Their Little Witch
Chapter 19
The next morning, Bucky was woken by his door swinging open,
"If you don't want to die, leave."
A laugh fills the room and he pulls a pillow over his head,
"I will shoot you."
Footsteps approach the bed, yanking his pillow away to reveal Shuri, a large grin spread over her face,
"Good morning Mister Barnes. I've come for your lady friend, Luna said I would find my runaway in here?"
He looks over; Hermione is awake, playing with her hair. He looks at Shuri,
"How did she get out?"
Shuri sits cross-legged on the end of his bed,
"I had to watch the security footage twice; she unlocked the door with magic."
Bucky frowns, looking over at Hermione again,
"But why?"
Someone clears their throat and Bucky has to fight back a growl as Harry walks into the room,
"I think that was my fault, actually."
And now the blonde duo are here too. There goes any chance for Bucky to have a lie in.
Shuri looks at Harry,
"Why would it be your fault? It's not your bed that she shared."
Harry blushes, he'd found a clean set of clothes, from the looks of things,
"I was having an emotional issue. Then she was there, she started humming this song that sent me straight to sleep. It's something she used to do when Ron had left us back when we were on the run."
Luna bristles,
"Ronald left?"
Harry just nods and Luna softens,
"It sounds like mothers magic."
Harry's head snaps up,
"Hermione isn't my mum."
Luna laughs in a delighted way, leaning into Steve,
"Mothers magic is more about intent; I noticed it in the jumper she made for Bucky. She's worked out how to weave her magic into everyday things; the humming probably had some sort of calming magic in it. Most likely because of how close you are, she was able to sense that you were troubled and needed her. They call it mother's magic because it takes a bond to be able to work most of it. The song that sent you to sleep would just be a song to Steve."
Bucky forces himself to sit up, he wouldn't be getting back to sleep now.
Shuri contemplates for a moment before nodding, as if that made every bit of sense in the world. Then she turned to Hermione, a little frown on her face,
"I think we need to shower you. Or a bath. Either way, you are filthy."
Harry sputters,
"You can't shower her!"
Shuri turns to him, confused,
"Would you rather do it?"
His eyes widen and he shakes his head,
"Do you think she is able to do it herself right now?"
Harry turns to look at Hermione, who is now nibbling on her fingers and he grimaces,
"No, probably not."
Luna skips over,
"I'll help you. This week is full of new experiences."
Now Steve blushes, making Bucky smirk.
Shuri and Luna help each other to guide a very reluctant Hermione out of the room, allowing the men a few moments of silence before Bucky gestures for them to sit while he goes for a shower.
At first, neither Harry nor Steve says anything, and then Harry breaks the silence,
"Luna's different to other girls."
Steve grins, nodding,
"You can certainly say that again. I'm never sure if the creatures she talks about are real or not."
Harry laughs,
"No one really knows. At first, it caused a bit of a divide between Luna and Hermione."
Steve cocks an eyebrow in interest,
"But they're so close?"
"They are now. Hermione is a creature of facts and statistics. She's a genius, give her a subject and she'll be a master in less than a week, but Luna is also a genius, who doesn't need to see something to believe that it's there. Her belief and oddities made them absolute opposites. They bonded when Hermione worked out that nargles are another word for bullies."
Steve frowns,
"Luna never mentioned that."
Harry shrugged,
"She wouldn't. Like I said, they're as close as can be now, despite their differences."
Steve puts his hands on his lap,
"And where do you fit in?"
Harry sucks on his cheeks,
"Well, I met Hermione in our first year. Ron and I weren't always very nice to her, because she was a bit stuck up and she just knew everything. Then, Halloween first year, Ron said something that really upset her, because she'd had real trouble making friends. She ran off to the bathroom and stayed in there all day crying. There was a feast in the evening, and my defence against the dark arts teacher, who also happened to have Voldemort on the back of his head, had let a troll into the castle. Ron and I ran to get Hermione, it was our fault that she was in there. But the troll was already there, and she was just frozen in fear. The three of us knocked it out and we've been friends since. Ione was the first person to ever hug me."
Steve was frowning, but listening,
"Luna, I met Luna in fifth year. She was kind, odd and helped me realise what a prat I was being to everyone. She stood by my side with Hermione, Ron, Neville and Ginny at the end of the year when we broke into the ministry. She's utterly loyal, but it took her a long time to trust that we were her friends."
Steve nods,
"So you were eleven when you fought a troll and a psychopath and fifteen when you broke into a government building and fought a group of death eaters?"
