Nov 13th 1940 - Castle Kaufmann

Nearly two days had passed since Johann's disfigured transformation. Guards around the castle had started calling him in secret 'the Red Skull' for the bright red tint his outsides displayed and his apparent lack of skin.

Peggy had gone to Johann in his bedroom the day after he'd turned into whatever he now was, to bring him food and to do some reconnaissance. Peggy had reportedly been shouted at before she could drop the dinner plate, and he had thrown something incredibly heavy against the closed door at her, bending the door hinges attached to the wall. Peggy had told Hermione that it might indicate he had acquired super strength from the serum.

Hermione had never heard of such a thing. She knew that certain potions brewed could give someone supplementary strength temporarily, but it would wear off within six hours at the very most. It certainly wouldn't change someone's DNA. Well, unless it was infused like a disease; comparable to lycanthropy or vampirism.

She then pondered on the other possible repercussions the serum might have done to Johann besides the super strength. Specifically his mind and personality. Granted he had already been a horrible man before the serum, she wondered how it would affect his already vindictive demeanor like a muggle drug would.

Her questions remained unanswered.

Peggy did not stay with Hermione in the nearly two days she was left in her guest room as the SSR agent was busy visiting and sneaking food to Dr. Erskine in the dungeon where he was being kept. She was left to her own devices and contemplated several times through her boredom as to how far she would go if she simply apparated and left, land mines and splinching be damned.

Her calculations all pointed to an increasingly high risk of injury or death without the proper information she needed to navigate this time period, and had concluded that she simply had to wait. Wait until she was rescued by what or who, Hermione had no idea, but she realized she was forced into relying on Peggy's information. So she tucked herself into bed with warming charms in the drafty room and made do with deciphering various German books she had nagged some of the guards for.

It was all well and fine until Hermione started hearing gunshots late on the second afternoon from Johann's transformation. It sounded like several automatic guns were going off at the same time and Hermione leapt from her bed.

Was it an attack? The rescue Peggy had said was coming? Hermione threw caution to the wind and transformed her pillowcase into a satchel and placed an undetectable extension and a feather weight charm on the inside before stuffing her Unspeakable uniform and boots inside. She was leaving now.

Hermione drew her wand from its hiding place beneath her pillow and undid the locks on her door with a precise flick of her wand. The wood flew open and a surprised guard just across the hallway opened his mouth in shock. Hermione threw a stunner at the man and a quick obliviate to erase his knowledge of her wand. She wouldn't stay in the castle as a prisoner to these men, but she also couldn't put the time line at risk.

Hermione slipped from her room silently and headed towards the noise of echoing gunshots and vibrating explosions.

It seemed that the guards were either outside or in different parts of the castle as Hermione only ran into two others before she caught a glimpse of Peggy and surprisingly, Dr. Erskine. The SSR agent had a hand at the back collar of the doctor's dirty white lab coat leading him around the corner. Hermione raced after them.

"Peggy!" she yelled watching them slip away.

Peggy turned around and pointed some sort of machine gun at her. Hermione put her hands in the air and Dr. Erskine turned around too, straightening his glasses. "Hermione!" he exclaimed when he recognized her with a relieved smile. He looked to Peggy and then frowned. "You knew?"

Peggy lowered the gun and Hermione caught up to them. "I found out before the breakfast with Johann. She told me she was planning your escape."

Before Dr. Erskine could answer, Peggy pulled him through the next door by the neck of his collar again. "Which I am still trying to do! Quickly, hurry up!" she yelled and kept her gun pointed in front of her. "We have to make it outside to the plane before Johann and the guards catch us."

"Plane?" Hermione asked. She kept her wand loose in her hand and pointed out above her waist. Peggy ignored her wand, but Dr. Erskine looked at it with confusion before he was lurched back by the material at his neck.

"I have told you Eva-Peggy, I can not just leave this place, they will kill my family!"

"They won't get your family Doctor, you have nothing to fear," Peggy marched onwards.

Their small group ducked into an abandoned foyer. Dr. Erskine drew back from Peggy's grasp. "Have they been saved?" he asked breathlessly with wide eyes.

