Nicholas Scratch

"I spoke no spell. I said no incantation. You... You were made from scratch."

Nicholas Scratch was the son of Agatha Harkness.

Biography[]

Life[]

"I can offer only time."

Nicholas Scratch was born to Agatha Harkness,^[1] As Harkness was giving birth to him, Death came, intending to take him. Harkness pleaded with Death not to take him and she accepted, telling her that she could only give him more time, causing Nicholas to be born frail and sickly. As she admired her newborn son, Harkness said that he was made from scratch.

As he grew up, Nicholas would lure witches to Harkness so that she could drain their power and kill them. Nicholas asked why she did this, but Harkness responded that they needed to do this to survive, and that she could not protect him from what was coming for him. They would spend days singing songs and killing witches, eventually, one song in particular became the Ballad of the Witches' Road.^[2]

Death[]

After singing the Ballad one day, Nicholas was offered food and shelter by a woman, who was in truth a witch, offering to care for him alongside her covenmates. Nicholas, who knew full well what would happen to them if he agreed to go with them, declined, quickly retreating to the woods followed by his mother. After he apologized to his mother for failing to properly lure the witches to her and promised to help her to kill more witches tomorrow, Agatha forgave her son and the two then sang the Ballad as they gotten settled in for the night. With the two falling asleep in the woods.

During the night however, Nicholas woke up and saw Death, who came to claim him. Before going to the afterlife however, Death told Nicholas to say goodbye to his mother. Nicholas then kissed his mother one last time and went with Death to the afterlife, passing away in his sleep from his illness.^[2]

Legacy[]

"Did you know she traded her own child for the Book of the Damned?"

―Jennifer Kale to Billy Maximoff^[src]

Following his death and burial, Harkness began using the tale of the Witches’ Road to lure unsuspecting witches into forming a coven with her and provoke them into blasting her, draining their powers for herself. Due to her infamous reputation, rumors began to circulate around the witch community that Harkness had traded Scratch away for the Darkhold.^[4]

In 2026, Harkness and her coven embarked on the Witches' Road. During the Spirit Witch Trial, Scratch was able to communicate with Billy Maximoff through an Ouija board and revealed his name to Maximoff. When Maximoff yelled Scratch's name out loud, Scratch told Harkness, who was killing Alice Wu-Gulliver by draining her magic, to stop, although it was too late.^[4] Harkness later admitted to Maximoff that she was afraid of dying because she was afraid of facing her son in the afterlife, although Maximoff was sure that Scratch would forgive his mother for everything she did.^[2]