**Allied Airfield - Somewhere in Italy**
**November 1943, when possibility became probability**
Steve Rogers stood on the tarmac wearing his future like ill-fitting clothes.
Army-issued pants. Combat boots. A leather jacket that smelled of other men's courage and someone else's last mission. Underneath, still wearing the ridiculous blue-and-red costume because there hadn't been time to find anything else, and because—he suspected—some part of him wanted to remember who he'd been when he put on the tights and thought heroism was performing for crowds.
That felt like years ago.
It had been three hours.
The shield leaned against his leg. Real now. Not a prop anymore. Or maybe it had always been real and Steve was the thing that needed to become authentic. Either way, it was coming with him. Into the heart of Hydra territory. Behind enemy lines. To save Bucky.
To save them all.
If he could.
If he survived.
If any of this insanity actually worked.
The night tasted of aviation fuel and desperation. Stars overhead did their usual trick of pretending the world below them wasn't on fire. Steve had never been good at appreciating irony, but he was learning. War was an excellent teacher of things you'd rather not know.
Footsteps approached. Two sets. One he recognized—the precise, confident rhythm of Agent Carter's stride. The other was heavier. Male. Moving with the loose-limbed confidence of someone who'd never met a problem he couldn't engineer his way through or buy his way out of.
Howard Stark appeared first, carrying what looked like half an arsenal disguised as luggage. He wore a flight jacket with casual elegance, the way some men wore tuxedos—like he'd been born in it and simply hadn't bothered changing.
"Rogers!" Stark's grin was all teeth and recklessness. "Heard you're planning something monumentally stupid. I approve. Monumentally stupid is my specialty. Well, that and revolutionizing modern warfare, but who's counting?"
"Mr. Stark." Steve managed something approximating politeness. He'd met Howard exactly twice. Once during the Project Rebirth demonstrations, and once at a War Bonds rally where Stark had been sizing up the chorus girls with the focus most men reserved for strategic planning.
"Please. Howard. 'Mr. Stark' was my father, and he'd have called this mission idiocy." The grin widened. "Which means it's *exactly* the kind of thing I want in on. Got you a ride. My personal cargo plane. She's not pretty, but she's fast, and she's got enough modifications to make the brass very nervous about my government contracts."
Peggy emerged from the shadows carrying a helmet painted blue with a white 'A' emblazoned on the front.
"Before you ask," she said, presenting it to Steve, "I acquired this from one of the chorus girls. Legally speaking, 'acquired' is the word we're using. Morally speaking, I stole it. But she had three, and you have none, so I'm comfortable with my choices."
Steve took it. The helmet was lightweight, theatrical, absolutely not designed for combat. It was also exactly the kind of thing Captain America would wear in the comics.
Reality imitating art imitating propaganda imitating hope.
"And these—" Peggy produced a pair of pilot's goggles, the leather worn soft with use. "Will keep your eyes functional when Howard tries to kill us all with his piloting."
"My piloting is *excellent*," Howard objected. "I've only crashed twice, and both times were primarily the weather's fault."
"The second time was in clear skies, Howard."
"Clear but *turbulent* skies. Completely different."
Despite everything—the fear, the impossible mission, the weight of two hundred lives pressing against his chest—Steve felt his mouth twitch into something almost like a smile.
"Thank you," he said, accepting the goggles. "For this. For coming. You didn't have to—"
"Oh, don't thank us yet," Peggy interrupted. "Wait until we've actually accomplished something more impressive than theft and bad decisions." She glanced past him toward the darkness beyond the airfield. "Harry should be here any moment. He said five minutes, which in Harry-time usually means—"
**CRACK.**
The sound wasn't loud. It was *wrong*. The auditory equivalent of reality having a small seizure. Like the universe had hiccupped and forgotten what physics were supposed to sound like.
The air six feet away from them simply *folded*.
Then unfolded.
Then contained a person who definitely hadn't been there three seconds ago.
Harry Carter—Agent Magus, the ghost story made flesh—stood in a puddle of nothing that had been empty air. He wore black combat armor that drank light. Gold trim that caught fire. A red hood pulled low. A mask that revealed nothing and promised everything impossible.
For exactly two seconds, he stood like that. Mythic. Terrifying. The kind of thing that appears in soldier's nightmares and propaganda posters.