Peggy paused in her stride and opened her mouth uselessly for a moment before she made eye contact with him. "I feel as if I ought to tell you now rather than later, and risk loosing your trust Doctor, but believe me when I say we had no idea until very recently."

Hermione watched the hope die in the doctor's eyes and a glimmer of cold knowing pass over his face.

The echoes of gunshots seemed very far away. "Your family died in Dachau in 1937. Just over three years ago. They were being held in a concentration camp and passed from a typhus outbreak that killed thousands of other inmates there as well. I am sorry."

Dr. Erskine seem to collapse inwards. She watched the rolling sense of despair fall across his shoulders like a literal steel weight had been dropped from above and as he clawed his hands over his bespeckled eyes shaking his head insistently. "No. No it can not be so, zhey told me- zhey promised me-"

His shoulders shook and the doctor fell to his knees on the polished marble. "My family."

Hermione's own grief filled her like a teacup close to the brim. The poor doctor, the poor man. "Dr. Erskine, I am so so sorry, I can't-"

"I will KILL him," he bellowed, snapping his head up. His face was flushed with wide and furious eyes, his hands were clenched at his face like they could brake the foundations of mountains, and the shaking from his shoulders that Hermione had witness was not from tears, but from the essence of his fury.

"How dare he-" Dr. Erskine stood on shaking legs. "My wife. My children."

The soft swish of Peggy's uniform as she planted herself in front of Dr. Erskine became the loudest noise of the room. "Dr. Erskine you can't kill Schmidt. He is too powerful now that he's taken the serum. He would kill you were you stand."

"I do not care! I will take his head from his-"

"You will die in vain," she whispered. "With nothing done to weaken him because he can not be stopped."

The florescent lighting of the foyer they lingered in reflected glistening eyes behind his glasses. He could not meet Peggy's stare. "I must-" he swallowed hollowly. "I must do somezting."

Peggy shifted the rifle in her arms. "Escape with me. With us. Work with the SSR in the United States to stop him. You created the serum, but you could find something to undo it. Something to kill him."

His chin trembled and he looked to the ceiling for answers.

A resounding explosion from outside vibrated the rock walls of the castle.

"I vill- promise me- we will kill him."

Peggy nodded hard. "We'll kill him when the time comes. We will get him."

Dr. Erskine nodded and stood up from his knees. "Then we must go. He can not be allowed to capture us."

Another blast from outside sent Hermione stumbling towards the closest wall.

"Our friends have arrived and are distracting Hydra," Peggy said helping Hermione to her feet. "Well, and I drugged most of the men during dinner. Off in a nice sleep for a couple of hours if we're lucky." She poked her head around the corner of the next hallway and then pulled back quickly.

A ricochet of bullets splayed across the wood where her head had been.

She cursed. "I'm not usually very lucky. We'll have to go around."

"They will have blocked the service entrance by now," Dr. Erskine warned.

Peggy grimaced darkly. "You're right."

"How many were there?" Hermione motioned to the hallway.

"Four? Five if they've got someone with ammunition behind them."

Hermione ran through a list of spells in her mind. She could do something.

The Statue of Secrecy was going to be shredded to bits, but Hermione felt as if this was a specific situation that she could legally stand on.

The question was if she could stop several speeding bullets. Or at least slow them down. "Leave it to me," she stated before throwing herself into the hallway, pointing her wand at the end of the hall, and shouting, "Arresto Momentum Durar!"

Dozens of bullets cut through the air and made their way to Hermione, but much slower than normal. It was as if she was watching a muggle film with a 'slow-mo camera' as her mother had called it. They were in motion, but at a much slower speed.

The four Hydra men at the end of the hall also seemed to be affected by her spell as they were moving at a lesser speed too, pulling their triggers and trying to shout in a completely different time sequence at each other.

Hermione stepped to the side of the speeding bullets and ran towards the end of the hall. She threw several stunners and watched as they fell at a turtle's pace into unconsciousness and to the floor.

