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October 1988
Two and a halfyears passed. The new normal of the Granger household settled not in a suddenshift, but in a slow, gradual acceptance. The initial period after their talkhad been filled with a delicate, careful navigation of their new reality. Therewere still hiccups, moments where her parents would look at her with a flickerof that old, deep-seated worry.
But with time, thetension eased, replaced by a new, unique kind of family dynamic. They hadaccepted that their daughter was different, that she saw the world through alens they could never understand. They started to include her in more adultmatters, discussing household finances or current events not as a novelty, butas if consulting a strangely small, wise peer.
Yet, their lovenever wavered. She was still their little girl, the one who needed her hairbraided in the morning and a hug before bed, even if she spent her afternoonsreading university-level physics textbooks.
For Hermione, thisperiod of peace was a crucial phase of consolidation and growth. With the cloudof her parents' worry lifted, her training could proceed with an even greaterdegree of focus. Her body, the living conduit for her power, responded to theconsistent, rigorous conditioning. The channel widened, the flow of magicbecame smoother, stronger.
The agonizingheadaches that had once been the price of a few minutes of complex spellcastingwere now a distant memory, replaced by the faintest of the strain that onlycame after hours of intense, sustained effort.
Her foundationalarsenal had been honed from clumsy, draining experiments into extensions of herown will. The flashbang was a thoughtless, reflexive defense. The multi-layeredtelekinetic shield was an instinct, snapping into existence with the speed of aflinch. The laser, once a difficult and unstable weapon, was now a tool ofsurgical precision, its range and power far exceeding her early attempts. Theywere no longer spells she cast; they were simply things she did.
Now that her bodyhad become accustomed to channeling greater power, she had moved beyond herself-created tools to the more classical branches of magic. Charms came to herwith an almost startling ease.
They were, at theircore, pure applied intent—imposing a new property or function onto an object.Her magic already operated on that principle. Incantations were just a crutchshe had never needed; for her, simply wanting an object to become waterproof withenough focus was functionally identical to casting an Impervius Charm.
But it wasTransfiguration that proved to be a revelation. Where the books she'd founddescribed years of painstaking visualization, her mind, with its uniquedisposition for seeing through the surface of things, found a naturalshortcut.
She didn't just seea matchstick; she perceived its fundamental structure, its very essence, its'matchstick-ness'. Her imagination wasn't just picturing a needle; it wasdrafting a new blueprint at an almost atomic level. The first time she tried,the transformation wasn't even a struggle. On her very first attempt, thematchstick flowed into the form of a needle, a clean, perfect transformationthat happened with startling ease.
The success lefther momentarily shocked, but that shock was quickly consumed by a wave ofprofound, intellectual satisfaction that only grew deeper as she continued herforay into the art. She had a natural, almost terrifying aptitude for it.
Her nights were formastering the impossible. Her weekends, however, were for managing thepractical.
The scene was afamiliar one for a Saturday morning. The living room coffee table was buriedunder a sea of paper: quarterly statements, market analyses, and copies of the FinancialTimes. Her father was inputting figures into a calculator, a small, amazedsmile on his face as he double-checked the final tally.
"It's stillhard to believe," he said, setting the calculator down and leaning backinto the sofa cushions. "The foundation is more than solid. Phase One wasa resounding success."
Hermione noddedfrom her armchair, not looking up from the thick physics textbook resting onher lap. "The capital is secure. Which means it's time for PhaseTwo."
Her father leanedforward, his expression a mixture of excitement and caution. "Thehigh-profit companies, you mean? The tech sector?"
"Exactly,"she confirmed, turning a page. "The market is shifting. The real growth iscoming, and we need to be positioned for it."
For two years, shehad let their money grow in safe, boring, reliable stocks. Now, with asignificant capital base, it was time to pivot. It was time to invest in thefuture she remembered. It was time to invest in tech.
The research hadbeen exhaustive. She had her father subscribe to every major financial journaland tech publication from the United States. She spent hours poring over marketreports and SEC filings, cross-referencing the reality of this world with her memoriesof the one she'd left behind.
She reached for aprospectus from the pile, her eyes scanning the list of publicly tradedtechnology and R&D firms. Most of the players were familiar: Microsoft,Apple, Intel. The names blurred together in a sea of acronyms and corporatejargon. Sun Microsystems. Oracle. Cisco.
She was looking forone more aggressive, high-risk, high-reward company to round out the portfolio.A firm involved in advanced materials or robotics, something on the cuttingedge. Her eyes scanned the list, past the familiar names, looking for somethingthat sparked a memory.
And then she sawit.
Nestled between"Stane International" and "Technodyne Systems" was a namethat did not belong. A name that was so profoundly out of place, sofundamentally impossible, that her mind, for a single, frozen second, refusedto process it.
StarkIndustries.
The world wentsilent. The scent of her mother's baking from the kitchen vanished. Thecomfortable weight of her father's presence at the table disappeared. There wasonly the name, printed in stark black ink on the page.
Her breath caughtin her throat.
No. Not a coincidence. Her memory, the perfect, eidetic recall of two lifetimes, was alreadycross-referencing. The distinctive logo. The mention of the brilliant,reclusive founder and current CEO, Howard Stark, his genius son, AnthonyStark. The name of his long-time friend and COO, Obadiah Stane.
Her body remainedperfectly still, a placid statue of a nine-year-old girl. But inside her head,a supernova of data exploded, a cascade of connections firing so rapidly it wasalmost a single, horrifying thought.
StarkIndustries. Howard Stark. Super Soldier Serum. S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA. TheWinter Soldier. The assassination of Howard Stark. Perfected batch of SuperSoldier Serum stolen, delivered right into the hands of HYDRA.
Nick Fury. Captain Marvel. Kree. Skrulls. The Hulk. TheAvengers.
Loki. The Chitauri. Asgard. Ultron. Vibranium. Wakanda.
Magic. Sorcerers. Dimensions. Dormammu.
Celestials. Galactus. Mephisto.
Thanos.
THE INFINITY STONES.
The carefullyconstructed equation with all its variables that defined her life, her goals,her entire strategic plan, did not just change. It shattered.
The world wasn'tjust Harry Potter; it was a chaotic, unpredictable fusion of two vastlydifferent, and vastly more dangerous, universes. In this new, horrifyingly vastequation, Voldemort didn't even register as a significant threat anymore. Abigoted, provincial terrorist obsessed with a single island on a planet thatwas just one of countless battlegrounds for literal gods and cosmic horrors.Her primary long-term threat had just been downgraded to nothing more thanthird-rate low tier villain.
The shock was soprofound, so utterly world-breaking, that for the first time in this life, themask she wore didn't just slip. It cracked.
"Oh, shit."
The words, a quiet,sharp curse from her previous life, slipped out loud into the quiet livingroom, before she could control herself.
Daniel and JeanGranger froze, staring at their nine-year-old daughter, who had just uttered aswear word for the first time, and that too with the finality of someone whohad just seen the end of the world.