Then he reached up and pulled off the hood.
Pulled off the mask.
And became human.
Or at least human-shaped.
Steve stared.
He couldn't help it. Peggy had warned him not to stare. He was staring anyway.
Because Harry Carter looked like someone had sculpted the Platonic ideal of masculine beauty and then decided it needed emerald eyes that burned with something older than the face they occupied.
Black hair. Strong jaw. The kind of features that belonged on Roman coins or Renaissance paintings. But the eyes—Christ, the eyes—they were *green*. Not hazel. Not brown-with-green-flecks. *Green* like deep forests and deeper magic and things that grew in darkness and turned toward light with desperate hunger.
"Peggy." Harry's voice matched his face—rich, warm, British-proper with something wild underneath. He moved forward and pulled his sister into a hug that looked like it might crack ribs but was probably just enthusiasm.
Peggy made a small *oof* sound but returned it with equal vigor.
"Miss me?" Harry asked into her hair.
"Desperately. It's been almost a week since you've done something impossible and given Phillips another ulcer."
"Only a week? I'm slipping. Must be age." He released her, held her at arm's length, studied her face with the intensity of someone reading scripture. "You look tired."
"There's a war on, Harry. We're all tired."
"Some of us are tired and *sensible*. You're tired and about to fly into Hydra territory with a test-tube soldier and Howard Stark's piloting skills. Which category does that fall under?"
"The 'saving two hundred men' category. Do try to keep up."
Harry grinned. It transformed his face from sculpture into something alive. Something dangerous and delighted in equal measure.
He turned his attention to Howard, who stood with his mouth slightly open in an expression Steve recognized. The look of a man whose understanding of reality had just been gently but firmly relocated.
"Mr. Stark." Harry extended a hand. "Agent Harry Carter. Though most people call me Magus for reasons that are about to become dramatically apparent if they're not already."
Howard shook it automatically. His brain was still catching up with his body. "You... you just..."
"Appeared out of nowhere? Yes. Apparition. It's a form of magical transportation. Very convenient. Absolute hell on your inner ear until you get used to it." Harry's smile turned sharp. "I understand you're a man of science, Mr. Stark. Empiricist. Rationalist. The kind of person who doesn't believe in magic."
"I... I don't..." Howard rallied magnificently. "There's no scientific basis for instantaneous teleportation. Conservation of energy alone would require—"
"Would require an understanding of physics that includes things your professors never mentioned because they didn't know they existed." Harry's tone was gentle. Not condescending. The way you explain things to very intelligent children who've just discovered the world is larger than they'd been told. "Magic exists, Mr. Stark. It's real. It follows rules—different rules than physics, but rules nonetheless. You can either spend the flight arguing about epistemology, or you can accept that I just violated several laws of thermodynamics and focus on the part where we're about to violate several laws of the German military."
Howard's mouth worked silently. Then: "But... *how?*"
"Practice. Talent. A wand. Several years of schooling at an institution your government doesn't know exists and wouldn't believe in if they did." Harry patted Howard's shoulder. "Welcome to the larger world, Mr. Stark. Try not to hurt yourself adjusting to it."
He turned to Steve.
Their eyes met.
Steve had faced down bullies in Brooklyn alleys. Had volunteered for an experimental procedure that might have killed him. Had stood on stages and taken tomatoes to the face while pretending to be brave.
None of that prepared him for being *seen* by Harry Carter.
Because that's what it felt like. Not looked at. *Seen*. The way you see through windows. The way you see through lies. The way you see through someone's carefully constructed armor straight into the soft, terrified human underneath.
"Captain Rogers." Harry extended his hand. "Heard a lot about you. The first super-soldier. Symbol of hope. Star-spangled man with a plan. Though from what Peggy tells me, your plan mostly involves 'charge in and hope for the best,' which is less a plan and more a very enthusiastic suicide note."
Steve took the hand. The grip was firm, warm, real. "Agent Carter. Peggy mentioned you might be able to help."
"Did she mention I'm magic?"
"She... implied unusual capabilities."
"Excellent euphemism. I'll use that in my reports. 'Agent Magus employed unusual capabilities to resolve the situation.' Much better than 'Agent Magus turned six Nazi officers into ferrets and mailed them to Berlin.'" Harry released Steve's hand. Studied him the way scientists study specimens. "You're nervous."
