A/N This takes place a month or two after the final battle in the Harry Potter Universe and sometime between Steve being unfrozen and the Avengers movie in the Marvelverse. And yes, I know the timelines don't match up.

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own.

Warning: This story may contain in-depth descriptions of grief and PTSD. When I started this story I had no intention of going this detailed into the emotional impact, but as I started writing this I couldn't help but feel I wouldn't be doing justice to the toll trauma takes on children if I glossed over all the awful stuff that happens in canon. If there's anything I think might be extra triggering then I will try to put up a separate warning.

Chapter 12

The next morning about fifteen minutes to eight Hermione walked past the labs on her floor and into her office. She wasn't angry anymore, in fact she had stopped being angry shortly after she had apparated home from a deserted alley a few blocks from the restaurant and Stark Tower. She had twisted and turned while staring at herself in the mirror for a long time after the lunch and understood now, that she could have just denied his accusation and turned it around on him. He was smart, but he couldn't have actually known anything aside from the fact that she was small. He'd never seen her at her pre-war weight, her clothes covered a good portion of her body, and all her visible scars had been glamoured properly. When he had made that comment he was probably just trying to offend her enough to make her quit and maybe if she didn't have a secondary reason to put up with him or she didn't think she would be interested in the job she very well might have quit.

She stopped abruptly just inside her office. On her desk was the biggest bouquet of brightly colored flowers she had ever seen and in her new chair was Mr. Stark himself. His head was tipped back, and he was half slid out of the chair in his sleep. Hermione felt the hurt in her chest easing at the scene. He hadn't woken up at her entrance, so she knocked lightly on her doorframe and cleared her throat.

He startled awake and jumped out of the chair before he recognized her. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes before dropping his hands to his side. "I wanted to apologize for what I said yesterday. It was uncalled for. No matter how I felt about Pepper's choices I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I know better and for what it's worth I'm sorry you went through what you went through."

He broke eye contact before continuing gingerly, "I have no idea of the extent of it, but I shouldn't have made assumptions especially as I've been on that same diet before. A couple years ago I was held captive for three months and while they fed me, it wasn't- it was just barely enough to keep me alive while they forced me to build a weapon. Those months were some of the worst months I've ever experienced, and I would understand if I brought up bad memories and you hate me for it."

Hermione uncrossed her arms and sighed, "I don't hate you, but you could stand to think some more before you speak. I forgive you."

Tony frowned thoughtfully. "Really? Because I was going to show you the lab too as part of the apology. From your resume and Pepper's impressions I actually assumed you were less of a flowers type of girl and more of a show you state of the art technology type of girl."

Hermione grinned mischievously. "In that case, I don't forgive you yet, but if you show me the lab and answer all my questions that Pepper wasn't able to answer, then you can consider yourself forgiven."

"I could do that. Come on let's go then," he said returning her grin and getting out from behind the desk.

"Right now?" Hermione asked surprised.

"Yes, right now, unless you have something better to do?" he said.

"Well Pepper was supposed to come up in a few minutes," she said hesitantly.

"Jarvis let Pepper know that I'm giving a tour of the lab to Ms. Granger and to come up later whenever she has time," Tony addressed his intelligence system.

"I informed Ms. Potts and she said she'll be up after her nine o'clock meeting." Jarvis answered after a minute.

Hermione put her briefcase down behind her desk and grinned excitedly. This was one of the reasons she was so excited to work here, the accessibility to new technology and the opportunity to learn more about it. "You don't have to call me Ms. Granger. Hermione is fine," she said.

"Oh good. I thought you were going to go all British on me and insist on formalities," he said with a mock shiver before continuing, "If we're going to be working together you can call me Tony as well, kid."

She sighed good naturedly, "I just told you, it's Hermione, not kid."

"Hmm it's either that or Kitten."

Hermione grimaced, the reminder of Sirius would hurt, but she absolutely did not want to be called kid, by another man who played at being Peter Pan. "I'd rather you not call me either of those things, but if you have to, I suppose Kitten is the better option. Don't make it a habit though."

"Kitten it is!"

Hermione just sighed and followed him through to the lab. She was already learning that there was no sense in arguing with him as he was basically a force of nature. Once in the lab he gave her an overview of the numerous things he was in the process of tinkering with. He showed her the initial model of the arc reactor he had made and then several of the improved models he kept on hand in case the current one ever failed or started poisoning him again and several other small gadgets or robots he had to help him in the lab.

Then they moved to the corner of the lab that was all about the Clean Energy Initiative. This section had a powered up scaled model of the building along with numerous stacks of plans and diagrams on an architect's desk. Hermione reached out to touch the model with her left hand and as her fingers made contact the power on the model blinked out and then back on brighter. Hermione pulled her fingers away quickly. "Sorry was I not supposed to touch it?"

