Jack came toward town and dismounted his horse but it kept its pace, running through the fires that ravaged the town.

After landing expertly on his feet, he squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand as surrounding structures boomed with bursts of fire as though by cannon - or magic.

Magic.

Jack parted his linen shirt where Kurtz had knocked him unconscious but found nothing unusual - only feeling slight residual discomfort that could also have been digestion.

Jack kicked a stone across the ground, walking without aim. "Jack, lets go back to the ship." He mocked Hermione's voice before following with his own, "Oh, I'd bloody go now!"

Jack halted when he noticed a figure standing behind a screen of smoke. "Bugger." Jack knew by the unflattering shape that it wasn't Hermione. He stayed still, searching the area to evaluate an escape with quick and clever eyes. When he looked to the figure again, it was gone and he felt a chill down his spine.

"Sparrow!"

Jack leapt a whole foot in the air.

"Where is Miss Granger?" It was Donovan.

Jack rolled his eyes at his annoying familiarity. "You really ought not to creep up on captains that are… armed and deadly." Jack placed a hand on his pistol in show of dominance. "Why are you looking for Hermione?" His expression of jealousy shifted into one of urgency. "Have you seen her? Is she safe?"

"I was asking you that, Jack." Donovan pulled Jack away from the open. "Something is happening. I think, I think Mr. Kurtz is magical." He avoided divulging Hermione's own magic.

"Yes, yes, he fucking got me right in the center and next thing, I fall out of a bloody broom cupboard. Why couldn't it have been a wine cellar, for crying out loud? Arrant nonsense."

A noise sounded that caught their attention, alerting them to a tin lid that rolled oddly into the open from behind a nearby building, wobbling against the cold dirt ground as it slowed to a stop.

—————————————————————

A zap, a whirl and a twirl later Hermione spun around the building where a flare of red dust clouded the street corner to aid her disappearance like a magician from the stage. This allowed her to catch her breath.

She turned to find a set of vines ascending the brickside and her palms were sweaty as she gripped her wand while climbing it to the clay-gabled rooftop where the palm trees hung low enough to hide her, if only for a moment.

From this place she took in the scene below: Kurtz scoured the wreckage for her through an utter mess of broken glass and breaks of clay and wood where whole structures had been hit by their exchange, bags of wheat and barley marked by the EIC were now barely recognizable after having been blown to shreds, and the buildings where the townsfolk had been were now littered with their rushed abandon - only for flame and fire to take their place. Kurtz ushered his frustration through the windows as if they were red-painted targets.

Hermione gathered herself, willing herself to focus and plan. But what about Jack? Was he okay?

When Kurtz moseyed out of view yelling obscenities directed at her, she stashed her wand into her dress and maneuvered back down the vines but clashed with the ground poorly - a set of iron tools that had been leaning against a shed on the side of the building clattered to the ground with little to no regard for the urgency of silence. In fact, the reverberation of a tin lid rolling out into the open was enough to catch Kurtz's ear.

"Granger!" He shouted as he walked through a stash of burning barrels, the fire of their surroundings reflective in his eyes as he marched toward her, and sent a spell her way that was red in color. It struck the ground as she rolled away from it and shut her eyes, wincing at the painful reminder of the gash on her arm from his earlier offense.

She mustered the energy to raise her arm and cast a white burst of light that resembled lightning in form, color and function, throwing him back, effectively electrocuted. This bought her time to stand, as he lay on the ground steaming.

"Where do I get me one of those?" Jack observed with wide eyes, but moved quickly toward Hermione as she sunk to her knees. "Come, Donovan."

Hermione busied herself with her beaded bag, rummaging through it to find the vial of dittany she swore she brought. "Merlin." She huffed, glancing at her wound only to view Jack and Donovan approaching her.

"What are you- stop!" Hermione protested as they each grabbed an arm of hers and dragged her into hiding. "Let me go, I can walk, you bastards!"

"Woah, love, easy." Jack said once they had propped her up against the nearest wall, and she attempted to stand but they held her back again. "We're here to help."

"You can help by leaving. Go to the ship - get as far away from here as possible." Her breathing was labored.

"Or not." Jack lamented. "Say, give me this and-"

"No." Hermione held her wand close when Jack moved to grab it. "You don't know how it works."

Hermione visibly panicked when Kurtz stood and the men observed her fear with a newfound determination.

"I bet I do." Donovan snatched it from her while she was distracted. "Trust me, Hermione!" He took off toward Kurtz.

"No!" Hermione stood to chase after him, but Jack restrained her. "Jack, I swear, I'll -"

"You'll what, love? The fight stick is gone." He tried to reason with her.

Kurtz brushed himself off when he realized he had a new opponent. "Where is the girl? She took everything from me!"

"She's safe - from you." Donovan challenged him with a flick of the wand that created a small spark that was much less threatening than he'd hoped.

Seeing this, Hermione expertly maneuvered from Jack's grip and apparated between the duel, leaving Jack to stare with wide, kohl-lined eyes as she disappeared and reappeared in the blink of an eye.

Kurtz welcomed the challenge and aimed his first spell at Hermione, who resisted his curse mid-air using only her hands. She summoned a rounded shield that covered both her and Donovan from Kurtz' attack.

