Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

July 11th 2014

Clint hated airports.

Too many people, too many eyes, too many exits. He’d spent half his life watching crowd patterns, memorising uniforms, marking every shadow that could hide a weapon. Old habits didn’t die — they just got twitchier with age.

Hermione stood a few feet ahead, passport in hand, bag slung over one shoulder. Practical shoes, hair pinned up, expression calm in that annoyingly British way that made him feel like the only one here who might actually start a bar fight. She looked like she belonged in a university lecture hall, not an international terminal full of crying kids and overpriced coffee.

She shouldn’t have been flying commercial. He’d offered the Quinjet. Tony had offered his jet twice. But Hermione Granger was nothing if not stubborn.

“I couldn’t organise a portkey,” she’d explained earlier, tone clipped with the kind of logic that always made Clint feel outmanoeuvred. “Sokovia’s too small to have its own Ministry branch. The closest official hub is in Vienna, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Flying’s easier.”

Flying.

Right. Boarding a plane to a small Eastern European country that most people couldn’t find on a map was definitely easier.

Still, he hadn’t argued. Couldn’t, really. Sokovia was quiet, neutral — the kind of backwater that didn’t even make S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar before HYDRA tore everything apart.

And after the mess in D.C.? After Natasha had dumped everything onto the web, shredding what little cover they had left.
Yeah. Maybe this was for the best.

Tony had scrubbed every trace of Hermione from the files over a year ago — a move Clint had never stopped being grateful for — but that didn’t mean the world was safe.

“You’ve got the emergency line, right?” he asked, again.

Hermione didn’t even look up from her boarding pass. “Yes, Clint.”

“And the encrypted phone Tony gave you?”

“Yes.”

“And the—”

She turned, eyes narrowing with a familiar warning spark. “If you ask about the locator charm again, I will turn your hair blue.”

He almost smiled. Almost. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

There it was — that stubborn spark that always made her seem older, sharper, harder to shake. She’d spent months on lockdown after SHIELD collapsed and the world around them crumbled. She’d earned this quiet, this distance.

“You sure about this?” he asked, tone lower now. “Sokovia’s not exactly a vacation spot.”

Hermione’s lips curved. “It’s not meant to be. They’ve got a promising research initiative — cross-disciplinary work between Muggle and magical medicine. I might actually be able to do some good there.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, scanning the crowd again. “Yeah, well, ‘doing good’ tends to end with you dodging bullets.”

“That only happened once.” When she stepped closer, the edges of her irritation softened. “Clint,” she said quietly, “I’ll send word once I’m settled. Sokovia’s peaceful. This is research, not fieldwork.”

He frowned. “You said that about your last trip to Nepal, and I still got a call about a cursed monastery.”

“That was a misunderstanding,” she said primly.

“Uh-huh.”

“Once is enough.”

She smiled then — small, soft, and a little sad. “I’ll be fine, Clint. You can stop worrying.”

“Not how this works,” he muttered.

She huffed a quiet laugh and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him. He pulled her in closer. She was small but solid, her heartbeat steady against his chest. Safe. For now.

“You’re allowed to miss me,” she murmured against his shoulder.

“Who says I will?”

She leaned back, raising an unimpressed brow. “You always do.”

He didn’t answer because she wasn’t wrong.

The boarding call echoed overhead. Hermione adjusted her satchel, tucking her wand discreetly inside. “Tell Tony I said goodbye — properly, this time. And Pepper.”

“I’ll tell them.”

Hermione nodded once, then rose on her toes and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. He bent, brushing his lips against her temple in return — a quiet, wordless promise. She turned toward the gate and didn’t look back, but he stayed until the last glimpse of her brown hair disappeared down the tunnel.

Only then did he exhale.

He lingered long after the crowd thinned. The announcement boards flicked over to Departed, and the line at security moved on without him. Somewhere beyond the glass, a jet roared down the runway — maybe hers, maybe not — and the sound crawled up through his chest until it settled like lead beneath his ribs.

