Dr. Erskin was something the Nazi government hated.

An intelligent Jewish man who refused to give in to their demands. After that man came demanding his serum, Erskin knew he had to leave or he would be killed before the month was out.

So it was naturally quite the surprise to be confronted by an insane British-accented woman with red and black hair, deep green eyes...and a thirst for knowledge.

The strangest part was that she didn't want the recipe for his serum. Oh no, she wanted to improve it. She wanted to help perfect it!

But the part he was having trouble with was that she was offering to get him out of Germany.

"I still do not understand. How exactly can a woman get me out of Germany alive?" he asked confused. He had no issues with her being an intelligent woman. He had issues with the fact she would draw attention to them both.

Holly smirked, before she snapped her fingers and something dropped into her hands. Erskin stared.

"How..."

"I am more than just a scientist and inventor. I am a witch. More importantly they won't exactly be looking for us thanks to my abilities...though we will have to watch out for Grindlewald and his merry band of morons. Of course if I see Albus Dumbledore he is so getting a swift kick in the balls," said Holly flatly. To demonstrate, she pointed to a tree.

"See that up on the hill?" she asked. Erskin nodded. She cast a simple Fidelius on it. "Now tell me Dr. Erskin, is there anything on the hill?"

"There is nothing," he said.

"And I were to state there is a tree on that hill five hundred meters away?"

Erskin blinked. There had been no tree, and yet when she said something it appeared clear as day.

"That is quite impressive."

"I can do the same to your research. All of my files have been locked by magic so unless I allow it, no one can read them or copy them. If I cast this spell on us, it will make getting out of Germany that much simpler. Again though, if I see someone I recognize and don't like, they are going to suffer."

As luck would have it for Holly (but not the man who would later make her life a living hell before she had enough) they did at one point run into a much younger Albus Dumbledore.

He was helping those who were defecting leave Germany unharmed, more or less through the same way Holly got both herself and Dr. Erskin that far through Nazi territory.

Holly took one look at his face, recognized it, and then took seven quick steps to where he was before tapping on his shoulder. The moment he turned, she slammed her left leg so hard to his groin that he doubled over for a good twenty minutes. Every man there wince and crossed their own legs and hoped to hell they didn't do whatever he did to piss her off that much.

Holly later learned she actually ruptured one of them, and called it even. She knew for a fact he was gay, but considering the time it wasn't socially acceptable.

Besides, it wasn't like he was going to use them like most men would. He could afford to shoot blanks.

When she said that she got quite a few odd looks from those who heard her. Those that knew Dumbledore well enough to know his preferences actually snickered or laughed outright in agreement.

Still, at least now she had an in with Dr. Erskin and she could take as many embarrassing photos of Steve before he got the upgrade.

If Holly had her way, he was never going to live down the fact he was practically a scare crow before he was injected with the serum.

Holly also planned to get as many blackmail photos of Nicholas Fury, Phil Coulson, Maria Hill, Tony Stark, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff as she could. The first four were her primary targets, Natasha and Clint were bonus.

Though if she found Fury in an honest-to-god afro she might lose it from laughing too hard.

"No, no, no! Do you have any idea what effect radiation has on the body, especially at these levels?" said Holly.

Erskin wanted to use gamma radiation to spark the necessary changes as a way to compensate for the lacks his serum had.

Holly, as someone who had come from another timeline, knew better than to mess around with radiation. Not after what happened to Bruce Banner or anyone who was in Japan.

Logan was the only one she knew who could survive being less than ten miles from the blast and not end up with acute radiation poisoning.

"What would you use then?" he demanded.

Holly pulled out a book from her odd space.

"Why don't we try alternative methods that won't have a high risk of killing those injected? Do you know what happens when a human ingest Re'em blood?" said Holly.

"What is a Re'em?"

"No idea. But I do know that phoenix tears can heal almost any wound, cleanse any poison...that's it! What if we tried incorporating phoenix tears into the serum?"

"Where would we find a mythical fire bird at this time of the night?" asked Erskin calmly.

Holly's grin was less than comforting.

"Ignis!"

There was a loud cry as a large ball of fire erupted in front of him. Something landed on Holly's arm, and when the flames died off Erskin came face to face with a massive red and black bird with two-inch long talons, wings measuring six feet or more and an intelligence he would be hard pressed to see in most of his colleagues.

"Meet Ignis, son of Fawkes and my companion when things go bad. He is a phoenix. A relatively young phoenix who hasn't hit his first century, but still a phoenix. Why don't we see what his tears can do for the serum?" suggested Holly.

"I do not want to contaminate the only sample I have," said Erskin.

Holly rolled her eyes.

"The US government is funding this little operation, and if you want it off the books that badly I can pay for it straight up with gold. I can even use third parties and you know I have little interest in selling it. You once said that this serum would make a good man better and a bad man even worse. All I care about is getting this perfected to the point that it would be safe to use on the average human," said Holly flatly.

"Give me one reason why I should trust you?"

"Because in roughly two years you will come across a man who would never survive his first battle on the front lines, yet will restore the faith in humanity you lost when you came across the Red Skull who took the imperfect serum in an attempt to become a superior man."

Seeing him almost convinced, Holly told him something that probably wouldn't earn any bonus points, but she always found brutal honesty to be the easiest.