Four bodies hit the marble before she made it to the end of the hall and Hermione grinned. "You can come out! I've got them-"

A fifth man from beyond the turn of the hallway stepped out behind his spelled comrades. He was young, Hermione noticed. Less than twenty years old, dressed from head to toe in Hydra's black uniform and very pale. Like he was just as surprised to see her as she was of him.

Too shocked to move, Hermione watched as the young man raised his gun with a shaky arm and pulled the trigger.

Five if they've got ammunition behind them, Peggy had said.

Hermione didn't feel the pain of the machine gun fire as it hit her side. She felt a sudden impact of no sensation, then a burning hot sort of flash spread from her waist to upper thigh like she had been poked repeatedly with a hot coal.

Hermione's mind couldn't process that she had been shot as in the next moment, she watched as a bullet bit through and exited the side of the young man's head. Hermione turned and saw Peggy lower her weapon with Erskine behind her. They both started running towards her.

Hermione looked back at the young man and studied his prone body in haze of numb realization. She hadn't seen a man killed in front of her so deliberately since the Battle of Hogwarts over ten years ago.

Peggy and Dr. Erskine had reached her and the doctor made to pull at her dress's damp material covering her right side.

"She's in shock," Dr. Erskine said looking between both of Hermione's eyes.

"Shock is probably my friend right now," Hermione answered, wanting to hold her injured side. A horrible itching sensation was starting to crawl across her body.

"Can you move?" Peggy asked, looking down the next hall before coming back to Hermione.

She stared back at the agent seriously. "I have to," Hermione answered. "We have to, hold on." Hermione pointed her wand at her side. "Vulnera Sanentur," she muttered and soft warm feeling spread from her side.

She held the spell for only a couple of seconds before letting the magic go and lowering her wand. The most powerful healing spell she knew. "That'll have to do for now. I'm not a doctor, but it should stop the major bleeding."

Peggy nodded once completely accepting her word and started towards the next section of the castle. Dr. Erskine and Hermione followed silently, and she pointed to her side again whispering, "Obtorpescere," to numb the pain she knew she would start feeling very soon.

"What you are holding, Is that-?" Dr. Erskine asked lowly.

"Later," Peggy interrupted, rushing them through a room filled with enormous paintings.

"I'll tell you when we get off the plane," Hermione smiled. Statue of Secrecy be damned. They were living in a life or death situation.

Peggy came to a large metal door with thin windows on each side that showed the late night air. Another 'BOOM' rocked the ground and illuminated the outside landscape in fiery definition.

"We're here," Peggy said, reaching for the door. She tried the handle, but it wouldn't turn. She tried to kick the metal door, but it wouldn't budge.

Hermione used Alohamora under her breath, but still the metal door wouldn't move.

Hermione grimaced. "Stand back, this could get messy."

Peggy back-peddled and dragged the doctor with her.

Hermione flicked her wand upwards and silently cast Confringo. The door blew outwards with a 'BANG' in strips of exploding metal and Hermione led the others into the night air.

Hermione realized that they were exiting from the left side of the castle and the explosions and machine gun fire were coming from directly across the other side of the property. It was an enormous diversion.

Peggy took the lead from there and led them through a wide and unoccupied field. Guard towers were abandoned and its bright spotlights were left still on, illuminating the empty terrain. Peggy briskly led them in a faster pace far through the never ending field until the castle was a dim glow behind them.

They came upon a small stretch of thick trees and Peggy shouted into the night. "Stark! Call back the men, we've got the Olive Branch. I repeat we've got the Olive Branch!"

A smartly dressed man stood away from the shadows of a looming tree and Hermione nearly jumped at his sudden appearance.

She stopped just behind Peggy with Dr. Erskine and clutched her side. The numbing charm she had spelled onto herself had disappeared somewhere half way through their jog across the meadow and she could feel the blood she was losing on her dress and down her legs.

Dr. Erskine held a hand out to Hermione on her shoulder, and she found that the dizziness she was feeling through her rapid shallow breaths was causing her to lean forwards dangerously.

"We need an examination room!" Dr. Erskine called to the new man. "Now!"