He forced himself to move. Past the cafés, the newsstand, the endless chatter of travel that never stopped. Out through the automatic doors and into the damp July air.

The city smelled like rain and exhaust. It should’ve been ordinary — just another mission drop-off, another day — but his pulse hadn’t stopped tracking her flight path like a target he couldn’t see.

He’d tell himself this was good. She’d be safe. Out of range. Out of sight.

But he’d learned the hard way — peace never lasted long.

His earpiece buzzed.

“Agent Barton,” JARVIS’s voice came through, smooth and polite as ever. “Miss Granger’s flight has departed. Mr Stark requests that I remind you she refused the private jet, and he is, quote, ‘emotionally wounded.’”

Clint snorted, the sound scraping out of him. “Tell Stark he’ll live. And to stay out of her research files.”

“I will… attempt to convey that message diplomatically,” JARVIS replied. There was a pause, and then the AI’s voice came through the earpiece again, “She’ll be fine, Agent Barton. Miss Granger’s statistical survival rate is notably higher than yours.”

Clint huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

He started toward the parking lot, the hum of engines fading behind him.

Chapter Text

April 29th 2015

Hermione’s tea had gone cold an hour ago.

She stared at the television perched on the narrow shelf in her rented flat, the newscaster’s rapid-fire Sokovian doing little to soften the images playing out on screen — smoke, fire and a large castle.

“Brilliant,” she muttered, dragging a hand down her face. “Because clearly, it’s been too quiet lately.”

The camera cut to a shaky amateur clip, and her stomach sank. A flash of red-gold armour streaked across the skyline, followed by a green blur tearing through what looked suspiciously like the ruins of an old fortress.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Hermione sighed. “Tony.”

Of course it was. Who else could manage to turn up in a quiet Slavic backwater and blow up a castle before breakfast?

She reached for her phone, scrolling through her contacts until she found Clint’s encrypted number. The line rang twice, then straight to voicemail.

“Clint,” she said crisply, pacing the length of her narrow kitchen. “Please tell me that explosion I just saw doesn’t involve you. Because if it does, I swear to Merlin, I will—” she stopped herself, sighed, and ended the call before she said something she’d regret.

She tried again. Still nothing.

The third time, the call didn’t even connect.

Her irritation slipped, replaced by something sharper. Clint wasn’t usually careless about communication — not after everything that had happened the year before.

She tapped her foot, weighing options. Then she switched contacts and hit call again.

Tony answered on the third ring. “You do realise it’s three in the morning back here, right?”

“Oh, spare me,” Hermione said. “You’re never asleep at this hour. What in Merlin’s name have you blown up this time?”

There was a pause. “You saw that, huh?”

“I live in Sokovia, Tony. You’ve just made the national news.”

“…Ah.” Another pause, faint static on the line. “In our defence, that castle was already full of people with terrible decor choices.”

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do I even want to know what that means?”

“No,” Tony said easily. “You really, really don’t.”

She sighed, half in fondness, half in exhaustion. “Is Clint with you?”

Silence.

Then, too casually, “He’s fine.”

“Tony.”

“He’s— alright. Bit of a scratch. Dr Cho’s patching him up.”

Hermione sank onto the edge of her small kitchen table. “A scratch,” she repeated flatly.

“Okay, fine, more of a— cannon-related incident. But he’s going to live, promise.” She closed her eyes and breathed deliberately through her nose. “Hey, Glinda,” he said. “You still there?”

“Obviously.” She glanced at the window. The city beyond her little flat was a smear of rainy grey. “Is Clint sleeping?”

“More or less,” Tony said. “Dr Cho’s running him through another cycle in the cradle. He’s stable. I’m—” He cut off, the noise level changing on the line. “Hold on. I need to get somewhere without, uh, five impossible voices in the background. Can you hang?”

Hermione frowned. “Is someone listening?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Well. Possibly. I just don’t want to do this in the middle of the common room at two in the morning.” She heard the scrape of a chair. 

