Earth-200007, C.E. 1036
"What does it mean, professor?" Aelric asked. He had been one of Salazar's favorite students, back when he'd actually been a professor at Hogwarts. He'd since parted ways with his old friends, but the title still stuck with his former students. Even after they'd grown and started families of their own, as Aelric had.
His retirement hadn't been amicable. Godric, Helga, and Rowena's insistence on letting in the muggle-borne would be the death of them, and all wizard-kind. Salazar wanted no part in it. It wasn't borne of any prejudice on his part- he, after all, had been born of non-magical parents. He'd had to lie to his family, without guidance or knowledge. He'd had to suppress his magic with the terror of what might happen to him if he were discovered. He knew what it was like to be hunted, harried, to not sleep restfully for months on end. He'd lived with the knowledge that a single slip up could have him burned. He'd had to lie, struggle, and connive just to survive. The others didn't know, they couldn't know. They'd grown up in wizarding enclaves, with parents to protect and guide them. While the hunt had still been a reality for them, they had the luxury of seeing it with detachment, and not as an existential threat. Salazar couldn't. He had seen too much. He had lived it.
And he was living it now. Imprinted on the ground was the sigil of their doom. "Bifrost." He said "She's here."
Aelric's eyes widened in terror. "Here?" He gasped "But we're protected! The wards- they're supposed to protect us!" Aelric was part of a small wizarding hamlet, Belucan, one of many that had sprung up in the wake of the Viking invasions and the gods who had come with them. Perhaps that safety had allowed for complacency.
"Wards are only as strong as the will of the people they protect." He replied. In all likelihood someone had slipped up. Someone had visited a nearby muggle village and exposed themselves as a magic user. That was why the Goddess of Death had come to them now. Salazar had been preparing his whole life for this, ever since Asgardians had scoured his village and he'd slipped out into the night. "Get as many people out as you can, take them to Hogwarts." He told Aelric.
"What about the Goddess?"
And what of her? All that he knew of her was legend and terrified rumors. Still, he had prepared as best he could. He and his compatriots had worked together to ward Hogwarts and communities across the isles. They had taught young witches and wizards how to fight, how to stay hidden, how to protect themselves. Yet he feared that those precautions would not be enough. He had hatched a basilisk in Hogwarts, in hopes that he or his heirs could command the beast against her. He had invented a spell, and though he had not yet used it, he had never doubted its terrible power. There were many ways to kill with magic, but this killing curse was meant for death and death alone.
"Leave her to me."
It would have to be enough.
-----
"What are you?"
There really was no good way to answer a question like that. Harry knew essentially nothing about this woman, her motivations, or her abilities. She probably had some connection to Asgard, or was some sort of deity, given the timing of her appearance, but other than that…
"A little sore, but I'm doing alright, thanks." He responded flatly. She was unamused.
"Any ideas why she looks like she wants to skewer you?" Natasha asked over comms.
Thor grunted in acknowledgement of the question and stepped forward. "I don't know who you are-"
"Hela." The woman said.
Thor's composure faltered "Is that… supposed to mean something to me?"
Annoyance flared in Hela's face. "I'm shocked that Odin would allow such an ignorant oaf to wield Mjolnir… actually, I'm not. Where is that old fool, anyway?"
"My name is Thor Odinson. My father is dead and I will not have you speak ill of him. How do you know him?"
For just a moment, annoyance gave way to fury "And he never told you about me?" She said with venom. Thor shrugged. "Well then. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Hela, Goddess of Death, firstborn daughter of Odin- and since the old man is dead- Queen of Asgard." Thor looked stupefied, and Harry couldn't blame him. His friend had had enough life changing events for one day. "Now, brother, kneel."
"What?"
"Kneel, to show your allegiance to your Queen. And join me in dispatching that abomination." She glanced disdainfully in Harry's direction "Who no doubt is responsible for our father's death." Harry winced, as it clicked. Thor had said that any Asgardian animosity towards wizards had long since died out, but clearly, he hadn't been entirely correct. This goddess intended on completing the genocide of his people once and for all.