"I'm—"
"Terrified. But doing it anyway. That's not an insult, Captain. That's the definition of bravery. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the decision that something matters more than the fear. Your Sergeant Barnes matters more than your fear. So you're going to get him. Even if it kills you."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Steve said simply.
"Good." Harry's smile returned. Softer now. "Then let's make sure it doesn't kill you. I've gotten quite good at keeping people alive in situations designed to kill them. Consider it a specialty."
"Wait." Howard's brain had finally caught up with recent events. He pointed between Harry and Peggy like he was identifying suspects in a lineup. "Wait. You two are supposed to be twins?"
"We are twins," Peggy said patiently. "I realize we don't look much alike—"
"You look *nothing* alike! You've got brown hair and brown eyes. He's got black hair and green—are those colored contacts? Please tell me those are colored contacts and not naturally occurring human eye pigmentation that shouldn't exist outside of genetic mutations—"
"Genetics," Harry interrupted. "Perfectly normal, extremely boring genetics. I got our father's looks and coloring. Peggy got our mother's. I inherited our mother's eyes. Peggy got our father's. We're fraternal twins, Mr. Stark. Different eggs, different combinations, same womb, same birthday, same tendency toward dramatic entrances at inappropriate moments."
"The dramatic entrances are *your* specialty," Peggy objected. "I use doors like a civilized person."
"Doors are so limiting. Also, they can be locked. Very inconvenient when you're in a hurry."
Steve watched them. Brother. Sister. Twins who looked nothing alike but moved like two parts of the same person. They had the same way of standing—weight slightly forward, ready to move. The same way of speaking—precise, sharp, layered with meanings underneath meanings.
They were dangerous people pretending to be civilized.
Or civilized people who'd learned to be dangerous.
The distinction probably mattered, but Steve couldn't figure out how.
"Right." Howard clapped his hands once, rallying. "Magic. Twin spies who don't look like twins. Impossible eye colors. A rescue mission that violates every principle of military strategy. This is either the beginning of something legendary or the setup for the world's most tragic headline. Either way, my plane's fueled and ready. Shall we?"
He gestured toward the cargo plane squatting on the tarmac. It was big, ugly, and covered in modifications that probably violated several international treaties.
Steve picked up his shield. The weight felt good. Real. Something to hold onto when everything else was impossible.
"One question," he said to Harry. "Peggy mentioned you're... effective. But I need to know. Can you actually help rescue two hundred men from behind enemy lines? Or is this going to be another disaster where good people die because I made the wrong choice?"
Harry's expression shifted. The humor drained away. What remained was old. Tired. The face of someone who'd seen things no face that young should have seen.
"Captain Rogers," he said quietly. "I've spent the last three years fighting a war your military doesn't know is happening. Against enemies your intelligence services think are fairy tales. I've saved people from things worse than Nazis, from fates worse than death, from endings that don't include the mercy of dying. I've done it alone. I've done it in darkness. I've done it without recognition or reward or any of the things that make heroism comfortable."
He stepped closer.
"So yes. I can help. I will help. And if we do this right—if you listen to me, if you trust me, if you let me use those 'unusual capabilities' without asking too many questions—we'll get your Sergeant Barnes back. We'll get all of them back. And the only people who die tonight will be the ones who definitely deserve it."
Pause.
"Do we have an understanding?"
Steve met those impossible green eyes. Saw truth there. And determination. And something that looked like rage wrapped in righteousness wrapped in the absolute certainty that monsters needed killing.
"We have an understanding," Steve said.
"Excellent." Harry's smile returned. Smaller. Sharper. "Then let's go commit some extremely justified violence against fascists. It's practically a public service."
He pulled his hood back up. Settled the mask into place. Became Agent Magus again—the ghost story, the urban legend, the thing that went bump in the night and made Nazis check under their beds.
They walked toward the plane together. Four people about to attempt something impossible.
A super-soldier who'd never seen combat.
A British agent who'd never failed a mission.
An engineer who'd just discovered magic was real and was *definitely* planning to write equations about it later.
And a wizard pretending to be a soldier pretending to be a myth.
Howard climbed into the cockpit. Peggy followed him up the ramp. Steve moved to join them.