The pause let her frustration gather, like a coiled spring. “You said he’s stable, but—” she began. “He’s injured, Tony. He was shot by a cannon. I’m getting on the next flight.”

“No, Hermione,” Tony said, flat and instant. “You do not get on that next flight.”

Hermione froze. She could hear the absolute finality in his voice, and for a ridiculous second, she wanted to laugh. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I know exactly what you think you’re going to do,” Tony went on, and there was something like a tired patience under the edge. “You are going to arrive here, you’re going to confront your brother in front of a table full of people who have no idea he keeps parts of his life offline, and you’ll either get pulled into a briefing or you’ll snap and hex someone. Neither is an acceptable outcome.”

“I will not hex anyone,” Hermione said, affronted. “I'll see him and—”

“You will not see him,” Tony interrupted. “Not yet. Clint has spent years making sure you don’t come with classified paperwork stamped across your life. He did that for a reason.”

She felt a wash of cold comprehension. He was right — of course he was right — but that didn’t stop the angry pulse of heat behind her ribs. “So what, I sit here and twiddle my thumbs while he bleeds?”

“Not twiddle,” Tony said. “Do smart things. Do safe things.”

“Which are?”

“For starters, stay put. Let Cho do her work without you leaning over the cradle, scaring the staff. I’ll keep you updated.”

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly again. “You realise I moved halfway across the world for research—not to watch you lot set off international incidents.”

“Hey, we’re trying to keep things tidy this time,” Tony said. “Minimal property damage. Mostly.”

“Mm-hmm,” Hermione murmured. “Tell Clint when he wakes that if he even thinks about dying on me, I’ll kill him myself.”

Tony chuckled, the tension in his tone easing. “I’ll put it on his chart.”

Unbelievable.

Absolutely unbelievable.

Clint Barton had been shot by a HYDRA plasma cannon.

He’d spent most of his career dodging bullets, blades, and alien tech, but apparently what was going to take him out was some idiot in a snow-covered bunker with a half-charged energy weapon.

Now he was flat on his back in a sterile med bay while Dr Helen Cho — brilliant, terrifying, and far too calm — worked with her team and a machine called the cradle to knit him back together.

If she ever found out, she’d kill him herself.

Scratch that. When she found out. Because she always did.

He could already hear her voice — that sharp, careful tone that meant she was furious and trying not to sound it.

You promised me you’d be careful, Clinton. Plasma weaponry?

He winced, not from pain, but from the mental image of her crossing her arms, brow furrowed, wand probably tucked into her sleeve for emphasis.

The cradle’s scanners hummed softly over his chest, and Banner hovered somewhere nearby, muttering about tissue regrowth and energy signatures. Stark’s voice cut through now and then — clipped, focused — as he and Cap argued over the twins. The “enhanced” kids.

Clint tuned them out. He couldn’t afford to focus on anything but the quiet throb in his ribs and the nagging worry twisting in his gut.

Sokovia. Of all the places in Europe, it had to be Sokovia.

He’d heard the coordinates before the mission and felt his stomach drop straight through the Quinjet floor.

Because he knew someone who lived here. Someone who wasn’t supposed to ever be anywhere near HYDRA territory.

Someone only he and Stark knew about.

She was supposed to be safe — tucked away in the capital, buried under research papers and potion bottles, sending him monthly updates full of academic jargon he pretended to understand.

Not thirty miles from an exploding bunker.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath.

Banner looked up from the monitors. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Clint lied. Banner nodded and wandered out of the room after Cho.

Clint let his head fall back against the gurney, exhaling slowly. If Tony was half as smart as he liked to think, he’d already sent a quiet ping to make sure there wasn’t any mention of her in the local newsfeeds. They’d gone to insane lengths to scrub her existence out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s old servers before the HYDRA leaks — thank God for that.

Still. Trouble followed her like gravity. Always had.