He didn't like lingering on it- the awareness that some grave injustice had been done to him, to his ancestors, to humanity as a whole. If he did, he'd start wondering what scars of that genocide still echoed and shaped his life and the world he'd grown up in. The wizarding world had been deeply flawed- paranoid, racist, and xenophobic. Yet, he wondered how much of that was because of millennia of being hunted like vermin. He wondered what his world might have been like without the likes of Hela? Would wizards and muggles still be separate? Would blood supremacists hold less sway?
The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him. That so much might have been taken from him before he'd even been born. But there had been no deserving target of his anger, so he'd just let it burn itself out.
Until now.
Thor sighed "Yeah… no." Then he threw Mjolnir at her.
Stephen took a step back, "Checkpoint."
Harry, not expecting Thor to attack at that moment, was a beat behind him. He didn't even try for any of the more common spells- during sparing session with Thor it was apparent that stunners and low-level jinxes had little effect on him. Instead, Harry pressed his hand to the rocky ground, intending on collapsing the mountain around her and burying her in a landslide.
But Hela was fast. She wove around Thor's hammer and materialized a volley of blades out of thin air. Hastily, Harry pulsed his magic into the ground and apparated out of the path of blade storm. The mountainside began to collapse on her, but Hela leapt into the air, sending blades at all three of her opponents as she flipped and landed gracefully onto the ground- equidistant between the three of them.
Harry apparated away from that volley as well, but Hela had already caught into his strategy and had send out an erratic spray of spears, one of which nearly grazed him as he re-appeared. Harry, running on pure instinct, lashed out with a powerful blasting curse. She dodged the spell, but against anyone else that wouldn't have mattered. It would have been enough to level a city block, but the maelstrom of shrapnel did little more than stagger her and rip her clothes.
His teammates hadn't been idle. Stephen had conjured a portal in front of him, using it to redirect her blades back at her. Meanwhile, Thor summoned Mjolnir, taking the hammer back into Hela's path. Hela intercepted the hammer with an outstretched palm, shooting a smirk at Thor, who stared in disbelief. A rain of blades descended on her, courtesy of Stephen, but she barely flinched as one pierced cleanly through her chest, lodging into the ground. She looked vulnerable and Harry wasn't going to turn down the opportunity. "Imperio." No more hesitation.
In that moment, it looked like they might have had her, but in the next the truth became clear. She snapped the blade embedded in her and pivoted out of the path of Harry's spell. Despite having just been impaled, she looked no worse for wear, with no visible wound or even blood. And Thor's hammer…
She had shattered it.
"That's… not possible." Thor mumbled, for the moment taken out of the fight from sheer shock. Fortuitously, at that moment reinforcements arrived. It was surprisingly coordinated for something so ad-hoc. Tony's drones opened fire just as a series of portals opened, and a fresh wave of Avengers stepped through.
Harry grimaced, knowing just how precarious introducing new, easily killable people into the mix was, but there was no time to question the strategy. If he wanted to protect everyone, he needed to keep Hela's focus on him. "It pisses you off, doesn't it? To know that you failed." He shouted. Hela's head whipped towards him, yeah, he had her. "You devote your life to genocide, but in the end it meant nothing."
"I hate you." Natasha said.
"Why do you always do this." Hill echoed her.
Despite asking for it, the volley of blades headed in his direction was intimidating, the only answer was to apparate away again. "Coward!" She spat. "Fine, if you won't fight yourself, I'll just have to murder your little friends, one by one."
Shit.
Steve, T'Challa, Pietro, and Skye comprised the first wave of reinforcements. Pietro whisked Cap away and T'Challa's vibranium suit was excellent protection, but Skye…
Her shockwave deflected the oncoming barrage, but one errant spear lodged into her shoulder, breaking the runic protections he had so carefully inscribed her armor far too easily. She cried out, eyes wide, bracing for the next blow. Harry only had moments, and there was only one answer. He had hesitated with Demogorge and Thor had paid the price for it. Never again.
Harry apparated right behind her, so that his wand was pressed against her back. Already, she was pivoting to face him, a blade extending, moments away from skewering him. Coming so close to her was nearly suicidal, but it also meant that his spell was point blank, no space to dodge. "Avada Kedavra."