"Captain." Harry's voice stopped him. "When we're in the air, I need to explain some things. About what I can do. About what you'll see. It's going to be strange. Possibly disturbing. Definitely outside anything in your experience."
"I've been injected with an experimental serum that turned me into a different person," Steve said. "I think I can handle strange."
"You were injected with *science*. Science makes sense. It follows rules. It can be measured, tested, repeated. What I do..." Harry paused. "What I do breaks rules you didn't know existed. And once you see it, once you really *understand* what's possible, you can't unsee it. The world becomes a different place. Larger. Darker. More dangerous. More wonderful. But definitely different."
"Will it help me save Bucky?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't care how strange it is."
Harry studied him for a long moment. Then nodded slowly.
"You're going to be an interesting addition to this war, Captain Rogers. I can tell already."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Yes."
They climbed into the plane.
Howard started the engines. They roared to life with a sound like controlled explosions—which, Steve supposed, was exactly what they were.
Peggy secured the cargo door. Checked her weapons with the practiced efficiency of someone who expected to use them.
Steve sat on a crate that had once held ammunition. Now it held him and his shield and his fear and his determination and all the things that made him something more than the serum.
Harry settled across from him. Pulled off his mask again. Those green eyes caught the dim interior lights and turned them into something otherworldly.
"Right," Harry said. "Let's talk about magic, Captain America. And about why the war you think you're fighting is only the beginning of the real war. The one that's been going on for centuries. The one that's about to get significantly more complicated."
The plane lurched forward.
Began to taxi.
Began to fly.
And somewhere ahead—in the darkness, in the mountains, in the heart of Hydra territory—Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was still alive.
Still breathing.
Still waiting for a rescue that shouldn't be possible.
But was coming anyway.
Because impossible was just another word for things that haven't happened yet.
And tonight, the impossible was about to become aggressively, violently, *magnificently* real.
---
The plane rose into darkness.
Behind them, Italy fell away like a memory.
Ahead, Austria waited with open teeth.
And between them, in the cargo hold of an experimental aircraft, a super-soldier learned that the world was stranger than he'd ever imagined.
And a wizard explained exactly how much stranger it was about to get.
The war continued.
But for the first time since stepping off that stage, since reading those casualty lists, since accepting that being Captain America meant something more than selling bonds—
Steve Rogers felt like maybe, just maybe, he was finally doing what he was meant to do.
Being a hero wasn't about the costume.
It wasn't about the shield.
It wasn't about the serum or the strength or any of the things they'd given him.
Being a hero was about the choice.
The decision that someone else's life mattered more than your fear.
And tonight, Steve was choosing Bucky.
Choosing those two hundred men.
Choosing hope over despair and action over performance.
Choosing to be the man the serum had made possible.
But that he'd had to become himself.
The engines roared.
The night opened before them like a throat.
And somewhere in that darkness, rescue was coming.
Impossible.
Inevitable.
Already written in the stars that pretended not to care.
—
**Somewhere Over the Alps**
**November 1943, when revelations came at altitude**
The cargo hold vibrated with engine noise and possibility. Steve sat with his back against cold metal, shield resting against his knee, watching Harry Carter—Agent Magus—settle into the kind of comfortable stillness that soldiers learned in trenches and wizards apparently learned somewhere else entirely.
Howard's voice crackled through the intercom: "We're at cruising altitude, which is to say we're high enough that if we crash, we'll have plenty of time to contemplate our poor life choices before impact. ETA to the drop zone is ninety minutes. Try not to do anything magical that interferes with my instrumentation, Merlin."
"No promises," Harry called back. He pulled off his gloves, flexed his fingers like a pianist preparing for a performance. "Right then, Captain. You wanted to know about magic. Let's start with the basics and work our way toward the part where your understanding of reality has a small nervous breakdown."
Peggy looked up from checking her sidearm. "Harry, perhaps ease him into it? Not everyone adjusts well to ontological upheaval."
"Peggy, he volunteered to be injected with an experimental serum that could have killed him. He's currently planning to parachute into Nazi-occupied Austria to rescue prisoners from a Hydra facility. I think he can handle learning that unicorns are real."
Steve blinked. "Unicorns are real?"