When this was over, when he could stand again, he was going to check for himself. Maybe even drag her out of whatever lab she’d buried herself in and put her on the next flight home.

A shadow shifted at the edge of his vision. Tony, arms crossed, was watching the monitors like he could will them to stay green. When he noticed Clint looking, he said, a little too casually, “She knows you’re not dead, by the way.”

Clint blinked. “You talked to her?”

Tony’s mouth twitched — not quite a smile. “She called. Saw the news. I did my best impression of calm and rational.”

“How’d that go?”

“Terribly,” Tony said dryly. “You owe me, Barton. She nearly booked a flight. I had to talk her down before she apparated into the med bay.”

Clint groaned, dragging a hand over his face. “She’s gonna kill me.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “But at least you’ll be alive for her to do it.”

An hour later, the cradle powered down with a low whine, leaving a faint echo of warmth under his skin. Dr Cho gave a short nod. “You’ll live. Try not to get shot again.”

“Not making any promises,” Clint rasped, forcing a faint grin.

She rolled her eyes and left him to rest.

He lay there for a long while after the room emptied — the soft hum of the machines the only sound. His fingers twitched toward his comms, the muscle memory of reaching out, of checking in. But he couldn’t risk it.

Not yet. Not with the rest of the team listening.

So he whispered instead, quiet enough that only the walls could hear him. “Stay safe, brat. Please just… stay safe.”

Chapter Text

May 4th 2015

The Barton homestead wasn’t much to look at from the outside—just a weathered farmhouse tucked between fields and trees, too far from the nearest road for GPS to find. Which was exactly the point.

It wasn’t on any SHIELD registry, Stark’s maps, or Fury’s old databases. It was a place built to disappear. The last fallback. Their fallback.

The team didn’t know that part. They just knew they needed somewhere quiet, somewhere no one could find them while the world lost its mind again.

The Quinjet’s landing gear hissed as it touched down in the field, and Clint was already wincing. The ground was still damp from the storm last night. Mud. So much mud.
Hermione was going to murder him if she ever saw what they were about to track across her antique rugs.

He led the way up the porch, keys in hand, trying to ignore the creeping ache in his ribs. Cho’s cradle had done its work, but not even alien tech could patch over fatigue. “Welcome to nowhere,” he muttered, shoving the door open.

The others followed — Steve first, calm and assessing; Natasha behind him, scanning like she couldn’t turn the habit off. Banner looked like he wanted to melt into the floorboards, and Thor ducked through the doorway like a walking thundercloud. Stark brought up the rear, uncharacteristically quiet.

The air inside was cool, faintly lemon-scented. The furniture was simple but lived-in — mismatched wood tones, soft lighting, a shelf or two of well-worn books. No photos on the walls. No sign of anyone else living here. Just enough to look like an anonymous, well-kept farmhouse.

“Nice place,” Steve said, glancing around. “Didn’t know you had a house.”

Clint shrugged. “That’s the point. Quiet, off-grid, only a few know it exists. ”

Natasha ran a gloved hand along the back of the couch, eyes softening. “You finished the renovations.”

“Couple years back.” He tried to sound casual. “Did most of it myself.”

Her smile was faint. “Looks good.”

He grunted something noncommittal and turned toward the kitchen before she could ask more. He could still see flashes of Hermione — pre-renovation, walls stripped bare, Hermione arguing with Harry over proper insulation charms while he tried to explain muggle drywall.

God, she’d hex him if she saw this team stomping all over her polished floors.

He grabbed a stack of old towels from the counter and tossed them toward the door. “Shoes off or wipe ‘em down. I’m not cleaning up after you lot.”

Tony arched a brow. “House rules? Cute. Didn’t know you were domesticated.”

“Didn’t know you followed instructions,” Clint shot back.

Tony grinned faintly but let it drop, taking a long look around. His gaze lingered for half a second too long on the bookshelf by the fireplace — the one Hermione had lined with everything from magical theory to particle physics. Clint felt a flicker of panic but forced himself to keep moving. The titles were in Latin and Old Norse. No one but Stark would think twice.

