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Chapter 29: Magic vs. Mach 2
🕑 Added 2025-09-03 18:42:11 +0000 UTCTony Stark's mind, arguably the most advanced computational device on the planet, simply blue-screened. He turned his head with the stiff, slow movement of a malfunctioning robot, his pupils dilating as his helmet's HUD struggled to focus on the impossible sight.
There, flying not ten feet from his right shoulder, was a little girl. She was perched on a wooden broomstick, her strange black robes fluttering violently in the supersonic wind, a look of cheerful curiosity on her face.
"Sir," Jarvis's calm, synthetic voice stated, a fraction of a second too late. "A humanoid heat signature has just been detected in your immediate vicinity."
"I SEE IT, JARVIS!" Tony roared, his voice a strangled mix of terror and disbelief.
"Through analysis, sir, this appears to be the same entity that was making physical contact with the suit…"
"THANK YOU, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS, SHUT UP!" Tony yelled, cutting him off. His mind was a maelstrom of chaotic, contradictory data. A child. In a Halloween costume. At thirty-thousand feet. Flying on a broom. Who had been touching his suit. It was a string of absurdities so profound that it threatened to unravel his entire understanding of reality.
"Hi!" Hermione chirped, giving a cheerful little wave.
She even said hello.
Tony took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing his racing heart back into a semi-normal rhythm. He needed data. He needed to impose logic on this madness. "Who," he said, his voice strained, "are you?"
"Hmm," Hermione mused, tapping a finger against her cheek and looking up at the sky as if contemplating a deeply philosophical question. "That's a very complicated question. Do you mean my name? My species? Or my purpose for being here?"
All of it! I want to know all of it! Tony screamed in his head.
"My name is Hermione Granger," she began, launching into a bizarre, rapid-fire monologue. "I'm twelve years old. I live in London. I'm a witch. I attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I'm in my dormitory by eight o'clock every night. I don't really care for sweets, but I do enjoy a nice cup of tea. I go to bed at eleven and get a full eight hours of sleep. Before bed, I do twenty minutes of wand-warming exercises. All the professors say I'm perfectly normal…"
Her voice was a bewildering, disorienting stream of information. What the hell is this? A bit? Is she doing a bit? Tony's mind snagged on a single word. Hermione. That name. It was familiar. Where had he heard it? Pepper. Pepper had been rambling about a child S.H.I.E.L.D. had brought in. A "predictor." A "wizard."
He stared at the small girl flying effortlessly beside his multi-billion-dollar suit of armor, and the carefully constructed, science-based walls of his worldview began to crumble.
No, he thought, shaking his head violently. Magic doesn't exist. It's a trick. There's nothing that can't be explained by science. I'm just missing the data.
His eyes, analytical and sharp, scanned the broomstick. That's it. It had to be. It was some kind of next-generation, single-person aircraft, disguised as a primitive piece of wood. The bristles were probably some kind of advanced ion thruster. The wood, a carbon-nanotube composite. But that didn't explain how a small child was surviving the extreme temperatures and low pressure of this altitude. Or how her voice was cutting through the roar of the wind so clearly. Or the technology that had made her completely invisible to his sensors.
"Are you a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?" Tony asked, his mind settling on the most plausible, if still insane, explanation. "Trained since birth? God, the government is a cesspool. Using kids to do their dirty work." He sighed, a wave of paternalistic concern washing over him. "Listen, kid. You shouldn't be doing this. Pepper mentioned you; she really likes you. Why don't you quit? The Stark Group will fund your entire education. Go to MIT. You're clearly a genius."
Hermione just curled her lip in a disdainful sneer. "S.H.I.E.L.D.? Please. They couldn't afford me."
Before Tony could formulate a witty retort, Jarvis's voice, now laced with genuine urgency, cut in. "Sir, an incoming call from Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes. He has marked it as a top-priority emergency."
"Patch him through," Tony sighed.
"Tony! What the hell is going on?" his best friend's voice crackled over the comms. "I've got two bogeys on my tail, and they look like they're after an unidentified craft that has your energy signature all over it!"
"I'm just taking my new convertible out for a spin, Rhodey," Tony quipped, his eyes darting nervously behind him.
"Don't lie to me, man! A terrorist camp in Gulmira was just wiped off the map. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
"First I'm hearing of it. Sounds like someone's doing your job for you."
"Tony, so help me God, is there something you're not telling me?" Rhodey pressed. "Because I'm looking at something right now that's about to get blown out of the sky!"
Just as he finished speaking, a deafening roar ripped through the sky behind Tony.
"Sir," Jarvis announced calmly, "two F-22 Raptors are approaching at speed. They have achieved weapons lock."
"A little late with the warning, J!" Tony yelled. He slammed his thrusters to full, the armor rocketing forward as he tried to outrun the fighter jets.
The next second, a flash of light under each jet's wing. Two missiles detached, leaving brilliant white smoke trails as they streaked across the sky, closing the distance with terrifying speed.
"MISSILE INBOUND!" a blaring, red warning flashed across Tony's HUD.
His first instinct was to deploy flares and dive. But then he remembered. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The little girl on the broom was still there, struggling to keep up. She was directly in the blast radius.
"Damn it!" he swore. He made a split-second, heroic, and utterly stupid decision. He killed his forward momentum, spun around, and flew directly back towards the oncoming missiles, hoping to draw them away from her.
Hermione watched the gold-and-red suit rocket away from her, and a flicker of genuine annoyance shot through her. So fast! Her Nimbus 2000 was a masterpiece of magical engineering, but it was no match for a jet engine. Just as she was about to cast a subtle tripping jinx to slow him down for being a show-off, he spun around and came flying back, waving a hand frantically to the side, motioning for her to get away.
She turned. And saw the two missiles, now terrifyingly close, screaming right for her.
She understood instantly. He wasn't trying to show off. He was trying to save her.
Hmph. You've got a conscience after all, she thought. For Pepper's sake, then. Let's see what this armor is really made of.
She accelerated, the magic of the broom responding to her will. She shot past Tony, placing herself directly between him and the oncoming warheads.
Tony saw her move, and his heart stopped. What is this kid doing?! She's going to get herself killed! It was too late to dodge. The missiles were meters away, their proximity detectors about to trigger. He braced for the inevitable, cataclysmic impact.
Just as he was preparing to be blown into a million tiny pieces, he heard a clear, powerful shout from the girl in front of him, a single, strange word that cut through the roar of the jets and the shriek of the missiles.
"PROTEGO!"
He turned his head just in time to see a faint, shimmering dome of translucent blue energy erupt into existence, enveloping both of them in a perfect, silent sphere. The next second, the world turned white.