Tony came up behind her and ran a finger slowly over the model. The power levels didn't change even a little bit when he touched them. He frowned and said, "It's not supposed to do that."

Hermione blinked in confusion. She supposed it could have been her magic, but she hadn't even felt it spark out of her and when she had replaced her wand it had seemed to cut down on the number of things she short-circuited at home the last few days. She wasn't sure if it was because it helped her magic flow better or if the effect was all mental since she felt more settled now that she wasn't using a wand that had taken great joy in torturing her before. She also wasn't feeling any particularly strong emotions aside from joy at the ability to talk about academic things, so she wasn't sure why the model would have reacted to her or her magic.

Tony walked around the model checking it over for anything obviously wrong with it. "Jarvis did you catch what happened to the Stark Tower model when Hermione touched it?"

"There seemed to be a slight electromagnetic anomaly about the time that Ms. Granger touched the model, Sir," said Jarvis.

"Project the current levels energy now as well as a graph of the average output for the last six months." The information that Tony asked for popped up in mid-air.

"Oh, that's neat. I didn't know Jarvis could do that! Can he project any data?" asked Hermione astonished as she looked at the charts and graphs projected. That had the potential to be very useful for research projects.

"Yes. Jarvis can project data and can be used like a computer as well," Tony answered absentmindedly as he flicked through the old data looking for any other time the energy had changed or been disturbed during the last six months. He couldn't find any other time that the data had ever changed. The output stayed constant as it was designed to do. He closed out those past graphs, having already gotten the necessary information from them and pulled the current spike up. He enlarged the chart and pulled up the raw data spreadsheet beside it. He leaned back and Hermione stood next to him while she tried to understand what the data was and how it was all interconnected.

"I see the output changes with the electromagnetic data, but why does the electromagnetic data matter?" Hermione asked.

"The energy that powers the Clean Energy Initiation is a type of heavy metal fusion that a large version of the arc reactors, like the ones I just showed you, harness and convert into electromagnetic energy," Tony said.

"So, if there was an additional source of electromagnetic energy nearby or something interfered with the electromagnetic waves would that possibly cause the effects we saw?" she asked curiously.

Tony nodded. "It could. The problem would be where it could have come from. There's no other spikes within the last few months and certainly nothing this dramatic or sudden."

"Solar flare?" she offered with a straight face.

If it was her magic that caused the spike in the anomaly that could be an interesting insight into what caused magic to interfere with technology so strongly. To Hemione's consternation, wizards didn't seem to care about the reason that magic and technology were incompatible, but then again, most of them also thought muggles still lived in squalor and filth. Most of the wizards that did know that muggles weren't some kind of poor, unfortunate, inferior type of human, like half-bloods and muggleborns, likely hadn't thought about the problem much after acclimating to using magic. Hogwarts hadn't taught critical thinking and the wizarding community at large in the UK had been very traditional with an emphasis of doing things a certain way just because they had always been done that way. Hermione hypothesized that the lack of emphasis on critical thinking and experimentation had likely been what had produced the stagnation in most of wizarding Europe over the last few centuries.

Hermione was still curious though, about what exactly caused magic in the first place and why it could interfere so easily with technology. Although she was confused about how her just touching the model had produced a reaction, since she wasn't actively casting, and her magic and mental states were relatively good today. She glanced down at her hand that had touched the model discretely. It hadn't even been her wand hand which generally channeled her magic. She pursed her lips slightly and looked up at the ceiling consideringly, it had in fact, been her left hand, which now that she thought about was very near her scar that was covered in a magical glamour.

Hermione pressed her lips together tightly. That was probably what had caused the interference, but the only way to see if that was true or not was to touch the model again with her other hand to see if it set the model off. However, if it did blink again, then she absolutely did not want Tony Stark to see it, because if he thought there was something special about her he would stop at nothing to figure it out and that would be a catastrophic breach of the Statute of Secrecy. Tony Stark could not even keep his own secrets nonetheless something like the secret of magic.

Oh, but she wished she could tell him, because her fingers practically itched to figure out the problem and maybe gain greater insight into the hows and whys magic worked. Between all the equipment in the lab and the monitoring equipment he had set up in random places she would almost bet that they would be able to discover a lot more about how magic worked scientifically than she ever could by just herself.

Tony's voice interrupted her thoughts, "Jarvis bring up solar activity for the past month." He looked at the data intently and after he verified that there hadn't been any unusual solar activity particularly today, he turned an accessing eye toward his new assistant. Something had caused unusual activity and Hermione had been touching it at precisely that moment. Now while that could be a coincidence it could also be the reason it happened in the first place.

"Touch it again Hermione," he said abruptly.

"What? Why?" she asked a little too quickly. She hadn't expected him to be so suspicious of her already.