“You live out here alone?” Bruce asked quietly.

“Don’t live out here full time, but after today I'm considering it.”

Thor had been silent since they’d landed, but now he turned slowly in the middle of the room, his expression sharpening. His gaze swept the beams, the walls, then the ceiling. The faint hum of magic brushed against Clint’s nerves — old, patient, and strong. Hermione’s wards. Still holding. Still invisible to the untrained eye.

Thor’s brow furrowed. For a long moment, he looked like he might say something — then his eyes met Clint’s. Whatever he saw there made him pause.

“Your dwelling is… well-protected,” the Asgardian said finally, voice low.

Clint’s stomach tightened. “Yeah. Guess I got lucky with the bones.”

Thor’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Luck,” he repeated, tone unreadable. “Of course.”

Steve, thankfully, broke the tension. “Get some rest. Stark, check in with Maria. Bruce, get some sleep.”

There were murmurs of agreement, gear dropped by the door, tired bodies sinking into couches and chairs. Within minutes, the house was full of quiet conversation and the hum of the fire Stark had lit out of sheer restlessness.

Clint stood at the window, watching the last streaks of daylight fade across the fields. The wards shimmered faintly at the edge of his vision, subtle as breath. Hermione’s touch lingered in every inch of this place.

He’d built it with her — every beam, every ward, every layer of protection. It wasn’t just a house. It was their home.

A soft step sounded behind him. Thor. The Asgardian’s voice was calm, but there was weight beneath it. “Tell your kin,” he said quietly, “that her magic endures. It sings strong still.”

Clint didn’t turn around. “I’ll tell her,” he murmured.

Thor nodded once and strode out the front door, leaving him alone with the fading light and the hum of the wards.

The quinjet’s engines droned a low, constant hum, the kind that usually helped Clint find his focus. Not tonight.

The whirlwind of what happened in the past 24 hours—Natasha gone, Vision, whatever the hell he was, Thor arriving, Vision lifting Mjolnir, Thor insisting that made him “worthy,” Stark looking smug as ever, Cap trying to pretend none of it rattled him. Banner looked haunted, retreating deeper into his thoughts.

Everyone was busy pretending not to be rattled. Stark and Banner were hunched over the console, muttering about neural patterns and upload integrity. Steve was running mission specs with that tight-jawed calm that meant he was worried. The Maximoff twins sat near the back, quiet—too quiet.

Clint stayed strapped in, tablet in hand, thumb hovering over the same blinking message he’d sent a dozen times.

You need to get out. Now.

Still no reply.

He leaned back, exhaling hard through his nose. Hermione had a way of vanishing into her own world when she was working. Books, research, healing runes—whatever kept her mind busy. But this wasn’t just another dusty library in Prague. This was Sokovia, and Ultron was tearing it apart.

He shouldn’t have let her go back to Europe.

Nine months ago, he’d told himself it was safer—quiet, out of the line of fire. She’d laughed, called him “Mother Hen,” and promised she’d be fine. And she had been. Until now.

He swiped to check the signal again. Nothing. His encrypted channel was still dark, the system Tony built to keep her off-grid doing its job a little too well.

A soft hum cut through his thoughts—Wanda’s voice. “You’re worried,” she said simply.

Clint’s head snapped up. She was watching him, eyes too knowing. Her tone wasn’t prying, but it made his spine stiffen all the same.

“Just focused,” he said.

Her lips twitched in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “It feels like… someone you care about is close to danger.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t need her poking around in that.

Tony looked up from the console near him, catching the tail end of that exchange. His expression sharpened just slightly. When Wanda turned away, he murmured, “She’s fine, Clint.”

Clint’s jaw worked. “You don’t know that.”

Tony’s tone softened, for once without the sarcasm. “If something had happened, I’d have seen it by now. My systems still ping her signal when she’s online. Nothing yet. Just a blackout zone.”