Hela fell to her knees, and for one foolish moment Harry thought he had killed her. Then there was pain. Blades tearing through his suit, and then his flesh. Harry's mouth gaped open in a voiceless scream as he toppled onto his back, still suspended in the air by the spears gouging through his chest. Slowly, his body sank deeper onto the spears impaling him, while above him, Hela rose. Power rolled off her like a storm, crackling with its intensity. Her eyes glowed.
What had he done?
"You fool." She laughed "I'm the Goddess of Death. You think you could use death against me? Me?" She plucked the wand from his limp hand. "Your filth will corrupt this relic no longer." Harry had no answer, he barely had space in his mind for regret before a spear lodged itself in his head.
-----
"Well, that was fun."
Harry jerked to wakefulness, finding himself, for the third time, naked on the floor of King's Cross. This was starting to become a habit, and he didn't like it. As he had with his previous visits to limbo, he willed himself clothing, only to discover that the trick no longer worked. Cringing, he looked up to the voice that had addressed him, and all thoughts of modesty vanished.
It was her. Death, looking as terribly beautiful as she ever had. Her eyes consumed him, and it felt like he was literally being consumed by her. He stood, bracing himself against the shaking of his limbs. He'd never felt more vulnerable, so exposed. "I love watching you die." She continued, stepping towards him and placing a hand to his cheek. Goosebumps erupted across his body as her touch whipped up a combination of numbing cold and stinging electricity.
Her hand traced downward, across his chest. Numbly, Harry noticed he was hard. Death was smiling at him. She was amused.
Then she pulled her hand back, and Harry rasped in a breath. "Take a look." She said, motioning to the side. As if seen through a haze there was a view the battlefield that Harry had just left. Skye, Pietro, and Steve were dead, filled with blades like pincushions, and Thor looked to be on his last legs. The ground around Hela sprouted spears, and they encircled her like a deadly flower. Harry felt oddly detatched, even though it was his friends, practically his family dying in battle because of his failure. It was like Death blotted everything else out.
"Is she one of yours?" He said faintly, feeling proud that he could speak at all in her presence.
"An acolyte, you could say." She waved a hand "She channels a bit of my power, I spread a bit of my influence, it works out. We could have a similar deal, though the terms would be… slightly different." Harry really didn't like the way her tone dipped. He could swear that he saw a hungry spark in her otherwise hollow eyes, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
"I can't accept that offer." It was all he could say in the face of her. She was so much, it was hard to do anything more.
"I know, that's why we're here." She said, nonplussed. "Word of advice. Next time, don't use the killing curse on her."
"Wait, next time?"
It was then that he saw it, the green magic weaving around Stephen Strange's wrist. The clever bastard had-
-----
"Checkpoint." Strange said "Harry, don't use 'Avada Kedavra'. It backfires horribly."
Harry glanced down at Stephen's wrist- he'd activated the Time Stone. "How many times?"
"Five."
-----
"Checkpoint."
Suddenly, Harry was dumped onto a floor. He rolled over to see Thor and Wanda falling through their own portals "What's the meaning of-"
"I've been looping time." Stephen interrupted Thor succinctly. "I've done ten iterations of the battle so far. Trying out different strategies."
Harry scrambled to Wanda, who was laid out on a table and looked much worse for wear. Her arm was bent at a painful angle, her face was heavily bruised, and a trickle of blood ran down from her temple. He gently touched a hand to her cheek and channeled his magic to heal her. Faintly, she began to stir. "No luck?" Harry asked.
"Not yet. In every iteration so far, we lose."
"What have you learned so far?" Steve pushed into the room. The room, he recognized now, was the largest meeting room in Avengers compound- dominated by the central table that Wanda was laying on. The other members of their team were close at hand.
"She's very deadly. Its almost impossible to keep up a defense against her projectiles without letting something slip through. She's durable, she's been impaled and shrugged it off, and can withstand explosions. She's fast, she can dodge targeted spells, arrows, and missiles. She can nail Quicksilver given enough time and break through any protection short of Vibranium. She can break your hammer, Thor."