Harry just nods and Steve laughs,
"You're joking?"
Harry shakes his head, the laughter dying in Steve's throat,
"But you were just kids?"
Harry laughs,
"For Hermione and I, we were basically at war from the moment we arrived at Hogwarts. Hermione was everything that the wizarding Britain hated, muggle born, intelligent and powerful. By all rights, in their eyes, she shouldn't exist. And I was the Chosen One, destined to defeat Voldemort. We never really had a choice, the others did. They could have stopped, left at any time, but they didn't. They stayed by our side."
Steve shakes his head,
"The more I hear about your world, the less I like it."
Harry nods slowly,
"I'm hoping that now it's over, things will change. But, if I'm being honest, Kingsley's display yesterday makes me think that Hermione is making the right choice with all of you. I don't want to see her hurt again, and I worry that it will still be a long time before she's seen as an equal in that world."
"And you? Will you go back?"
Harry frowns,
"I don't know. I owe the Weasley's so much, they've been a family to me for the last eight years, but I like not being recognised, I like the idea of a simple life. Ron is my best friend, but Hermione is my sister and I already lost her for a year, I don't know if I'm ready to be apart from her yet. And Luna would never forgive me if I left yet, anyway."
Steve doesn't say anything for a moment,
"Whatever choice you make, it has to be for you. If you want to stay with us and the girls, that's fine, but if you want to go back, none of us would hold that against you. Not even Luna."
Harry hangs his head; he still had a lot to think about.
When Bucky came back in, he felt better. A shower had done him the world of good, and it had helped get the waves out of his hair from Hermione's plaits. He'd shrugged on a clean pair of linen pants and a dark top, clean socks had also felt heavenly on his feet.
He'd caught the tail end of Steve and Harry's conversation, but he didn't have anything to contribute. Bucky had never doubted where he would go.
He shepherded the men out of his room, he knew it was unlikely that they would see the women any time soon.
He'd taken them around Wakanda, the bits he could remember. He showed them the market, the farms, the beautiful waterfall that was about 45 minutes from where they were staying. He'd also taken the liberty of allowing Steve to buy them lunch at midday in a small pub that felt warm and familiar. He'd had a simple burger and fries, harry had a club sandwich and Steve had ordered a chicken and bacon pie.
After lunch, they'd found T'Challa coming out of a meeting, he'd greeted them with a smile,
"Hello, friends. I trust you are settling in well?"
Steve smiles and offers his thanks again, but Bucky has other ideas,
"We were wondering if you knew anywhere safe where we could teach Harry to fire a gun."
T'Challa frowns before nodding,
"I will show you."
He leads them to s small, abandoned field,
"I learnt archery here. This should serve your purpose."
They all thank him, and he makes his leave, citing a need to make sure his sister hadn't managed to burn down her lab yet.
Bucky had Harry summon a target, and both Steve and Bucky had drilled him on safety, lecturing him like a ten year old.
They'd reminded him to keep his legs shoulder-width apart, his back straight and his aim true.
When he finally fired the gun, his aim was off and the noise had surprised him, making both Bucky and Steve laugh. Then they showed him how to reload, Steve didn't have a lot of patience, he liked things to be quick, and simple. Bucky on the other hand was the opposite, he had answered all of Harry's questions, corrected his posture and shown him how to take the pistol apart and put it back together again,
"And that's why you get a shield, and I get a gun." Is what he'd said when Steve had good-naturedly moaned about how thorough he was being.
Harry loved it. He loved the simplicity, the feel of it in his hands. It also helped that a small, childish part of his was giddy that he was being taught to fire a gun by Captain America and The Winter Soldier! -If they'd picked up on that, they'd been polite enough not to say anything.
By the time they'd called it a day, he'd been able to hit the human shaped target in the arm. It wasn't much, but he'd felt a surge of pride, almost like a child, when he'd finally done it. He'd come to find quite quickly that using a gun was nothing like using a wand, a gun required more care, more accuracy and a steadier arm. When they'd left, he'd been almost giddy with excitement.
Steve had also been kind enough to go through some basic exercises that would allow his stamina to build up as well as increase his arm muscles.
If he was honest, he hadn't had this much fun in a while.
Even on the walk back, he'd struggled to keep the grin off his face, much to Bucky's amusement,
"Does her remind you of anyone?"
Steve scrunches his nose up,
"I don't think so, why?"
Bucky snorts,
"He's just like you, short, puny, desperate to prove his worth. I'll be pulling him out of bar fights next."
Steve narrowed his eyes,
"I was not that bad."
