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October 1988
Two and a half years passed. The new normal of the Granger household settled not in a sudden shift, but in a slow, gradual acceptance. The initial period after their talk had been filled with a delicate, careful navigation of their new reality. There were still hiccups, moments where her parents would look at her with a flicker of that old, deep-seated worry.
But with time, the tension eased, replaced by a new, unique kind of family dynamic. They had accepted that their daughter was different, that she saw the world through a lens they could never understand. They started to include her in more adult matters, discussing household finances or current events not as a novelty, but as if consulting a strangely small, wise peer.
Yet, their love never wavered. She was still their little girl, the one who needed her hair braided in the morning and a hug before bed, even if she spent her afternoons reading university-level physics text books.
For Hermione, this period of peace was a crucial phase of consolidation and growth. With the cloud of her parents' worry lifted, her training could proceed with an even greater degree of focus. Her body, the living conduit for her power, responded to the consistent, rigorous conditioning. The channel widened, the flow of magic became smoother, stronger.
The agonizing headaches that had once been the price of a few minutes of complex spell casting were now a distant memory, replaced by the faintest of the strain that only came after hours of intense, sustained effort.
Her foundational arsenal had been honed from clumsy, draining experiments into extensions of her own will. The flashbang was a thoughtless, reflexive defense. The multi-layered telekinetic shield was an instinct, snapping into existence with the speed of a flinch. The laser, once a difficult and unstable weapon, was now a tool of surgical precision, its range and power far exceeding her early attempts. They were no longer spells she cast; they were simply things she did.
Now that her body had become accustomed to channeling greater power, she had moved beyond herself-created tools to the more classical branches of magic.
Charms came to her with an almost startling ease. They were, at their core, pure applied intent—imposing a new property or function onto an object. Her magic already operated on that principle. Incantations were just a crutch she had never needed; for her, simply wanting an object to become waterproof with enough focus was functionally identical to casting an Impervius Charm.
But it was Transfiguration that proved to be a revelation. Where the fanfictions she'd read described years of painstaking visualization, her mind, with its unique disposition for seeing through the surface of things, found a natural shortcut.
She didn't just see a matchstick; she perceived its fundamental structure, its very essence, its 'matchstick-ness'. Her imagination wasn't just picturing a needle; it was drafting 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, the matchstick flowed into the form of a needle, a clean, perfect transformation that happened with startling ease.
The success left her momentarily shocked, but that shock was quickly consumed by a wave of profound, intellectual satisfaction that only grew deeper as she continued her foray into the art. She had a natural, almost terrifying aptitude for it.
Her nights were for mastering the impossible. Her weekends, however, were for managing the practical.
The scene was a familiar one for a Saturday morning. The living room coffee table was buried under a sea of paper: quarterly statements, market analyses, and copies of the Financial Times. Her father was inputting figures into a calculator, a small, amazed smile on his face as he double-checked the final tally.
"It's still hard to believe," he said, setting the calculator down and leaning back into the sofa cushions. "The foundation is more than solid. Phase One was a resounding success."
Hermione nodded from her armchair, not looking up from the thick physics textbook resting on her lap. "The capital is secure. Which means it's time for Phase Two." Her father leaned forward, his expression a mixture of excitement and caution. "The high-profit companies, you mean? The tech sector?"
"Exactly," she confirmed, turning a page. "The market is shifting. The real growth is coming, and we need to be positioned for it." For two years, she had let their money grow in safe, boring, reliable stocks.
Now, with a significant capital base, it was time to pivot. It was time to invest in the future she remembered. It was time to invest in tech. The research had been exhaustive. She had her father subscribe to every major financial journal and tech publication from the United States. She spent hours poring over market reports and SEC filings, cross-referencing the reality of this world with her memories of the one she'd left behind.
She reached for a prospectus from the pile, her eyes scanning the list of publicly traded technology and R&D firms. Most of the players were familiar: Microsoft, Apple, Intel. The names blurred together in a sea of acronyms and corporate jargon. Sun Microsystems. Oracle. Cisco.
She was looking for a more aggressive, high-risk, high-reward company to round out the portfolio. A firm involved in advanced materials or robotics, something on the cutting edge. Her eyes scanned the list, past the familiar names, looking for something that sparked a memory. And then she saw it.
Nestled between "Stane International" and "Techno dyne Systems" was a name that did not belong. A name that was so profoundly out of place, so fundamentally impossible, that her mind, for a single, frozen second, refused to process it.
Stark Industries.
The world went silent. The scent of her mother's baking from the kitchen vanished. The comfortable weight of her father's presence at the table disappeared. There was only the name, printed in stark black ink on the page.
Her breath caught in her throat.
No. Not a coincidence.
Her memory, the perfect, eidetic recall of two lifetimes, was already cross-referencing. The distinctive logo. The mention of the brilliant, reclusive founder and current CEO, Howard Stark, his genius son, Anthony Stark. The name of his long-time friend and COO, Obadiah Stane.
Her body remained perfectly 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 was almost a single, horrifying thought.
Stark Industries. Howard Stark. Super Soldier Serum. S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA. The Winter Soldier. The assassination of Howard Stark. Perfected batch of Super Soldier Serum stolen, delivered right into the hands of HYDRA.
Nick Fury. Captain Marvel. Kree. Skrulls. The Hulk. The Avengers.
Loki. The Chitauri. Asgard. Ultron. Vibranium. Wakanda.
Magic. Sorcerers. Dimensions. Dormammu.
Celestials. Galactus. Mephisto.
Thanos.
THE INFINITY STONES.
The carefully constructed equation with all its variables that defined her life, her goals, her entire strategic plan, did not just change. It shattered.
The world wasn't just Harry Potter; it was a chaotic, unpredictable fusion of two vastly different, and vastly more dangerous, universes. In this new, horrifyingly vast equation, Voldemort didn't even register as a significant threat anymore. A bigoted, provincial terrorist obsessed with a single island on a planet that was just one of countless battlegrounds for literal gods and cosmic horrors. Her primary long-term threat had just been downgraded to nothing more than third-rate low tier villain.
The shock was so profound, so utterly world-breaking, that for the first time in this life, the mask 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 living room, before she could control herself.
Daniel and Jean Granger froze, staring at their nine-year-old daughter, who had just uttered a swear word for the first time, and that too with the finality of someone who had just seen the end of the world.