An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Sixty-One

"Alright, Monica Rappaccini..." I started skimming through the information, but the SHIELD file had way more on her than my dad's file. This might take me a minute. "Dated Bruce Banner, stole his research, went on to join- holy shit, went on to join AIM? Ana, am I reading this right?"

"Yes, you are. The most current information from SHIELD says Monica Rappaccini recently took over as Scientist Supreme for an enemy organization known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM."

"Oh my God... she's a full-blown supervillain. How did my dad not know about this?"

"AIM is largely restricted to SHIELD jurisdiction," said Ana. "SHIELD prefers to keep the Avengers out of the details of their business."

"Ugh, yeah, I guess. Reason number fifty-two that I'm not joining up..." I clicked through the file for a little longer, eventually getting to a page on personal information. "Okay, here we go, known relatives... father, who cares, mother, who cares, son... oh my God."

I stared at the screen, not quite able to process what I was reading. I knew the name Rappaccini because I'd spent most of my summer with Monica Rappaccini's son. My obnoxious teammate-turned-friend Jackson Rappaccini was the child of one of the biggest evil masterminds in the world.

"Ana... are we sure this is right? There's no mistake, there's no way that this is a different Jackson, nothing like that?"

"No mistake. Everything you're seeing is correct, to the best of SHILED's knowledge."

I swore under my breath, trying to process this information. How did this happen? How did I not know? And what the hell did this mean?

Did Jackson know about magic? Had he known the whole time?

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The only way for me to get answers was to find Jackson, and I couldn't do that if I was caught in a mental spiral.

"Okay, Ana, is it fair of me to assume that our mystery figure in the storm is Jackson?" I asked. I needed to take this one step at a time.

"Yes, based on DNA and other readings such as the size of our figure, there is a 99.7% chance that our mystery person is Jackson Rappaccini."

I nodded slowly, trying to think about what that meant and what I needed to do next.

"Okay... okay... Jackson is the guy in the storm... that means he has magic, and he has a chip in his head that's starting to kill him... which means he probably recently figured out that he has magic, and that's why he's suddenly some crazy modified obscurial when this wasn't a problem before."

I thought my words through a few more times to make sure they actually made sense, and eventually I decided they did. Something relatively recent had made Jackson aware of his powers, and because of that he'd been spiraling out of control ever since.

"Fuck, Ana, what if I did this? God knows I did a horrible job of covering up Hogwarts... what if I'm the reason he's in this spiral right now?"

The more I thought about it, the more that made sense. He started showing up just after break, which was the last time I'd seen him.

I started to panic. What if this ended up killing him? It would be all my fault. I was supposed to save people, not kill them!

I was ripped out of my panicked thoughts by a literal, physical shock from Ana.

"I'm sorry Alexa, but it seemed like you needed it. You're no help to anyone if you get lost in your own worries and what-ifs," she said.

I let out a deep breath I didn't even realize I was holding.