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The Space Stone, a raw, crystalline chunk of blue light, pulsed in Hermione's palm. It felt incredibly hot, its power a dizzying current of pure, untamed cosmic energy. She carefully placed it into the second empty groove of the silver necklace.
"Click."
Two gems, one yellow (Mind) and one blue (Space), rested side by side, complementing each other with a silent, terrifying hum. The act felt profound. She hadn't just collected powerful artifacts; she was assembling a cosmic arsenal.
The transfer was rough. The space above a dark, garbage-strewn alley in the ruins of downtown Manhattan tore open with a violent, searing burst of sparks and air pressure. Three figures tumbled out, landing hard on the cold, damp ground: an older, haggard Tony Stark, a grim-faced Steve Rogers, and a man in a red cloak who instantly stabilized himself with a shimmer of magic—Stephen Strange.
"Here," Strange said, rubbing the dust from his eyes, his voice strained. "We made it back to the day of the Chitauri invasion. She should be finishing the mop-up at Stark Tower now. We need to move."
Strange looked at Tony, whose posture was rigid, his gaze fixed on the ground. "Tony, are you ready?"
Tony didn't answer immediately. He slowly pulled a long, obsidian-black wand from an inner pocket of his coat. It was completely unadorned, yet it radiated an aura of profound, lethal coldness. The Elder Wand. His hand, gripping the dark wood, was shaking visibly.
"Strange," Tony's voice was hoarse, thick with a pain that went far deeper than the physical. "Are you certain… there's no other way?" He looked up at the Sorcerer Supreme, a desperate, broken plea in his eyes. "We can't try to talk to her? She's… she was family."
Strange shook his head, his expression a mask of terrible, weary certainty. "I have seen countless futures, Tony. Every permutation. Every attempt to reason, every plea for mercy. None of them end well. None of them change the final outcome."
Steve, who had been listening in grim silence, stepped forward. "What exactly is the outcome? What is she trying to do?"
Strange looked at the Captain, his gaze heavy with the weight of unspeakable knowledge. "The Ancient One warned me on her deathbed: Hermione is the key to universal order. But if she ever discovers one specific… thing… a certain piece of knowledge… her personality will turn drastically. The cost of that knowledge is the destruction of all existence."
"She's already a dark witch," Tony said, his voice laced with self-hatred. "What else could turn her?"
"I don't know," Strange admitted. "The Ancient One never saw it, only the profound change it would cause. But if we allow her to keep assembling the Stones, if she gains access to that final variable, every future ends in oblivion. This is the only window. The moment of her greatest distraction. We have to do this, Tony. Now. We only have the energy for one temporal jump."
Tony looked at the dark wand in his hand, his eyes burning with unshed tears. He raised the wood, his lips trembling as he tried to form the killing incantation. This was not a fight against a supervillain; it was the execution of the daughter he never had.
The tip of the dark wand flared with a sickly, searing green light, charged with the concentrated power of a Level 6 Killing Curse.
The light shot out, a silent, absolute spear of death aimed directly at the nexus of Hermione's soul.
But Tony's love, his guilt, his absolute, devastating regret, was stronger than the curse. The green light curved, missing its target by a fraction of an inch, impacting the metal wall behind her with a sound like tearing fabric.
"I—I can't do it!" Tony screamed, dropping the terrifying wand onto the cracked concrete, his whole body shaking violently.
At that very moment, the air beside them shimmered, tearing open with a sound like a sheet of fracturing glass. Doctor Strange's own, ancient, and highly illegal magic.
Hermione, who had just stepped out of the portal at Stark Tower with the Stones, felt the supersonic whip of the curse pass close enough to her soul to send a raw, paralyzing spike of terror through her body. That was a Level 6 attack. An absolute threat.
She spun around, her eyes widening, and saw the three figures—Tony, Steve, and Strange—standing there, their faces grim, and her mind, the brilliant, terrifying analytical engine, clicked into place. The level of the curse, the presence of the Sorcerer Supreme, the profound look of despair on Tony's face.
Future, she thought, the realization hitting her with the force of a hammer. They're from the future.
"You're not Tony," she growled, her wand appearing instantly in her hand, pointed at the Sorcerer Supreme. "You're not the present-day Steve. You're from tomorrow." She looked at the abandoned Elder Wand on the ground. "Why do you want me dead? And what, precisely, did I do in your timeline that was so catastrophic it required you to kill a child?"