"Get back!" Her eyes were scathing as she commanded he leave the danger.

"No, ma'am. My place is here."

"Get the captain to safety, he's the only one who can…" she strained to keep up the shield as Kurtz shot spell after spell at it, weakening her. "... Who can get us all out of here. Ready the ship."

Donovan stepped out from behind Hermione's force field and aimed the wand at Kurtz, who noticed this, and took aim at him.

"Stop!" Hermione yelled in anguish, pulling her Time Turner from the bosom of her dress with a plan to bring time to a standstill, but was forced to watch the green light emerge from the end of Kurtz's wand, as if in slow motion, and travel midair through the dust, debris, and eventually Donovan's body that crashed to the ground faster than Hermione could reach him.

She ran to Donovan and collapsed on him with tears forming in the corner of her eyes to blur the vision of his lifeless face. She let out an audible sob before taking her wand from Donovan's hand and standing up once more, turning to find Kurtz's pleased expression.

They stood in the street, poised like a proper duel. Hermione raised her wand before she realized that it had split down the centre.

She couldn't disguise the defeated expression that crossed her and she dropped her wand to the ground - a mere paperweight. Her face contorted with a fierce frown as she mustered an energy that she had never before felt.

"He was just a boy!" Hermione's eyes seemed to change color in her rage as the tingling in her body consumed her. She raised her hands as if to tear off the tin roofs of the buildings that surrounded them, and the metal pieces popped off from their hinges and nails before Hermione threw them at him, one by one.

He deflected them with a gesture from his wand, and so Hermione summoned a wooden cart from behind him that knocked into him from behind, leaving him on the ground in a pile of splintered wood. Hermione came to stand in front of him.

"Stand up." She demanded, but he only looked up at her from below so as to avoid obedience. "I said stand up!"

She lifted him in the air using only wandless magic and threw him across the road with a single gesture. He landed on the ground with an audible groan.

Kurtz sat up, dusting off his ornate vest and wiping blood off of his lower lip with the back of his hand. "Not even a wand, huh, Granger?" He spat on the ground when Hermione approached. "Tell me… how did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Time travel. How is it that you can do all of this and be from the future?"

"I have my ways." Hermione replied shortly.

"And the captain doesn't know?"

She had forgotten about Jack in all the madness. She glanced around for him, a newfound urgency washing over her.

Jack, observing from afar, hadn't yet decided whether or not to come out from hiding. No, no, he wasn't a coward - he simply knew his disadvantage and planned accordingly.

"Enough!" She yelled at Kurtz, sensing the diversion he was creating. "You - what you are doing here is abhorrent. The magic you are performing to run your business is Unforgivable. And, now, you've killed someone." She stood tall. "As a member of Magical Law Enforcement community I, acting within my rights as an unspeakable, will deliver you to the proper magical authorities. But first, you will free all of the people you've enslaved." She was tired, but refused to let it show.

"Magical authorities? Pah! Maybe in the future you have such intricacies, but I'm afraid here, you are without. And, even i can't undo their curse. So long as I'm alive, their curse will be too." His smile was bloody and shook her to the core.

His wand was hidden from her view when he hit her with a spell that knocked her to the ground. Seeing stars, she faded in and out of consciousness.

"Oí!"

Hermione turned her head just enough to see through half-lidded eyes as Jack's peered up from behind a nearby barrel, barely visible.

"Hey, hey - put that down." Jack crouched down again. "I'm not magic!"

Kurtz lowered his wand. "So you care for the girl, do you? Why else would you choose now to come out from hiding?"

"Leave her alone." Jack stood up, prepared to fight.

"What will you do?" Kurtz chuckled, "Stab me? Oh, I promise, I can do much worse." He pointed his wand at Hermione.

"No! No! Stop. I… we haven't even begun our negotiations… Why fight to the death when you can win with wise words, eh? You're an intellectual man - let's hash this out, man to man… Resolve this like gentlemen. Aye?" Jack coaxed the wizard's attention away from Hermione as she tried to pull herself up. Jack's dark eyes were wide and passionate in the firelight. "No swords or… magical wooden sticks necessary for us adversaries."

"Okay. Begin your proposal." Kurtz looked beside Hermione, his wand aimed threateningly at her as she lay on the ground struggling to stay awake.

"I think we-"

"As it turns out, Sparrow, there is nothing that you can offer me that will save her life. But you can still save yours." His voice was dense. "Leave my town. Ne'er return."

"Not without her." Jack stood his ground.

"Do you even know what she is?" Kurtz seemed amused.

"No. And I don't care." Jack pulled back the hammer of his pistol in warning. "Back away from her."

When Kurtz took aim at Hermione who lay unconscious, Jack pulled the trigger.

Kurtz stumbled back after being shot in the chest. "You shot me, filthy pirate!" He pulled apart his vest to reveal the wound that dripped with blood.

"Ironic, innit?" Jack mused. Jack stooped over as Kurtz fell, gasping for breath. "The magic man with all the wealth, killed by a lowly, working sailor… I like it. And, didn't you say that if you die, the people are freed? Well, let's just say I won't offer you the same kindness Miss Hermione did."

The second gunshot echoed through what remained of the town, seemingly shaking the palm trees as a wind blew with new direction.