"I could have just ripped out the serum's code from you directly. There is a spell that allows magicals to 'read' minds, but it's little more than a flashlight compared to natural psychic ability. I have a distant cousin who is a class ten telepath...and somewhere down the line I accidentally woke up a similar mutation. However I respect human boundaries when it comes to their mind, and I respect you as a scientist which is why I want to help improve your serum rather than steal it and claim it as my own. Hang it over certain 'intelligence' agencies to piss them off, yes, but not to dishonor your contribution to the world," said Holly honestly.

Erskin was shocked she could have taken the serum at any time, but chose to let him keep the original formal to himself and decided to work off his recipe. Then his mind caught up to what she said and he asked "Hang it over?"

Holly grinned. Evilly.

"Let's just say a lot of people have been trying to duplicate or recreate your serum since you succeeded, and if people knew I had the recipe it would piss them off because I'm more likely to treat it like the forbidden apple that Eve bit into in Eden. In other words, no one would be getting it unless I allowed them to have it, and even then it would be so thorough protected it would be like trying to pull your own teeth out without any pain killers or tools," said Holly. "One man tried to unlock the secrets of the formula and ended up becoming a creature that is fueled almost entirely by rage because he used gamma radiation to unlock it. The only reason he survived was because of his unique genetic structure he inherited from his father."

Erskin wasn't completely convinced.

"How about this. You try to improve the serum your way, and when you're ready to be reasonable you can call me. Or to be more specific call Ignis and he'll bring me," said Holly flatly.

She left a card in his jacket.

Odds were he'd see her sooner rather than later after she was done.

Eric Lencher was a mutant. More than that (which was all Holly cared about) he was a terrified young boy who didn't deserve half the crap he was being put through just because he happened to be born to a Jewish family in the worst possible time during Germany's history.

Holly used magic to sneak in, then turned the place into a magical dead zone in case there were any wizards on Grindlewald's side who were helping Shaw.

She beat the crap out of ten before she laced their clothes with a port key spell that would send them to the magicals in Britain who were helping those trying to stop Grindlewald. She even included a post-it note saying "Interrogate me, because I'm an idiot who decided to help Grindlewald".

And to add to that, she even put a spell so she could see the reactions of the magicals when they realized who they had...and the fact someone went in and ruined Shaw's operations.

Some things she simply couldn't tolerate. Experimenting on humans just because they had a different faith or background was one of them. She hated Nazis and everything they stood for.

Besides, she would need Eric's powers over magnetic fields to rob the Nazis. She had a list of boats and planes carrying artwork stolen during WWII, and she saw no reason why she couldn't rescue the pieces and give them back to the people they rightfully belonged to.

Holly read history books because it gave her brain a rest. And thanks to the wonders of eidetic memory, she remembered anything she read.

One of them happened to be a book on artworks stolen by the Nazis.

It took her two hours to find the boy who would become Magneto.

The poor kid was terrified, exhausted, and worried about his mother. A woman he hadn't seen since his power initially manifested.

The first thing she did was find where his mother was. The second thing she did was free her and leave a fake in her place. And since she always wanted to punch Sebastian Shaw in the face, she would wait until he planned to kill Eric's mother in front of him.

She didn't know who the strange woman was, only that she had freed her and planned to break everyone out.

Well...that and she apparently really hated Nazis.

Watching herself be killed so callously wasn't a pleasant experience. Seeing a British woman backhand the one who ordered it and was trying to harm her son, however, was something she rather enjoyed. Especially when with a few waves of her hand, she got to kick him squarely in the balls.

Eric was quick to hug his mother tightly.

Holly let them have a moment, before she set off an ungodly number of magical fireworks.

The doors to the facility sprang open, and anyone wearing a swastika ended up flat on the ground as a gravity bomb went off that was keyed to the symbol.

Those kept prisoner didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. They ran outside the null zone...and ended up in the remote reaches of London.

She personally took Eric and his mother there.

"Thank you... Thank you!"

"Don't thank me yet. We still have to deal with the Aurors once they realize a high-level witch just absconded with an entire concentration camp's worth of prisoners and left a mess for them to clean up."

The gravity bomb would wear off in an hour...and self destruct so thoroughly that no one would be able to recreate it.

Holly bent down to Eric's level.

"I do have a request from you...and your mother. I plan to make hit and run attacks on the idiots who hurt you and tried to kill your mother...and anyone who agrees with them. And I would like your help in making their lives hell," said Holly seriously.

"Why do you need me?"

"Shaw was right in one thing. If trained properly you can be one of the most powerful mutants alive. But his training was all wrong and it would have poisoned you against humanity as a whole. I can help you learn how to access your powers without having to resort to such barbaric methods. And I would like to have your mother's permission, seeing as how any good mother would be worried about her son," said Holly.

Eric talked things over with his mother. Then he came back to Holly, who was healing some of the victims from the camp.

"I'll do it. But can I call my mother occasionally?"

"We'll come visit her once a week, and you can call her more often than that once she has a phone number," promised Holly.

That was a better deal than he would have gotten if he had done what Shaw demanded...plus she clearly didn't like Nazis which was another major plus. But the biggest factor was the fact she was openly giving him a chance to decide his own fate, unlike Shaw.