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Harry's smile was frozen on his face. He held the Golden Snitch aloft, its tiny wings beating a frantic rhythm against his palm, but the triumphant roar he had been expecting never came. Instead, the stadium was chanting a different name. Her name. He looked over at Hermione, who was being mobbed by their ecstatic, cheering teammates, and a profound, bewildering sense of confusion washed over him. I… I caught the Snitch. Didn't I?
In the teachers' stand, Professor McGonagall was beaming, a rare, openly joyous expression on her face. Gryffindor had finally, finally, won. Beside her, Snape looked as though he had just swallowed a lemon, though as his gaze fell on Harry, a flicker of something almost like relief passed through his dark eyes. Dumbledore, however, simply covered his old face with one hand, his expression completely unreadable.
The cheers from the Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw stands were not just for a victory; they were a catharsis. For years, they had endured the Slytherin team's dirty tactics and arrogant gloating. Today, someone had finally given them a taste of their own medicine, and it was glorious. No one cared that Hermione's methods had been brutal; they only cared that the bullies had been beaten.
Stark Tower, New York.
Tony, Pepper, and Fury stared at the screen, the feed having cut out just after the final cheer. They were all silent, processing the sheer, unadulterated chaos they had just witnessed.
"Well," Tony finally said, breaking the silence. "I think we can conclude that the little wizard is not, in fact, a damsel in distress."
Pepper was still pale. She had watched, horrified, as the sweet little girl she'd come to adore had systematically and violently dismantled an entire team of players, some of whom were twice her size. "She was so… brutal," she whispered.
"Brutal, yes," Fury corrected, his voice a low, grim rumble. "But also tactical, efficient, and completely unpredictable. She used non-magical technology as a force multiplier in a magical environment. She is, without a doubt, the most dangerous twelve-year-old on this planet."
"She asked me to build her a six-barreled Gatling gun to mount on the front of that thing," Tony added, a strange, almost proud look in his eyes. "I thought she was joking. I'm not so sure anymore."
The three of them swallowed hard at the thought.
Suddenly, Fury's phone rang, a shrill, urgent sound. He answered it, listened for a moment, and his expression hardened. "My apologies," he said, already moving toward the door. "A situation requires my immediate attention." And with that, he was gone, leaving Tony and Pepper alone with the lingering, unsettling images of the game.
Hogwarts, the Library.
A few days later, Hermione sat at a secluded table in the back of the library, a tome titled A History of Modern Magical Theory open in front of her. Across from her, Harry and Ron were fidgeting, exchanging nervous, conspiratorial glances.
"Hermione," Harry finally began, his voice a hushed whisper. "We need to ask you something."
"Go on," she said, not looking up from her book.
"Do you… do you know who Nicolas Flamel is?"
"I do," she replied, her tone flat.
Harry's eyes widened in surprise. "You do? Who is he?"
"He was a noted alchemist and a close personal friend of Albus Dumbledore," she said, finally looking up. "Why are you asking?" She could see the excited, detective-like gleam in their eyes. They had clearly been busy while she'd been… otherwise occupied.
Harry hesitated, glancing at Ron. "Well, we, uh… we found something. On the third floor. It's being guarded by a massive, three-headed dog."
"Hagrid let its name slip," Ron added. "Fluffy."
I will never tell you, Hermione mentally recited, perfectly mimicking Hagrid's terrible secret-keeping, that the dog Fluffy is just guarding Nicolas Flamel's Philosopher's Stone. She had to give them credit; they were putting the pieces together, clumsy as they were.
"So," Harry pressed on, his voice dropping even lower, "we think Snape is trying to steal whatever the dog is guarding. We saw him, his leg was all bitten up. And we think this Flamel must have made it. Do you know what it is?"
"No," Hermione lied smoothly, a perfect mask of disinterest on her face. "There's nothing in the main library about any of Flamel's notable inventions." She stood up, placing the heavy book back on the shelf. As she walked past Harry, she paused and patted him on the shoulder. "But," she added, a meaningful glint in her eye, "if it's something that important, and that secret, I doubt you'd find it out here, wouldn't you?"
"Where, then?" Harry asked, his eyes lighting up.
"Where do they keep all the books they don't want first-years to read, Harry?" she asked with a knowing smile. "The Restricted Section."
With that, she turned and left them, a new, exciting plan already forming in her mind.
Winter arrived, blanketing the Hogwarts grounds in a thick, silent coat of silver-white snow. The castle emptied out as most of the students went home for the Christmas holidays. One cold, dark night, a ghostly, shimmering figure slipped out of the Gryffindor common room.
Hermione, wrapped in the silky, magical fabric of Harry's Invisibility Cloak, moved silently through the deserted corridors. Harry had received it as an anonymous Christmas gift, just as the books had foretold. In return for her "help" with his investigation, she had borrowed it indefinitely. The cloak, she had discovered, was a Deathly Hallow, a Wondrous Item of immense power, and her grimoire had copied its magical signature the moment she'd touched it.
Her destination was the library. The anti-Disillusionment charms and wards on the Restricted Section were powerful, but they were designed to detect human magic. They were completely blind to the otherworldly power of the Cloak of Invisibility.
For the next several days, she lived in that forbidden place. By night, she moved like a phantom through the aisles, consuming knowledge, her grimoire humming with a constant influx of new, powerful, and often deeply forbidden magic. By day, she would slip out to eat and rest, her absence from the nearly empty castle going completely unnoticed.
Her power grew at an exponential rate.
Hermione Jean Granger
Magic Level: Lv. 2 (5370 / 10000)
Spells Learned: Confringo (Blasting Curse) Lv. 2, Expulso (Explosion Curse) Lv. 1, Legilimens (Mind-Reading) Lv. 1, Obliviate (Memory Charm) Lv. 1…
But the true treasures, the spells she had really been searching for, were found in a slim, black, leather-bound book hidden in the darkest corner of the section.
[Dark Arts]
Imperius Curse: Lv. 1 (Control)
Cruciatus Curse: Lv. 1 (Torture)
Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra): Lv. 1 (Death)
There you are, she thought with a cold, triumphant smile. The three Unforgivable Curses. The ultimate tools of control, pain, and death. She felt no moral revulsion, no flicker of fear. She saw them for what they were: brutally efficient solutions to complex problems. A Level 1 Killing Curse was too weak to kill an adult wizard, but it was a start. She would just have to find a place to practice.
The one disappointment was the absence of the books on Horcruxes and Fiendfyre. She remembered Voldemort reading about them here in the books from her past life. Dumbledore must have removed them, she concluded. A pity.
Her work in the library complete, she followed a hunch, a whisper of magic she could now sense. Deep in the castle, down a forgotten spiral staircase, she found an empty, disused classroom. And standing in the center of it, gleaming in the moonlight from a high, arched window, was a massive, ornate mirror.
Etched into the golden frame was a strange, archaic inscription. She read it aloud, her voice a soft whisper in the silent room.
"Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi."