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Chapter 73: The Art of the Deal
🕑 Added 2025-10-07 16:24:28 +0000 UTCHermione moved through the opened S.H.I.E.L.D. cases with the discerning eye of a master jeweler appraising a new collection. She would pick up a strange, glowing fungus, murmur its alchemical properties under her breath, and toss it into her ridiculously small, dimensionally improbable schoolbag.
"Skin of an African Tree Snake… powdered moonstone… extract of Gurdyroot…" she muttered, her voice a low, satisfied hum. It was a treasure trove. Her mind was already racing, cross-referencing the materials with the recipes from Flamel's notebook and the dark tomes from the Restricted Section.
Nick Fury stood by his desk, his one good eye twitching as he watched his agency's entire collection of priceless, anomalous botanical and mineral samples disappear, box by box, into a twelve-year-old's backpack. Each item represented a massive investment of S.H.I.E.L.D. resources, a mystery his best scientists had spent years trying to crack. And he was now giving it all away for free.
Finally, she was done. The vast majority of the cases were empty. She looked up at him, a questioning look on her face. "Is that it?"
"For now," Fury said, his voice a low grumble. "That is the extent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s current collection."
She stared at him for a long, silent moment, a slow, knowing smile spreading across her face. Liar, she thought. He was holding some back, a desperate attempt to maintain some small sliver of leverage. It was fine. She would let him have his little secret. He couldn't do anything with them without her, anyway. All roads, she knew, would eventually lead back to her.
"Alright," she said cheerfully. "Keep up the good work. If you find anything else interesting, be sure to call me. I'll even identify it for you, free of charge." She patted her now-bulging schoolbag. "After I've taken my share, of course."
Fury's face grew even darker. As a reward for his cooperation, she released Goose from her bag. A fluffy, orange cannonball shot out and landed on the Director's desk, purring. A flicker of genuine, paternal affection crossed Fury's stern face as he reached out to scratch the cat's head. Goose, in response, hissed at him and immediately trotted over to rub against Hermione's leg.
The spymaster's heart broke just a little bit more.
"Well then," Hermione said, her voice full of false sincerity. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you, Director. Know that as long as you continue to be so… helpful, you will always have a partner in justice. The safety of the civilian populace is my highest priority!" With a final, angelic smile, she scooped up Goose, opened a sparking orange portal in the middle of his office, and vanished.
"Your 'justice' seems to have a very high price tag," Fury muttered to the empty room.
Hogwarts, the Greenhouses.
The air was thick, humid, and smelled of damp earth and chlorophyll. The aftermath of the first-year Mandrake lesson was a scene of minor carnage. The floor was littered with overturned pots and spilled soil. A half-dozen students were still lying unconscious on the ground, having failed to properly secure their earmuffs against the creatures' fatal screams.
"Honestly," Professor Pomona Sprout sighed, shaking her head as she waved her wand, magically righting the overturned benches. "The youth of today. So fragile."
Hermione, who had been completely unfazed by the screaming, root-like babies, helped her clean up. When the last of the unconscious students had been levitated to the hospital wing, she finally made her move.
"Professor Sprout?" she began, her voice full of a carefully crafted, academic curiosity. "I was reading in an advanced potions text about certain… aggressive floral species. Venomous Tentacula, for example, and the Chinese Chomping Cabbage. I was wondering if the school cultivated any?"
Professor Sprout looked at her, her kind, round face creased with concern. "My dear, those are extremely dangerous plants. Dark Arts-level, some of them. Whatever for would you want to know about them?"
"Purely for research, Professor," Hermione said, her eyes wide with a thirst for knowledge. "The book mentioned their unique venomous properties. I have a theory that, if properly neutralized and distilled, they could be used to create a whole new class of nerve-strengthening potions! The potential applications for healing are immense!"
It was, of course, a complete and utter lie. But it was a brilliant one, perfectly tailored to appeal to a Hufflepuff's love of healing and helping.
Professor Sprout looked at Hermione's cute, sincere, and deeply passionate face, and her professional caution began to melt away. "Well," she said, hesitating for a moment. "I suppose… for purely academic purposes…" She bustled over to a locked cabinet in the corner of the greenhouse and returned with two small, sealed packets of seeds.
"These are the last I have," she said, pressing them into Hermione's hand. "Be extremely careful, my dear. Their potential for healing is… theoretical. Their potential for a painful, venom-induced death is very, very real."
"Thank you, Professor! I won't let you down!" Hermione said, beaming, and then she happily skipped out of the greenhouse.
As she watched her go, a sudden, inexplicable feeling of unease washed over Professor Sprout. It felt, for a moment, as if she had just handed a box of matches to a pyromaniac.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts Office.
Hermione lounged in a plush armchair in Gilderoy Lockhart's ridiculously gaudy office, a place that looked less like a teacher's study and more like a shrine to its own occupant. The walls were covered in massive, moving portraits of Lockhart himself, each one winking, preening, and flashing a set of impossibly white teeth. The air was thick with the cloying scent of hair potions.
She was reading his book, Gadding with Ghouls, and to her own profound, horrified surprise, she was actually enjoying it. It was terrible. The prose was purple, the adventures were clearly fabricated, and the hero was an insufferable narcissist. But it was also… fun. It had the same shameless, over-the-top, brain-rotting quality as the cheap web novels she had secretly devoured in her past life. It was a guilty pleasure.
"A thrilling tale, is it not?" Lockhart's voice boomed from across the room, where he was admiring his own reflection in a full-length mirror. "My encounter with the Wailing Banshee of Wallachia! I knew from a young age that wizards of your generation would admire my rich and varied life experience…"
He launched into a long, rambling, and completely self-congratulatory monologue. Hermione just tuned him out, her mind enjoying the trashy, escapist fiction.
She eventually folded a corner of the page to mark her spot and closed the book with a soft snap. "Professor Lockhart," she said, her voice cutting through his bragging. "As your teaching assistant, I feel compelled to remind you that your first class begins in precisely ten minutes. Do you have your lesson plan prepared?"
She looked him dead in the eye, her expression a mask of polite inquiry.
"And please," she added, her voice dripping with a sweet, false innocence, "don't tell me your grand pedagogical strategy is to just read 'Magical Me' aloud to a group of twelve-year-olds."