Clint huffed out a breath. “Yeah, well, blackout zones have a habit of turning into craters lately.”

He glanced toward the twins again. Wanda’s head was tilted, like she was listening to the hum of everyone’s nerves. Pietro sat beside her, jittery, ready to spring.

Something in them twisted at his gut—the way she leaned on her brother for quiet reassurance, the way he kept himself braced between her and the rest of the world. It reminded him too much of those first months after the war, when Hermione came back to him in one piece but all wrong around the edges. She’d been brittle and fierce all at once—sleeping in corners, waking up ready to hex shadows, stubborn enough to make him proud and worried in equal measure.

He’d hovered then, too, trying to keep her steady without crowding her.

Now, looking at the twins, he understood how she must have seen him—this stubborn, protective fool who never learned when to stand down.

He swiped open the tablet again, typing one last message.

Sweetheart, I’m heading in. If you’re still in Sokovia, find a way out. I mean it.

He hit send. The signal light blinked once, then went dead.

Outside the Quinjet window, the clouds broke open, revealing the jagged outline of mountains below—the heart of Ultron’s playground.

“Hell,” he muttered. “She’s gonna kill me if Ultron doesn’t get there first,” he muttered under his breath.

“What’s that, Barton?” came Cap’s voice from the front.

“Nothing,” Clint said quickly. “Just talking to myself.”

Tony didn’t look up from the console. “You’re not the only one,” he said dryly, but there was something in his voice—a thread of shared worry he didn’t bother hiding.

Clint didn’t answer. He was already thinking of every possible way this could go wrong.

Because trouble had always had a way of finding Hermione. And if Ultron was anywhere near her, there wasn’t anything in the world that would keep him from tearing the damn place apart to get her out.

Smoke rolled through the streets like a living thing — thick, acrid, alive with sparks and debris. Clint’s comm crackled with voices: orders, cries, static. The air smelled of burning metal and ozone.

He was running triage, guiding civilians toward the extraction points, while the rest of the team kept Ultron’s army occupied. The city was coming apart, destroyed by Ultron’s drones, and the clock was ticking.

“Barton,” Steve’s voice snapped through the comm. “We need every civilian out.”

“Copy that,” Clint said, ducking behind the twisted remains of a tram line as another explosion shuddered through the street. “Working on it.”

He turned to a huddled group—families, mostly. “This way!” he shouted, waving them toward the buses. “Keep low and move fast—don’t stop for anything!”

He caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye—a blur of brown hair, robes, and a too-familiar stubborn stride.

No.

It couldn’t be—

But then she turned, wand flashing in her hand, and his stomach dropped clean through the ground.

“Hermione?”

She froze mid-charm, eyes snapping toward him. “Oh, for Merlin’s sake!”

She stormed across the rubble, robes streaked with ash, her accent sharp enough to cut through the chaos. “Do you ever listen when people tell you to stay alive?”

Clint gaped. “You’re—what the hell are you doing here?!”

“I live here! Saving people!” she snapped, gesturing at the terrified crowd behind her. “Since someone’s clearly incapable of doing it without getting himself shot every other mission!”

He grabbed her arm, pulling her into cover as shrapnel rained down from an exploding drone. “This isn’t a field hospital, brat—it’s a war zone!”

“Then it’s a good thing I’ve had practice!” she shot back, jerking her arm free. “You think you’re the only one who can handle a little chaos?”

“Chaos?” he barked. “The city’s being destroyed! Do you even know what’s happening?”

“I know enough!” she snapped, wand flicking toward a crumbling wall that instantly reinforced itself with glowing runes. “Now stop wasting time and help me!”

He stared at her, half in disbelief, half in exasperated admiration. Even in the middle of an apocalypse, she was in control—calm, fierce, furious.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “You couldn’t just pick up your phone, could you?”

Her glare could have melted steel. “You’re calling me reckless? You’re flying around the world getting blown up, and you have the nerve to lecture me?”