Bucky raises any eyebrow,
"You're still that bad."
When they got back, Shuri and Luna were waiting for them, both with serious looks on their faces. They lead Bucky, Steve and Harry round to the sofa room they'd used yesterday, Luna serves everyone a glass of water with ice cubes in it before settling onto Steve's lap. There was an air of seriousness that made the hairs on the back of Harry's neck stand on end. When Shuri finally broke the silence, Harry almost sagged with relief,
"We need to discuss Hermione's arm. I have a couple of options, if you're ready to hear them." As one, the group nods,
"The first would be to remove it, give her a prosthetic similar to our White Wolf's. However, I've done some research, and if it had been her leg, I would do that. But her arm? The arm channels your magic, and providing her with a false arm may result in some form of magical backlash. I also don't think it's the option she would choose, despite the way she is clawing at it right now."
Harry swallows thickly, looking around to see the other reactions in the room, Predictably, Bucky had stiffened, a hard look on his face that almost dared Shuri to try and remove the arm without coming to some form of physical injury. Luna looked impassive, blinking slowly and Steve was wincing,
"What's the other option?"
Shuri smiles hesitantly,
"It would be experimental. I want to put tiny nanites into her blood stream, almost similar to your serum, I suppose, except that it's not. The nanites would accelerate her healing, I could use them to specifically target the infection first, but because of the nature of the curse, the nanites would have to be permanent. They won't be enough to totally cure her, but they'll keep fighting the infection so it almost stops in its tracks. It'll never go away, but I think I can at least get it under control."
Bucky frowns deeply,
"What effect would the nanites have on her long term?"
Shuri almost grimaces,
"Physically, she shouldn't change. She'd still be her, not new muscles or new height. But the accelerated healing should persist, which also means she'll have a longer lifespan. She'll probably live to around the same age as you two, with her witch ageing as well. She'll tire easily at first, while she gets used to the foreign bodies, but in the long term it's the more promising option."
Harry sucks in a breath, on paper, that almost seemed too good to be true. Was it really possible?
As if sensing his thoughts, Shuri smiled softly,
"Again, this is experimental. But, if you all agree, I'll do it tonight. The sooner we get past this, the sooner she will recover. I'll need help though."
At this, they all nod. It was likely they'd all have demanded to be present for this anyway.
No one says anything, no one feels right making this choice for Hermione, it should have been her decision to make. She should have been able to do this herself.
Shuri just nods, rising to her feet,
"Harry and Luna, go fetch your wands-"
She's cut off when Luna pulls hers from behind her ear and Harry slides his down from a holster on his right arm. She just grins in appreciation and slight sadness,
"Okay then, you four. Follow me."
They follow her down to her lab, where Hermione is already present in a hospital gown, her skin clean and her hair having been evened out into a nicer trim, framing her face. She's staring at her feet while she sits on the medical bed, kicking her legs gently while T'Challa talks to her,
"We're going to do everything we can to make this is painless as possible, Miss Granger. And I know you probably aren't listening to me, but you're in very capable hands. Your Shacklebolt man won't find you here."
Harry frowns, approaching T'Challa,
"Has there been word from the ministry?"
T'Challa runs his hands down his face, his black robs sliding down his arms,
"Minister Shacklebolt desires the return of his war hero and his 'Undesirable', he means to visit tomorrow to negotiate your return to England."
Harry frowns deeply,
"I'm not a child, he can't demand my return."
T'Challa grins fiercely,
"I'd like to see him try."
Shuri clears her throat, cocking an eyebrow at the men,
"Are we ready to being? Before we lose daylight?"
Harry laughs nervously, fingering his wand and Shuri rolls her sleeves up,
"I need my two magic users to end the stasis on her arm. Your basic 'Finite' should be enough if you both cast it."
Luna comes to stand next to Harry, both of them raising their wands to Hermione, who's still just watching her feet,
"Finite."
The effect is instantaneous, Hermione begins whimpering, clutching at her arm without looking at it, her nails digging into the exposed flesh with ferocity. At Shuri's nod, Steve and Bucky move forward, taking an arm each as Hermione thrashes, though weakly.
Shuri approaches with a needle,
"Hermione, this is an anaesthetic, it will help you sleep, take the pain away."
She slides the needle into the arm that Steve is holding, Hermione turns to look at it as it goes into her skin, but she doesn't react. Within seconds, Bucky has gripped her, stopping her from slumping to the floor. He leans her into the medical bed, gently brushing her hair with his fingers as he pulls back,
"I'm right here with you, Doll. We're going to make this pain go away, okay? I'm right here."