"Extremely real. Also temperamental. They only trust virgins, which makes them spectacularly useless for military applications but excellent for certain types of healing magic." Harry's expression turned serious. "But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let me give you the overview, and you can ask questions when I pause for breath."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, green eyes catching the dim cargo lights.
"I'm what's called a Muggleborn wizard. That's 'Muggle' with two g's. It's the British term for non-magical people. In America, they say 'No-Maj'—short for 'No Magic.' Bit more straightforward, but we Brits do love our peculiar terminology."
"Muggle," Steve repeated slowly, testing the word.
"Precisely. Someone born without magic. Like you. Like ninety-nine point nine percent of humanity. But occasionally—roughly one in ten thousand births—a child is born to non-magical parents with the ability to do magic. That's me. Came as quite a shock to my parents when I turned six and made the neighbor's cat levitate because it was being rude to Peggy."
"The cat scratched me," Peggy interjected. "Harry took it personally."
"It drew blood. Retaliation was appropriate."
"You floated Mrs. Henderson's cat into a tree. She called the fire department."
"And they rescued it. System worked perfectly." Harry's grin faded back into lecture mode. "The point being, I exhibited magical ability at a young age. At eleven, I received a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is hidden in the Scottish Highlands under enough protective enchantments to survive a direct aerial strike—not that we're testing that theory."
Steve tried to process this. "A school. For magic."
"Seven years of education covering everything from Transfiguration to Defense Against the Dark Arts. I graduated in 1938, top of my class in combat magic, which turned out to be spectacularly useful timing given what came next." Harry's expression darkened. "Because here's what your military doesn't know, Captain. What your government hasn't been told. What the vast majority of humanity lives their entire lives without suspecting."
He paused. Made sure Steve was listening. Really listening.
"There's an entire world hidden inside the world you think exists. A magical world. Wizards and witches, magical creatures, entire communities living parallel to yours, separated by spells and secrecy and several thousand years of very deliberate separation. We have our own governments, our own laws, our own wars. We've been hiding for centuries because history taught us that when Muggles—non-magical people—discover magic, they tend to react poorly. Witch burnings. Inquisitions. The usual human response to things they don't understand."
"So you hide," Steve said slowly.
"We hide. Under enchantments called wards. Magical barriers that redirect Muggle attention, make them forget what they've seen, convince them to be somewhere else. You could walk past Diagon Alley in London—our main shopping district—a hundred times and never notice it. Your brain would simply... skip over it. Like a scratched record. The magic makes you not want to look."
Steve's head was starting to hurt. Not from the altitude. From the implications.
"How many?" he asked. "How many of you are there?"
"Globally? Perhaps a million witches and wizards. Give or take. Hidden in every country, every culture. We have our own communities, our own institutions. The International Confederation of Wizards—the ICW—serves as our version of the League of Nations. Less bureaucracy, more magic, similar amount of arguing about jurisdiction."
"And the... creatures?"
"Oh, everything you've been told is mythology? Dragons, unicorns, phoenixes, giants, vampires, werewolves, basilisks, acromantulas—which are spiders the size of elephants, and yes, they're exactly as nightmarish as that sounds. All real. All hidden. All managed by our governments through a combination of magic, misinformation, and strategic memory modification."
Steve looked at Peggy. "You knew about this?"
"Since I was eleven," Peggy confirmed. "Harry's first year at Hogwarts. He came home for Christmas and spent three hours explaining why turning teacups into hamsters was a foundational Transfiguration skill. I thought he'd gone mad. Then he turned my teacup into a hamster, and I had to reconsider several fundamental assumptions about reality."
"You adjusted admirably," Harry said.
"I had a small crisis first. Then I adjusted." She smiled at her brother. "Some of us process ontological upheaval more efficiently than others."
Steve tried to imagine it. An entire world. Hidden. Real. Operating according to rules he'd never known existed.
It should have been impossible.
But then again, a year ago, he'd been ninety pounds and unable to pass a physical. Now he was sitting in an airplane, planning an impossible rescue, talking to a wizard.
Impossible was becoming relative.
"The creatures," Steve said, "they're all hidden too?"
"Most of them. Dragons are kept in remote reserves. Unicorns live in protected forests. The dangerous ones—basilisks, certain types of dark creatures—are contained or destroyed. We have entire departments dedicated to magical creature management. It's remarkably bureaucratic for something involving beasts that breathe fire."