Another explosion rocked the street. Clint caught her by the waist, pulling her back as debris slammed into the spot where she’d been standing. She shoved him off immediately, cheeks flushed, eyes blazing.

“I’m fine!”

“You’re lucky!”

Her nostrils flared. “You’re a hypocrite, Clinton Barton! You tell me to keep my head down, stay out of danger—meanwhile, you’re out here fighting murder-bots!”

He opened his mouth—then another blast hit nearby, cutting him off. When the dust cleared, she was gone.

Just—gone.

“Hermione!” He spun around, scanning through smoke and screaming civilians. Nothing. No flash of brown hair, no glint of wandlight. Just chaos swallowing everything whole.

“Barton?” Steve’s voice crackled through the comm. “We’re moving civilians to the central square. Where are you?”

He swallowed hard. “On my way.”

He forced himself back into motion, every instinct screaming at him to search for her, to comb every ruined street until he found her. But the city was tearing itself apart, and he had people depending on him.

Later. He’d find her later.

He just had to believe she was smart enough to stay alive long enough for him to do it.

As he herded another group of civilians toward safety, he caught a glimmer of gold runes pulsing faintly on a nearby building—a reinforcement charm, her signature.

She was still out there.

He muttered under his breath, “You’d better be lucky, brat.”

Chapter Text

May 6th 2015

The world shuddered.

For a single, horrifying moment, Hermione thought it was another explosion—then she felt it: the deep, unnatural pull beneath her feet, the shift in gravity that made her stomach lurch.

The ground wasn’t shaking.
It was moving.

The city was rising.

She stared, wide-eyed, at the widening horizon beyond the rooftops. The streets tilted, the buildings groaned, and the air filled with the terrified screams of people who had no idea what was happening.

“Oh, Merlin’s bloody—” she hissed, shoving her wand back into her hand and sprinting for the nearest cluster of civilians.

“Everyone, stay close!” she shouted in Sokovian over the noise. “Hold onto each other—yes, you—no, don’t run!”

A little girl was sobbing, clutching her mother’s hand so tightly her knuckles were white. Hermione knelt beside them, forcing calm into her voice. “It’s all right. I’m going to take you somewhere safe. Just breathe.”

A heartbeat later, with a crack of displaced air, they were gone.

The surface—cold air, solid ground, the deep green of the forest below. She barely waited for the mother’s gasp of relief before she Apparated back, reappearing in the middle of another collapsing street, lungs burning.

Grab. Twist. Land. Breathe. Go back.

Over and over again.

Her lungs burned. Her vision tunnelled.

The air was thick with smoke and the metallic tang of blood, the sound of collapsing buildings mixing with the screams of people who hadn’t yet made it to the safe zones. Hermione had long since stopped counting how many she’d helped—five, ten, twenty—each one grabbed by the arm and wrenched through space before she could think too hard about what it was doing to her.

The city was high off the ground now—she could feel it. A nauseating weightlessness that made her stomach flip every time she Disapparated. The edges of her magic were fraying, every jump slower, rougher.

“Come on,” she gasped, clutching the hand of a little boy who looked more than half her age and twice as scared. One more jump. Just one more.

The world twisted—and they hit the ground hard on the surface below.

He was safe.

She wasn’t.

Her knees buckled the moment she reappeared on the floating city again, just long enough to pull another terrified pair of civilians from the rubble. The strain was brutal now, her body trembling with every jump.

She barely registered the flash of movement until strong hands caught her just before she hit the ground.

“Easy, sorceress,” a voice said, low and accented, almost teasing.

Hermione blinked up, vision swimming. A young man with silver-white hair crouched beside her, blue eyes sharp but oddly gentle. His clothes were singed, dust clinging to his face, and he moved with a speed that made her dizzy to even look at.

“Who—” she began, but the words died as a flicker of metal caught her eye.

A bot.

Ten meters away, rising from the debris, its cannon whirring as it locked onto them.

Her wand snapped up on instinct. “Bombarda!”

