably beautiful" He turned to walk to the front door again, already having a place to stay "I do remember something else" He looked at them "Her hair, it was long and bright red"
Tony lifted his head a little higher before he turned to look at the others in confusion. The others shrugged, they all had a general idea of who it was, but no one wanted to say the name. The Avengers were ready to meet this threat, to fight him and if needed they were ready to die in order to get rid of him. Even Tony, who was going to be father in five short months, was ready to lay down his life so the love of his life and his child could live in peace. None of them thought that it would come down to a witch fighting him and ensuring thier freedom.
"Ginny" Hermione and Luna said the name in unison.
A/N: I hope you like this. Tell me what you think.