Peggy put one of Hermione's arms around her shoulder and their small group limped through the shadows to a grounded Armstrong Whitworth A.W.41 Albemarle, a plane model Hermione recognized from her father's obsession with WWII bombers. The normally army green plane was painted black and sat undetected on the ground.

'Stark', the man from the shadows, saw the blood on Hermione's dress and jumped forwards. "Christ! What happened to her?"

"She was shot," Dr. Erskine bit out sardonically.

Stark placed an arm behind Hermione's shoulder blades and under her knees and lifted her cleanly from the ground. Her head rolled against his shoulder and the world spun before her eyes. She was too tired to be sick at the movement.

"Come on, I've got her," Stark said.

"There should be something to lay her down on in the back," Hermione heard Peggy advise.

There was a rustling of feet against grass, the mechanical shifting of gears and levers, the thump of footsteps on metal, and then she felt her back being laid down on taunt cloth. She looked up at a metal ceiling, and felt her head tip to the side uselessly. Merlin she was getting so tired.

"If we do nothing she will fall into hypovolemic shock before we cross into the next country," Dr. Erskine warned sounding very close to Hermione. She felt a warm hand across her forehead. "Ve must hurry."

"Stark, take us up. I've got to make contact with Colonel Phillips." Peggy sounded farther away than Dr. Erskine.

"Dr. Ersk-" Hermione started and a wave of dizziness hit her when she felt the plane move. "Dr.-"

"Do not try to speak Hermione. And do not fall asleep. You will live. I promise."

Hermione felt the ghost of a smile cross over her face. So determined. "Thank you- Doctor."

"You may call me Abraham klein time traveler."

Hermione saw the black haze of unconsciousness flicker around the corners of her eyes. "...Abraham then." A wheezy breath Hermione came to recognize as her own coughed out weakly. "Take this," she held out her own wand. "Don't let anyone take it from you."

Dr. Erskine held onto the thin piece of wood and tucked it into his doctors jacket. "You will have it back when you wake."

Hermione smiled and the darkness closed in. Was she going to die? Without saying goodbye to Harry or Ron or her colleagues or or... Hermione realized she would never tell the people closest in her life that she loved them dearly.

She would say that that had to be her biggest regret.

The last thing she saw was the ceiling of the moving plane and Dr. Erskine's worried face.

November 19th 1940 - Undisclosed SSR Base in Liverpool, Britain

Hermione woke to soft sunshine on her skin and the sound of static lined music from an old radio.

She came to slowly as memories and sensations reawakened. She had been shot, she knew, multiple times. In Germany of all places and in the year 1940. She had physically fought Nazis.

She should be dead. Again.

Her vision cleared and she soon recognized herself to be in a small hospital room or medical area. She was lying on a stainless steel barred bed that had been painted white and had a springy mattress beneath her. She was wrapped in thin white sheets tucked firmly around her lower half. The only color in the otherwise white colored room was the glass vase on top of a rolling tray over her feet that was filled with a cluster of beautiful violet chrysanthemums and vines.

Someone had left them for her. They held her attention for a moment longer before she went looking for her wounds.

She touched the white medical gown on her side and found the edges of bandages wrapped around her torso and upper thighs. She frowned as she couldn't feel any pain.

"Wonder drug Penicillin is," someone announced from the doorway.

Hermione looked up sharply at the intruder and crossed gazes with the 'Stark' man from before.

He was a very handsome man, she decided, taking him in. He was dark haired with deep set blue eyes and had a full bottom lip that settled over a sharp jaw line. He was dressed in a very fine blue three piece suit, checkered tie, and shiny shoes that looked misplaced against the white hospital floors. He dripped with wealth, and had the contentment of a man that had only ever know fine things.

He walked into her little room and held out a hand. "Sorry to barge in, it was my turn to 'check in' and see if you were still gone. Name's Howard by the way. Howard Stark."

Hermione took his hand and pumped it gently. "Hermione Granger. Thank you for flying me out of- well, you know."