Howard's voice crackled through again: "Are you telling me dragons are real? Actually real? With wings and fire and the full mythological package?"
"Multiple species," Harry called back. "Hungarian Horntails are particularly vicious. Ukrainian Ironbellies are the largest. Chinese Fireballs are the most maneuverable. I did a study abroad term in Romania working with them. Fascinating creatures. Terrible tempers."
"I'm going to need so much documentation," Howard muttered. "So many equations. This violates thermodynamics in at least six ways—"
"Mr. Stark, I literally appeared out of thin air thirty minutes ago. Thermodynamics and I have agreed to disagree on several fundamental points."
Steve held up a hand. "Wait. If you're hidden, if you've been hidden for centuries, why are you here? Why are you working with the OSS? Why tell us any of this?"
And there it was. The question that made Harry's expression shift from lecturer to soldier. From wizard to warrior.
"Because of Gellert Grindelwald," Harry said quietly.
The name hung in the air like smoke before fire.
"Grindelwald is—was—will always be one of the most brilliant wizards of our age. Possibly of any age. Brilliant and utterly, completely convinced that wizards should rule Muggles 'for the greater good.' That's his slogan. 'For the Greater Good.' Three words that justify every atrocity he's committed in the name of magical supremacy."
Harry stood, began pacing the narrow cargo hold. Restless. Angry.
"In the 1920s, he started building an army. Wizards who believed in his vision of magical dominance. Who thought centuries of hiding were weakness. Who wanted to reveal ourselves to the non-magical world and establish ourselves as the rightful rulers. He's been waging a war—a magical war—for nearly two decades. Fighting against the ICW, against governments who want to maintain the Statute of Secrecy that keeps us hidden."
"And now?" Steve asked, though he already suspected the answer.
"Now he's allied himself with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich."
The words landed like bombs.
Steve felt something cold settle in his stomach. "He's working with the Nazis."
"More than working with them. He's *enabling* them. Grindelwald provides magical support—enchantments, intelligence gathered through magic, strategic advantages your military can't detect or defend against. In exchange, Hitler provides him with resources, manpower, and the perfect cover. Everyone's so focused on the conventional war, they don't notice the magical one happening underneath it."
"Jesus Christ," Steve breathed.
"It gets worse," Peggy said quietly. "Tell him about Schmidt."
Harry's jaw tightened. "Johann Schmidt. Red Skull. Head of Hydra. He's not just a Nazi officer with delusions of grandeur and a fondness for occult symbolism. He's working directly with Grindelwald's forces. Sharing research. Trading resources. The weapons Hydra uses—those blue energy weapons you've seen in the intelligence reports?"
Steve nodded.
"Derived from magical artifacts. Specifically, from something called the Tesseract. An object of immense magical power that Schmidt recovered from Norway. Grindelwald helped him weaponize it. Showed him how to extract its energy and convert it into something that could be mass-produced for conventional weapons."
"That's not possible," Howard interjected over the intercom. "The energy output alone would require—"
"Would require magic, Mr. Stark. Which is why your scientists can't replicate it. They're trying to reverse-engineer magical technology using physics. It's like trying to understand poetry using mathematics. The tools are wrong for the task."
Steve processed this. Tried to fit it into his understanding of the war. Failed. Started building a new understanding from scratch.
"So Grindelwald and Hitler. Schmidt and Hydra. They're all connected."
"Intimately. Which is why the ICW—reluctantly, after significant debate and three separate votes—agreed to loan me to the OSS. I'm what's called a Hit-Wizard. Think of it as the magical equivalent of your special forces. We handle situations that require immediate, decisive, frequently violent magical intervention."
"You hunt dark wizards," Steve said.
"I stop dark wizards. Sometimes that involves hunting. Sometimes it involves direct confrontation. Always it involves preventing them from doing things that would make the regular atrocities of war look merciful by comparison." Harry stopped pacing. Met Steve's eyes. "I've been operating in Europe for three years, Captain. Disrupting Grindelwald's supply lines. Eliminating his key operatives. Preventing him from using magical means to tip the balance of the conventional war decisively in the Nazis' favor."
"The reports," Peggy added. "The ones Colonel Phillips filed under 'Allied Propaganda: Desperate Measures.' Those were Harry. Every impossible victory, every unexplained Nazi failure, every time a key target was eliminated under circumstances that defied explanation—that was my brother, using magic to fight a war our side didn't know was happening."
