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Hermione looked at him, her face a mask of patronizing pity. "Director," she said, her voice dripping with condescension, "the fact that your people needed a spaceship to learn about the Kree is, frankly, adorable. Some of us consider it basic galactic common knowledge."
Fury's jaw tightened, but he remained silent. He had learned, through a series of deeply humbling encounters, that engaging in a battle of wits with this child was a losing proposition. She was a walking, talking encyclopedia of cosmic secrets, and he was just a country bumpkin with a flying aircraft carrier.
He watched, a muscle twitching in his cheek, as she said a final, affectionate goodbye to the traitorous orange cat that was now perched happily on her shoulder, completely ignoring him. After everything he had done for that cat. After all the wrong payments.
With a final, enigmatic smile, she vanished, and Fury was left alone in his office, feeling older, more tired, and infinitely less informed than he had been an hour ago.
The sun was bleeding into the horizon as Hermione stepped out of the alley, casting the streets of New York in long, dramatic shadows. The air was cool, smelling of hot pretzels, exhaust fumes, and the promise of rain. She walked, her mind a whirlwind of long-term strategy. The pieces were moving. S.H.I.E.L.D. was hooked, Tony was on the path to becoming a hero, and she had a new, powerful Flerken companion. Things were proceeding according to plan.
She was so lost in thought that she almost missed it. A subtle shift in the atmosphere. The street, which had been bustling with the usual evening rush, had become unnaturally quiet. The distant sound of traffic seemed to fade, replaced by a heavy, watchful silence.
She stopped. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She could feel it. The weight of unseen eyes. An ambush.
A sharp, almost silent thwip, followed by the supersonic crack of a sniper round, ripped through the quiet.
A faint, shimmering ripple appeared in the air an inch from her face as the bullet flattened against her Shield Charm and clattered harmlessly to the pavement.
"Lumos Maxima!"
A brilliant, sun-like orb of light erupted from her wand, turning the dusky street into a landscape of stark, unforgiving daylight. And in that light, she saw them. Dozens of them. Black-clad, heavily armed mercenaries, emerging from alleys, dropping from fire escapes, their forms previously cloaked in shadow, now exposed. Drones, like mechanical wasps, buzzed in the air above, their red optical sensors all fixed on her.
The men closest to the flash cried out, clawing at their ruined night-vision goggles, their eyes seared by the sudden, magical daylight.
"Target is hostile! All units, engage! Engage!" a voice crackled over their comms.
The world erupted in a deafening, thunderous roar of automatic weapons fire. The street became a hailstorm of lead and fire, hundreds of bullets converging on her position. The air around her shimmered and sparked as the rounds impacted her shield, each one creating a small, spider-webbed ripple on the surface of the invisible barrier.
She just stood there, her expression one of bored annoyance. Really? she thought. This is your plan?
The HYDRA team leader watched from a nearby rooftop, his jaw tight with a mixture of disbelief and dawning horror. They had been told the target was a potential superhuman. They had not been told she was a god. An entire elite assault team was unleashing enough firepower to level a city block, and she wasn't even flinching.
"Keep firing!" he roared into his comms. "Her shield can't last forever! RPG team, on my mark!"
Several soldiers on adjacent rooftops shouldered rocket launchers. With a fiery whoosh, a volley of explosives streaked across the sky, converging on Hermione's position.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The street erupted in a series of massive, fiery explosions that shattered windows for blocks around. The mercenaries ceased fire, the sudden silence almost as deafening as the previous gunfire. They advanced slowly, their weapons raised, peering into the thick, acrid cloud of smoke and dust.
The smoke gradually cleared. And she was still there. Standing in the center of a blackened crater, completely untouched, without so much as a speck of dust on her black robes, an expression of profound disappointment on her face.
"Is that it?" she asked, her magically amplified voice echoing in the silent, ruined street. "How boring."
She sighed. It wasn't her nature to be passive. And frankly, she had been wanting to cut loose for a very, very long time. "My turn."
She raised her wand. And then, the symphony began.
"Bombarda Maxima!"
A concussive blast of pure force erupted from her position, throwing a squad of mercenaries like rag dolls.
"Diffindo!"
An invisible blade shot out, severing a lamppost, which toppled over and crashed down onto a parked car, crushing it like a tin can.
"Incendio Tria!"
A torrent of white-hot, serpentine fire engulfed a S.H.I.E.L.D. armored vehicle, turning it into a molten slag heap in a matter of seconds.
It was a massacre. A whirlwind of explosions, cutting curses, and elemental fury. She was a one-witch army, a human spell turret, and she was having the time of her life. The frustration, the tension, the constant need to act and pretend—it all melted away in the glorious, cathartic release of pure, unrestrained magical violence. With every scream, with every flash of light, with every soul that was torn from its body and consumed by her Dark Harvest, she felt a heady, intoxicating rush of pure, unadulterated joy.
Fighting was fun.
When the screams finally subsided, and the last of the drones had been swatted from the sky, only one man was left standing. He was on his knees, his weapon discarded, staring at her as if she were the devil himself.
"Please," he whimpered. "Don't kill me."
"Oh, I won't," Hermione said sweetly. "I just want to talk." She flicked her wand, and the man was lifted into the air and dragged towards her, kicking and screaming. She looked at the insignia on his armor. Not the Ten Rings. She had been mistaken.
"Who sent you?" she asked. When he just babbled incoherently, she sighed. "Never mind. I'll see for myself."
"Legilimens!"
His mind was a fragile, terrified thing. She ripped through his memories with brutal efficiency, past the fear and the training, to the core of the mission. The orders had come down through a secure, encrypted HYDRA channel, just hours after her class at the Triskelion. They had been disguised as a Ten Rings cell to provide plausible deniability. Their mission: capture the asset. Alive, if possible. Dead, if necessary.
So, she thought, a new, cold clarity settling over her. They were my students this morning. And they tried to kill me tonight. It was a declaration of war.
"Thank you for your cooperation," she said. With a final, dismissive cutting curse, she sent the last man on his way and turned to leave, the souls of the fallen a warm, satisfying hum in her grimoire.
She took one step. Then, a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. A subtle distortion in the air behind her.
She tried to turn, to raise a shield, but it was too late. A sharp, stinging pain, like a wasp's sting, pierced the side of her neck.
She looked down and saw a small, metal syringe, now empty, sticking out of her skin. Her vision began to blur at the edges. A strange, heavy numbness spread through her limbs. Her legs gave way, and she collapsed onto the cold, hard pavement, her last conscious thought a single, furious, and deeply ironic realization.
After all her power, all her magic, she had been taken down by a simple, stealthy, and very human attack.