He grinned quickly with a devil-may-care attitude. "I heard all about you from Peggy and the new doctor. For a beautiful dame with your kind of genuine moxie? Doll, anytime."

Genuine amusement bubbled up from beneath the anxiety and fear that had felt embedded into her bones from the last few days.

Howard placed his hands in his pockets and leaned on his heels. "When your all healed up in a couple of weeks I'll take you on a plane ride, a real plane ride out to show you the sights. We'll get fondue. It'll be fun," he shrugged.

"Stop flirting, you're supposed to be checking in," Peggy announced walking in with her hands behind her back.

"I did! Look, I checked, I confirmed, and now I'm reporting in," he made a mock salute at her. "She's awake and everything."

Peggy sat in a metal seat next to Hermione's bed and crossed her legs. "Very impressive," but Hermione could see the small smile she was biting back.

Without Peggy's maid costume from Castle Kaufmann, Hermione found the Agent Peggy Carter to be much more intimidating. Gone was the pig tailed braids and frills, and instead was an international agent dressed in stockings, a navy blue wool suit of jacket and skirt, and black pumps that made her look ready to kill.

Stark grinned and waved before turning to the door as his way out. "Oh, one thing before I leave," Howard said turning back and going for a pocket in his jacket. He dug around for a couple of seconds. "What exactly is this," he asked before showing them all Hermione's wand.

Hermione nearly leapt out of bed. "How did you get that?" she asked instead.

Peggy got to her feet. "Dr. Erskine was-"

"Now hold on ladies, I'm only looking at it, I'll give it back to the good doctor in due time. He was so... I don't know, protective of it. Like it was a weapon or something. And frankly, coming from a weapons specialist like myself, it got me curious."

"So you stole it?" Peggy crossed her arms over her chest.

"Borrowed it doll."

"It's mine," Hermione stated and held out her hand. "Now give it over."

Howard looked at Hermione disbelievingly and then to Peggy. Finding no one to support him Howard held the thin piece of wood out to her. "And how do we know it's yours?"

Hermione twirled her wand in her fingers and knew that worst case scenario, she could wipe his mind after this.

"Like this," she announced, and turned her vase of flowers into a tabby cat.

"Holy mother of Christ!" Howard reared back in shock, and then promptly leaned forwards and made to examine the cat. "That's- I mean you just- it defies-" he turned to her seriously. "How did you just do that?"

Hermione smiled. "Magic."

He scoffed. "Magic? Really?" He looked to Peggy, and finding no support for the second time, turned his stare to flicker between the both of them uneasily. "I mean that's-" he gestured at the cat who had stepped down from the tray and settled on Hermione's good side. "-impossible?"

Peggy studied the cat as well. "I've come to see a lot of 'impossible' things recently in the last couple days Mr. Stark, and I've come to realize that what we thought as fiction might have always been apart of reality if we only didn't choose to ignore the possibility."

Howard grimaced. "Riddles Miss. Carter? Don't think I didn't catch your innuendo over here," he looked away, "I heard about Schmidt too."

"Then you understand how fast our world is changing. Why we need people like Dr. Erskine, and then people like Hermione."

He frowned at Hermione. "What, Colonel Philips is going to let a dame join? Fight in the war?"

Peggy sat a little straighter. "I did."

He scoffed lightly. "Yeah, but that's you." He shrugged at Hermione. "No offense."

"None taken," Hermione replied a little lost in their conversation. It wasn't like she was going to stay here good Merlin. She had to find magical London! Dumbledore, or someone to help her get back to her time! Which then begged the question, "Hang on," Hermione stopped the conversation, "-where are we? What day is it?"

"Right, you don't know," Howard rubbed his hands together. "Well its November 19th, so you've been asleep for 6 days. You had to go into emergency surgery when we'd made it to the safe house, and then we had to transport you here, were we've been waiting for you to wake up. Colonel Philips needs to debrief you."

Hermione had no idea who Colonel Philips was. "And where are we exactly?"

"Another safe house in Liverpool."

Hermione motioned to her waist and legs. "And this?"