Steve looked at Harry with new understanding. "You've been fighting alone."
"I've had support. Peggy provides intelligence and coordination with OSS. The ICW sends resources when they can, though they're fighting Grindelwald on multiple fronts. But yes. Mostly alone. Because telling people about magic requires revealing magic exists, which violates about fifteen international magical laws and would cause mass panic if done incorrectly."
"So why tell me?"
"Because you're Captain America," Harry said simply. "Because you're going to become something significant in this war—I can see it, the way your story is shaping itself. Because you're planning to do something spectacularly brave and moderately insane, and you deserve to know what you're actually fighting against."
He sat back down across from Steve.
"The facility you're planning to infiltrate? The one holding Sergeant Barnes and the 107th? It's not just a Hydra base, Captain. It's a joint operation. Hydra and Grindelwald's forces, working together. Using magical interrogation techniques on prisoners. Attempting to replicate your super-soldier serum using magical enhancement. Creating weapons that blend Tesseract energy with dark magic."
Steve's hands clenched into fists. "Bucky. What are they doing to Bucky?"
"Nothing irreversible yet. I've been monitoring the facility remotely. They're still processing prisoners, determining which ones might be useful for experimentation. Your Sergeant Barnes is marked as high-value—apparently he's demonstrated leadership qualities and resilience that make him a candidate for their enhancement program."
"We're getting him out," Steve said flatly. "We're getting all of them out."
"I know. That's why I'm here." Harry reached into his robes and withdrew a stick. No—a wand. Roughly thirteen inches, dark wood, perfectly straight. It caught the light strangely, like it was made of something that existed slightly adjacent to normal matter.
"This is a wand. My wand. Holly and phoenix feather, thirteen inches, slightly yielding. It's the tool I use to focus and direct my magic. Every witch and wizard has one—it chooses us, actually, which is a bit mystical even by magical standards."
He held it loosely, comfortably. The way Steve held his shield.
"When we hit that base, you're going to see things that don't make sense. Spells that defy physics. Curses that kill without leaving marks. Enemies who can disappear and reappear. Shields that stop bullets. Fire that burns without fuel. I need you to trust that I know what I'm doing, even when it looks insane."
"Can you teach me?" Steve asked suddenly. "Magic. Can I learn it?"
Harry's expression turned sympathetic. "I'm sorry, Captain. You're either born with magic or you're not. The serum enhanced your body, your physical capabilities. But it didn't give you magic. That's... something else. Something genetic, something that manifests at birth or not at all."
Disappointment flickered through Steve. Then acceptance. He couldn't be everything. He didn't need to be. He just needed to be enough.
"But," Harry continued, "I can teach you how to fight *alongside* magic. How to recognize spells. How to exploit the weaknesses magical fighters have. Most wizards are spectacularly bad at hand-to-hand combat—we rely on magic so completely that we forget we have fists. You, with your enhanced abilities and that shield? You'll be able to do things that will surprise them."
"Such as?"
"Such as moving faster than they can cast. Such as using that shield to deflect spells—yes, it can deflect spells, the metal has interesting properties. Such as being so physically overwhelming that their magical defenses don't matter when you punch them into next week."
Steve almost smiled. "You want me to punch wizards."
"I want you to introduce dark wizards to the concept of kinetic persuasion. Magic makes you dangerous at range. But in close quarters? Captain, you're going to be a nightmare they don't have spells for."
Peggy holstered her sidearm. "We're approaching the drop zone. Harry, are you prepared to mask our insertion?"
"Disillusionment charms are ready. I'll cast them just before we jump. They won't make us invisible—that requires different magic—but they'll make us very, very difficult to see. Like looking at something through water. Your eyes slide right over it."
"And the parachutes?" Steve asked.
Harry's grin returned. Mischievous. Dangerous.
"Captain Rogers, we're not using parachutes. That would be far too slow and far too visible."
"Then how—"
"Magic. Obviously. I'll be levitating us down. Slower descent than free fall, faster than parachutes, completely silent, and we can adjust direction mid-flight."
"You can fly?"
"Not personally. Humans can't fly without assistance—brooms, enchanted objects, certain spells. But I can make objects fly. Objects like, say, three people in need of tactical insertion into hostile territory."