The explosion tore through the air, sending shrapnel and smoke scattering. Pietro flinched, throwing an arm in front of his face, but the bot was gone.

When the dust settled, he turned to her with a stunned expression that quickly shifted into something between amusement and awe.

“You make things explode,” he said, eyebrows raised. “I like that.”

Hermione groaned, swiping soot from her cheek. “I wasn’t trying to impress you.”

“You succeeded anyway,” he said lightly, offering her a hand to stand. “You are not from here.”

“Not the time,” she muttered, pushing herself up despite the tremor in her legs. “There are still people trapped.”

“You have done this—” He gestured around, incredulous. “You brought them down? With that?”

Her jaw tightened. “If you mean magic, yes. And unless you plan on helping, get out of my way.”

He grinned—quick, sharp, a spark of challenge in his eyes. “Oh, I plan on helping.”

Before she could respond, he blurred into motion, gone in a streak of silver and wind—back moments later with two more civilians, eyes wide, clothes torn.

Hermione blinked. “You—”

“Fast,” he said with a shrug. “You teleport. I run. We make good team, da?”

She stared at him for half a heartbeat, then sighed. “Fine. But don’t touch me without warning again—I’ll hex you.”

His grin widened. “Deal.”

Another explosion shook the street. Hermione squared her shoulders, drew in a shaky breath, and raised her wand again.

The rhythm of it became almost mechanical after that — find, grab, vanish, reappear.

Only this time, she wasn’t working alone.

Pietro was everywhere at once. A streak of motion darting between the collapsing buildings, scooping people up and dropping them near Hermione before blurring away again. He’d learned her pattern frighteningly fast: bring them close, she’d Apparate them down. Rinse and repeat.

Until it was finally—mercifully—quiet.

Or as quiet as a floating city full of explosions could get. Smoke still curled from the edges of the shattered street, fires flickering in the distance, but their sector was clear. 

Hermione pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. Her magic felt raw, like every nerve had been dragged through glass.

Pietro dropped beside her, breathing hard but grinning. “That was the last of them,” he said. “You are… how do you say… terrifying.”

“Thank you,” she muttered weakly, fishing through the pocket of her soot-stained jacket. Her fingers brushed her comm, still tuned to Stark’s frequency. She thumbed it on and held it close.

“Tony?”

There was a crackle, then his voice—familiar, grounding, threaded with exasperated relief.
“Hermione? Tell me I’m not hearing things.”

“You’re hearing right,” she said, sinking to sit on a chunk of broken pavement. “Our side of the city’s cleared. No civilians left up here.”

There was a sharp pause. “…Our side?” he repeated, voice suddenly wary. “What do you mean ‘our’? Who’s with you?”

Hermione swayed, vision going fuzzy at the edges. “Uh… long story,” she managed. Then it hit her all at once—the full absurdity of it—and she let out a soft, breathless laugh. “Oh, fuck. Clint is going to lose his mind.”

“You mean the archer?” Pietro asked, crouching beside her again, head tilted.

She huffed. “Brother.”

Tony’s voice came again, sharper this time. “Hermione, what do you—wait, who are you talking to? Glinda, who the hell—”

Pietro plucked the comm gently from her hand. “Is this Mr Stark?”

There was a beat of silence. Then, very dryly: “Oh, great. Maximoff. Fantastic. What, are you two having a coffee break up there?”

Pietro grinned faintly, ignoring the jab. “She helped get your people out. She is… very stubborn.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” Tony muttered. “Is she okay?”

Pietro glanced down just in time to see Hermione’s eyelids flutter. Her lips moved around something that might’ve been I’m fine—but she was already slumping forward.

He caught her before she hit the ground, frowning as her wand rolled from her fingers. “She will be,” he said into the comm, quieter now.

“Keep her that way,” Tony snapped. The comm hissed with static, the connection cutting as the signal flickered out.

Pietro sighed, tucking the device into her pocket. “Your brother,” he murmured to the unconscious witch in his arms, “is not going to be happy.”