"You should make a full recovery. You were hit with three bullets, but all had clean exit wounds and nothing major was nicked," Peggy assured her. "Dr. Erskine says that the only lasting damage will be the scars."

The information relieved Hermione. She wasn't sure how far her healing spell had gone, and she didn't wholly trust the 1940's medicine practices on gun shot wounds. She felt as if she was lucky to be alive. "Well then, when can I leave?" Hermione asked inconspicuously.

She also wasn't sure if Howard knew or not that she was from the future, so she kept the information to herself and didn't ask the glaring question out loud. When will I be well enough to travel back to my own time?

Peggy though seemed to understand what she was talking about and carried on. "Physically you can get up whenever you feel like you can. When your body is ready, you can stand up or move whenever you'd like. However, Howard is right, Colonel Philips wants to speak with you before anything else."

Colonel Philip sounded like the man in charge of everything, including Peggy, and Hermione wasn't sure she should talk to him without disrupting the time line even further than Hermione already had.

This left her with very little options.

Hermione pointed her wand to her injured side and focused on the numb skin below her nightgown. "Vulnera Sanentur," she whispered. She poured her energy and concentration into healing the damage to her side and legs. Healing was never a very fast magic, but Hermione only had to do enough to get her on her feet.

She would need to find Hogwarts, or Dumbledore, or someone from the magical world next. She didn't have time to negotiate with Colonels from this time. She needed to get home.

Hermione dropped her wand after she had layered the spell over her body several times over and she began to feel the rise of sweat on her brow. With the amount of magic she had flooded her body with, her calculations leant to her wound being completed closed, her swelling would be decreased dramatically, and physical exertion would be tolerable.

Which meant she could leave.

She met Peggy's eyes seriously when she was done. "Thank you for saving me."

She sat forwards in her bed and found no pain in her side. Whether that was from lingering drugs or Hermione's patchwork, she didn't complain. She flicked her wand and turned the cat back into vase of flowers. "I want to thank the both of you for saving me. You didn't have to take me along and rescue me, but you did." She met both of the SSR agents eyes. "So thank you. I owe you both a life debt."

Howard nodded seriously and leaned against the hospital wall. "I don't know what that means, but it sounds severe, so your welcome." He shrugged and gave her a smile. "It was only a plane ride doll face."

"But you saved me, and I can't-" Hermione was about to say leave but she stopped herself. "Anyways, again, thank you for your help." She tipped her head at Peggy and palmed her wand. "I won't forget it."

If Hermione had been paying closer attention, she would have noticed Peggy's sharp eyes notice the witch's nervousness and the moment she seemed to grasp her wand tighter. She would have seen her shift her body weight forward for quick movement.

But Hermione didn't notice these tings as she was overcome with the past few days events and her short moment of magical exhaustion.

So as Hermione began to apparate, she didn't watch at Peggy Carter began to lean forwards in her seat, coiled like a spring.

Determination.

Hermione smiled to her new found rescuers and friends. "And I'll always remember you."

Howard frowned. "What do you mean-"

Destination.

Hermione smiled back and closed her eyes. She envisioned Hogwarts, never changing even in the new decade she was in. "-mean you'll always rememb-"

Deliberation.

Peggy launched herself forwards, taking Hermione by the arm as Hermione was sucked backwards into an event horizon through the blackness.

They were pressed very hard from all directions, unbreathing as if there were iron bands tightening around their chests. Their eyeballs felt as if they were being forced back into their heads and their ear-drums were being pushed deeper into their skulls.

The pressure vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared, and Hermione ripped herself away from the hand on her arm.

"Oh my- oh my god," stuttered the other woman.

Howard gaped at the suddenly empty bed and and then at the empty seat beside it.

They had both disappeared. Right in the middle of his sentence.

Howard rapidly back peddled out of Hermione's room and started to sprint as fast as he could to the only person who would know what to do with magic, a questionable flower vase, and disappearing agents. Towards Colonel Philip.

Next: A trip to Scotland with everyone's favorite SSR agent and a baseball game.

And we FINALLY see Steve. See? Slow burn.