Howard's voice: "That's aerodynamically impossible. The surface area to weight ratio alone—"
"Mr. Stark, I'm going to say this with tremendous affection: *shut up about thermodynamics*. Magic doesn't care about your equations. Magic is its own set of laws, and they work just fine."
Steve looked at Peggy. "And you're comfortable with this? With him... flying us into a Nazi base using magic?"
"I've done it twice before," Peggy said calmly. "Once in Prague, once in Marseille. Harry's insertion techniques are unorthodox but effective. Try to relax and don't look down if you're afraid of heights."
"I'm from Brooklyn. We don't have heights."
"You're about to develop opinions about them."
The plane began its descent. Steve felt the change in pressure, in engine pitch. They were getting close.
He had roughly ten minutes before he jumped out of an airplane to be magically floated into a Hydra base to rescue his best friend from Nazis who were working with an evil wizard he'd never heard of until thirty minutes ago.
His life had gotten very strange very quickly.
"One more question," Steve said. "Grindelwald. If he's so powerful, if he's been fighting this magical war for decades—why hasn't someone stopped him?"
Harry's expression went dark. Old. The face of someone who'd seen things that would give darkness nightmares.
"Someone is trying. The greatest wizard of our age. Maybe the greatest wizard of any age. Albus Dumbledore—my former Headmaster at Hogwarts. He's been orchestrating the resistance against Grindelwald since the beginning. But there's a complication."
"What complication?"
"They were friends. Before all this. Before Grindelwald became a terrorist and Dumbledore became a resistance leader. They were friends. Close friends. Some say more than friends, though that's speculation. And Dumbledore refuses to confront him directly. Refuses to be the one to end it. So the rest of us fight Grindelwald's forces while the only person who could actually defeat him watches from the sidelines and coordinates strategy."
Pain flickered across Harry's face.
"I understand it. I do. Having to kill someone you once loved—that's a burden no one should carry. But people are dying. This war—both wars, magical and conventional—they're connected now. And every day Dumbledore delays is another day Grindelwald grows stronger, another day Hitler continues his genocide, another day soldiers like your Sergeant Barnes suffer in places like that facility."
"You're angry at him," Steve observed.
"I'm furious with him. And I understand him. Both can be true." Harry stood. Checked his wand. Adjusted his armor. Became Agent Magus again—the soldier, the weapon, the thing that killed monsters.
"But that's not tonight's problem. Tonight, we rescue two hundred men. Tonight, we strike a blow against Hydra and Grindelwald's alliance. Tonight, Captain America and Agent Magus teach the Third Reich why underestimating people is a fatal mistake."
The plane's rear cargo door began to open. Wind howled in. Cold Alpine air that tasted of snow and altitude and approaching violence.
Below, in darkness, Austria waited.
And in that darkness, in a facility built into mountains, surrounded by enemies who believed themselves invincible—
Bucky Barnes was still alive.
Still waiting.
Still hoping for rescue.
Steve stood. Picked up his shield. Settled the ridiculous helmet on his head. Adjusted his goggles.
"Let's go bring them home," he said.
Harry's wand traced a pattern in the air. Three times. Light rippled across Steve, across Peggy, across Harry himself. Not making them disappear—making them forgettable. Making them the kind of thing eyes skip over.
"Right then," Harry said, his voice barely audible over the wind. "On my mark. Three. Two. One—"
They jumped.
Into darkness.
Into impossibility.
Into a story that would be told and retold until history forgot where truth ended and legend began.
But that was later.
Now, there was only the fall.
The wind.
And Harry's magic, catching them like a gentle hand, slowing their descent, guiding them through darkness toward the fortress below.
Where Nazis waited.
Where Hydra operated.
Where evil had made itself comfortable.
Right up until Captain America and Agent Magus arrived to explain why comfort was a luxury they could no longer afford.
The mission had begun.
And the world—both worlds, magical and mundane—was about to change.
One rescue at a time.
One spell at a time.
One shield throw at a time.
Into the darkness they fell.
And the darkness looked up.
And realized it had made a terrible mistake.
---
Hey fellow fanfic enthusiasts!
I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you!
If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord (HHHwRsB6wd) server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling!
Can't wait to see you there!