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Chapter 79: An Intervention at Randy's Donuts
🕑 Added 2025-10-14 17:08:43 +0000 UTC"He did it on purpose," Harry fumed as they walked away from the scene, the excited whispers of the other students following them down the corridor. "Snape. He was trying to get me expelled. If you hadn't been there to give me an alibi…"
"You're sure about that?" Hermione asked, her tone maddeningly calm.
"Of course I'm sure!"
"Because," she continued, as if discussing a particularly interesting Arithmancy problem, "another way to interpret the situation is that he knew you were the prime suspect, and his aggressive questioning was a deliberate tactic to force you to produce a verifiable alibi, thereby publicly clearing you of all suspicion."
Harry and Ron stopped in their tracks, staring at her. The thought was so completely alien to their understanding of Snape that their brains struggled to process it.
Then, the image of Snape's greasy hair and his perpetual, venomous sneer flashed in their minds.
"Impossible!" Harry declared. "Absolutely impossible."
"Hermione, are you feeling alright?" Ron asked, looking genuinely concerned. "That's Snape we're talking about."
She just sighed, a sound of profound, weary resignation. Fine. Let the man suffer in his tragic, misunderstood solitude. I tried.
"But why does he always pick on me?" Harry grumbled, his indignation returning. "I've never even done anything to him."
"He's a Slytherin," Ron said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. "It's what they do. Look at Malfoy."
A slow, wicked, and deeply mischievous smile spread across Hermione's face. She leaned in close to Harry, a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. "Harry," she whispered. "Do you want to make it stop? Do you want Snape to be… nicer to you in the future?"
Harry nodded eagerly. "You have an idea?"
She leaned in and whispered two simple words in his ear.
Harry's eyes went wide with a look of pure, unadulterated horror. "You're joking," he breathed. "That's insane. He'll kill me."
"Trust me," Hermione said with a reassuring pat on his shoulder. "What's the worst that could happen? It's not like he could possibly hate you any more than he already does, right?"
She left him there, wrestling with the sheer, insane audacity of her plan, a seed of chaotic brilliance now planted in his mind.
Marvel Universe.
The world twisted, the scent of old stone and magic replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of Tony Stark's workshop. The moment she fully materialized, her private, Pepper-issued phone began to ring.
"Little Hermione! Tony… it's Tony…" Pepper's voice was a frantic, panicked rush on the other end of the line, thick with a terror that made Hermione's blood run cold.
"Pepper, breathe," Hermione said, her voice calm and even, a small island of stability in the other woman's storm. "Talk to me. What happened?"
"He was attacked," Pepper explained, her words tumbling out between ragged breaths. "In Monaco. Some man with electric whips, using Tony's own arc reactor technology. He's safe, he's back in New York, but that's not… that's not the problem."
Hermione's mind was already connecting the dots. Ivan Vanko. The Iron Man 2 plotline has started.
"Pepper, what is the real problem?" she asked, her voice gentle but firm.
"He's dying," Pepper finally choked out, the words dissolving into a raw, heartbroken sob. "The palladium from the reactor in his chest… it's poisoning him. He's been hiding it for weeks, Hermione. He was just going to let himself die and not tell anyone."
Ah, Hermione thought. So that's where we are.
"It's alright, Sister Pepper," she said, her voice full of a calm, absolute certainty that cut through the static of Pepper's grief. "I have a solution."
Randy's Donuts, a classic, unassuming Los Angeles donut shop, was now the stage for a high-stakes, superhero-level intervention. Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff stood at a table, their expressions grim. Across from them, Tony Stark sat, his face a mask of defiant, self-destructive glee. And in the giant, iconic donut sign on the roof of the building, the Iron Man armor sat, a silent, red-and-gold testament to his ongoing meltdown.
"I'm not giving you the suit, Nick," Tony said cheerfully, taking a large bite of a donut. "And I'm not joining your boy band."
"Tony, we are trying to help you," Fury growled, his patience worn to a thread.
"And you," Tony said, turning his glare on Natasha. "My new assistant. Turns out you're a world-class spy. Did you have fun lying to my face for months?"
"And you," Pepper shot back, her voice shaking with a cold, furious rage, "were you ever going to tell us you were dying? Or were you just going to let us find out when you collapsed in the middle of the workshop?"
"I…" Tony's glib, arrogant facade finally cracked, his voice suddenly small. He had no answer.
The tense, angry silence was broken by the sound of tearing air and a shower of orange sparks. A swirling portal ripped open in the middle of the donut shop, and Hermione stepped through, a look of profound annoyance on her face.
"Honestly," she said, looking around at the four of them. "Can't I leave you people alone for five minutes?"
"Little Hermione!" Pepper and Natasha exclaimed at the same time, rushing to her side.
Tony just stared at the portal, his scientific mind completely captivated. "A stabilized wormhole? How are you controlling the singularity? What's the power source?"
"Later," Hermione snapped, her gaze fixed on him. "I'm here to save your life."
"Save me?" Tony let out a bitter, humorless laugh. "Can't be done, kid. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best minds have tried. The palladium poisoning is irreversible. As long as this thing is in my chest, it's killing me." He sounded like a man who had already accepted his own death sentence.
Hermione walked up to him, her expression unreadable. Her eyes began to glow with a faint, pale blue light. Tony felt a strange, tingling sensation, as if he were being scanned, x-rayed, his every secret, every cell, every atom of his being laid bare and analyzed.
"You…" he began, unnerved by the intensity of her gaze.
The blue light in her eyes faded. "The poisoning is severe," she stated, her voice all business now. "But the degradation is slow. The core issue is the palladium. We simply need to replace it."
She reached into her ridiculously small schoolbag and, to the utter bewilderment of everyone in the donut shop, pulled out a full-sized, bubbling, cast-iron cauldron, which she placed on the floor with a heavy thud.
"Fortunately for you," she said, pulling out a series of strange, wriggling ingredients and a worn, leather-bound notebook, "I'm an excellent potioneer."