"What!"
"Also, that 'Avada Kedavra' curse of yours just supercharges her. She team-wiped us after you tried it."
Harry cringed "Sorry."
"Don't be, it's part of the experimentation process."
"So, where is she now?" Steve asked.
"Mirror dimension." Strange said "Though given that it took Odin's power to keep her bound in that pocket dimension-" He winced "Yeah, she just broke out."
"How long do we have until she threatens civilians?"
"Evacuation was already underway because of the Demogorge situation, thankfully." Hill said, but there are some military vessels nearby.
"Don't worry about that." Strange shook his head "We just need to come up with a plan, and I'll reset the timeline and relay it to everyone. So- do we have any other aces up our sleeves?"
Wanda pushed herself up. Harry placed a hand on her shoulder, willing her to take it easy "Have I tried the Mind Stone against her yet?"
Strange grinned wryly "You have not. You'll be vulnerable, though. You can't stand up to her in a face-to-face battle, Wanda."
"She hates my guts; I'll keep her distracted." Harry offered.
"I hate you." Natasha muttered. "And I doubt that'd be enough. If she's clever, she'll see through it."
"See through it…" Harry mused "That… might actually work."
"What might work?" Wanda asked.
Harry opened a compartment in the side of his suit and pulled out the Invisibility Cloak. "Use this. She'll never see you coming."
"Hopefully." Strange added "If she does, I'll just reset it, again."
Tony took the opportune moment to walk in. "I've also got something to share with the class."
Steve rose an eyebrow "Of course you do. What is it?"
"Oh, just a little thing Shuri and I have been working on. I'm workshopping names, but I've been calling it the 'God-buster'."
-----
"Checkpoint." Harry fell through a portal, tumbling onto the ground as Thor sputtered in indignation.
"What-"
"I've been looping time. We've come up with a plan." Strange explained quickly.
"Harry- heal Wanda and give her your invisibility cloak. You'll be drawing Hela's attention. Don't rely too much on apparation, she'll change targets. Don't use Avada Kedavra." He turned to Thor "Thor. She can break your hammer, be careful."
Another portal opened and Tony stumbled through. "Stark, we need to use the God Buster." His mouth curled in irritation at the word, but already he was moving on "Wanda will use the Mind Stone to subdue her. The rest of us will focus our attacks while she's down. Any questions? No? Good!" He clapped his hands "Let's do this."
Harry stayed with Wanda, cupping her cheek while he healed her. Activity buzzed around them, the other Avengers lurching into motion at Strange's instruction. Harry paid them no mind, all of his attention was on Wanda.
"Hey." He said softly.
"Hey." She echoed, managing a smile as the bruises disappeared from her skin. "Thank you."
"Of course." He kissed her now blemish free temple. Harry felt a hand on his shoulder, but immediately recognized it as Nat's. "Harry." Her grip on his shoulder tightened uncomfortably "I want you to know that I hate this plan."
"Well, she thinks I'm some sort of abomination that needs to be scoured from the Earth. It makes sense that she'd be focused on me." Harry said rationally.
"Exactly, that's why I hate it." Natasha voice was tense, yet resigned "I know the plan makes sense, but be careful. I don't want the scenario we win to be one where you die." Harry paused at that. He knew that Strange would protect their lives as much as possible, but he also knew that he would sacrifice lives for the greater good. It was very possible that one of them wouldn't make it out of this fight alive.
"Don't worry, I'll protect him." Wanda said. To an outsider, the true meaning of her words might not have been clear. But Harry and Nat instantly caught her message- if Harry dies, I'll make sure that Strange must reset.
"Oh, don't mind me." Tony quipped. He alone hung back while the other Avengers had been spurred into motion. He leaned casually against the wall, observing the rest of the team at work.
"I believe you've got somewhere to be, Stark." Strange said.
"Oh, do you?" Tony smiled impishly. "Because I believe I don't."
"And the suit?"
"Oh, did I not mention? I'm not the one wearing the suit." Stephen gave him an unamused look, so Tony continued glibly "Be a dear and open a portal to Shuri's lab, would you?"