Shuri comes back with an IV, attaching a bag with clear liquid in it to a cannula that she fits into Hermione's hand, finding a vein easily. At Steve's questioning look she explains,
"In the mixture is the nanites. They're microscopic. I thought it would be easier if she was asleep, she'd be less likely to pull it out until it's done. They have to go in slowly so that they can adjust properly to her specific needs."
Luna tilts her head,
"How long will it take?"
Shuri's looking at something on her computer when she absently responds,
"About three hours, give or take."
Luna nods slowly, summoning up a couple of sofas,
"Better to be comfortable, then."
Harry sits down almost immediately, settling into a comfy slouch, but Bucky looks at Steve, who just nods before he gingerly lifts Hermione, careful not to touch her wires, allowing Bucky to slide onto the Hospital bed, settling Hermione between his legs and resting on his chest.
Luna pouts,
"Hermione gets all the best cuddles."
Bucky turns to her, cocking an eyebrow almost testily,
"I know, for a fact, that you've had things that Hermione hasn't."
Steve sputters, turning a funny shade of red, but Luna just smiles serenely,
"Yes, I suppose I have. Still, your cuddles always look so comfortable."
Bucky flashes Steve a triumphant grin,
"What can I say? I guess Steve's just not up for the task."
Steve glares at Bucky, marching over to Luna and throwing her over his shoulder, making her squeal in delight as he settles on the sofa, perching her on his lap with a pout that makes her smile. She leans into him,
"This is good enough for me, Captain America."
Harry looks up at T'Challa,
"Girls are weird."
T'Challa just grins, his eyes watching as Shuri approaches, his grin turning into a chuckle as she launches herself onto Harry's lap,
"I felt left out."
Harry looks up at T'Challa, panic in his green eyes and T'Challa just waves him off,
"You're stuck there now, good luck."
Then he turns, fleeing from the room as Harry groans.
Shuri loops Harry's arms around her and Harry can't help but almost lean into her. He blames it on his hormones.
Luna looks to Shuri,
"Do you have any books? Or games? Something we can do?"
Shuri ponders for a moment before shaking her head,
"Not here in the lab, no. I can't afford for distractions down here."
Luna just sighs dejectedly. Harry snorts.
When the IV bag finally empties, Bucky has dozed off with Hermione in his arms; Steve had also fallen asleep, leaving Luna, Harry and Shuri to discuss various aspects of the magical world.
Shuri stands, stretching her hands over her head as walks over to the medical bed. When she puts her hand on Hermione's wrist, a cold metal one closes tightly around hers. She's patient, waiting for Bucky to fully wake up before turning to him,
"I know I'm a catch, but you're too old for me."
She pointedly looks at his hand, and he gingerly uncurls it, grimacing at the red mark on her skin, but she laughs,
"Next time, I'll wake you up first."
Bucky grumbles,
"Better not be a next time."
Shuri slowly disconnects the cannula, sliding the needle out of Hermione's skin with ease. She checked on the infected arm, smiling smugly when she noticed that the skin had lost some of it's green tinge. Obviously, it wouldn't be immediate, but this was a good step in the right direction.
Luna shook Steve awake after checking on Hermione, and the blonde pair, Harry and Shuri left for dinner. They'd offered for Bucky to come, but he'd asked Shuri to have something sent to his rooms instead, and he gingerly picked Hermione up, cradling her to his chest as he carried her out of the lab and up to his rooms. She'd be waking up soon, and he was determined to help her eat some proper food. He'd worked too hard to help her gain some weight to lose it now.
When he finally reached his room, he placed Hermione on his bed, keeping her on top of the covers.
He shoved his boots and socks off, grabbed a book about engineering and settled down next to her, reading while he waited for time to pass.
When Hermione started to come to, he marked his page and put the book on his bedside table.
She breathed heavily and blinked owlishly at him, her large eyes hazy and unfocussed.
He grabbed his glass of water, taking a sip before offering it to her, her lips parted easily and he helped her drink with a soft smile.
When their food had been delivered, he could have kissed the chef. It was pizza, a treat that he knew Hermione was fond of. He took a bite, to show her that it was okay, before holding it out to her, and like the night before, for every bite she took, she refused another until he'd had one too.
After they'd eaten, he'd changed into his pj's and helped her into bed. He fell asleep with her in his arms, much like the night before.
A.N. Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Marvel. Please review! Please remember that this doesn't follow canon at all, so some of the characters may behave a bit differently to what you are used to! If anyone wants to design me a cover, please feel free!