And wasn't that interesting. Hermione seemed defensive about touching the model which indicated that she might know something. "Call it mere scientific curiosity," he said with an innocent expression on his face.

She looked at him consideringly and didn't quite buy his nonchalant attitude, but she thought if she refused that might make her more of a curiosity to him. Her best bet would be to hope that her hypothesis was right and that her left hand had caused the disturbance because of her glamour. If she reached out with her right hand hopefully the model wouldn't react. "How would you like me to touch it?" she asked.

"The same place you touched it before, perhaps it was just whatever spot you touched before that set it off." Tony said with a wave of his hand. He didn't necessarily believe that, but it had sounded like a plausible enough reason.

Hermione held her breath and reached out her right hand to touch precisely the area that she had touched before with her left. When the power on the model stayed steady, she released the breath she had been holding in a quick gust and then pulled her hand away quickly.

Tony switched between scowling at the model, the data, and her. He grumbled out, "Nothing, now I'm going to have to figure out the reason for the anomaly before it comes back to bite me in the ass when we put Stark Tower on the arc grid."

Hermione suppressed a happy grin. Touching the model with her other hand hadn't disproven her theory, so she could be onto something about the nature of magic. She wished she could study it safely, but that wasn't possible, so she would have to write down her observations at home later and maybe get the data from Jarvis from when she had originally touched the model. Maybe someday she could figure out how to safely and privately test her hypothesis. It was only her first day, so she had plenty of time to think about it.

"Sorry Mr. Stark, I guess I'm all out of ideas on what could have caused the anomaly," she shrugged.

That broke Tony's extended glare at the data. "I thought I told you to call me Tony, Kitten? And I'll come back to the problem later. Did you have any questions on the Clean Energy Initiative? Pepper mentioned that you had expressed the most interest in that," he asked with a sideways glance.

"Yes, what is the heavy metal you are creating in your fusion reaction? How does the arc reactor convert the power over into electromagnetic waves? If you powered a whole city or country with this technology is it possible that if you had a sufficiently large enough solar flare it would potentially knock out the system? And is it even feasible to power large urban centers with this fusion reaction? Like is there a component that might be a limiting reagent?" Hermione spit out in rapid fire succession and was practically bouncing on her toes by the end of it. She opened her mouth to continue.

Tony held up a hand to stop her. "Woah, woah." She closed her mouth abruptly.

The inventor got a peculiar look on his face. "No wonder Pepper wasn't able to answer your questions the other day. You're a secret nerd aren't you, Kitten?"

She blinked slowly and then a wide grin spread across her lips. "It's actually not much of a secret," she said.

He laughed genuinely and began to answer her questions one at a time, delighted to find someone who was interested in the project and science rather than how much money it could make for them or the company. Which is exactly how Pepper found them hours later. Her nine o'clock meeting had run very late and now it was just before lunch.

"You see you can take the atoms and-," Tony was gesturing wildly with his hands as he spoke.

Pepper cleared her throat several feet from the two of them, interrupting whatever scientific babble that Tony was animatedly explaining. Neither of the two of them had even recognized that she was in the same room as them.

"Oh! Hello Pepper," they both chorused at the same time with bright smiles on their faces. She wanted to sigh. Great two nerds to deal with. At least the two of them seemed to be getting along better than yesterday and with any luck Hermione would be good at her job and Tony would accept having an assistant especially since they seemed to have found common ground. He even appeared to like talking with her rather than condescending to her. Maybe this would work out better than she had planned and Tony would make a rare friend.

Pepper smiled softly at Tony. He was endearing when he got worked up about science and technology even if she didn't understand everything he was saying. She turned to her newest employee and apologized sheepishly, "Sorry, I'm late. My nine o'clock meeting ran pretty late, the potential investor was the type of person that loves the sound of his own voice a little too much. We can go get lunch together and then we can set up all the stuff in your office unless you have other lunch plans of course?"

Hermione twisted around from where she had sat on the counter at some point during her and Tony's conversation to look at the clock behind her. She winced when she discovered that it was nearly noon. She turned back around. "Lunch would be great. I hadn't realized it was that late at all." she said noting that her stomach was beginning to feel empty.

"Excellent. Let's go then," she said starting out the door with Hermione in tow. They made it as far as to the door of the lab before Pepper turned back around at the sound of only one set of footsteps following her. She let Hermione catch up to her, before cocking her head at Tony's form. He was fiddling around with some charts with Jarvis. "Aren't you coming with us Tony?" she asked.

"I have something I want to figure out first. Can you guys bring me back an order from wherever you go?" he asked without looking away from the screens he was frowning thoughtfully at.

The two women glanced at each other and Hermione shrugged in acceptance. She would have to come back up to this floor after she was done, so it wasn't a problem for her to bring back lunch for the inventor. "That shouldn't be a problem, Tony," Hermione said.

"Thanks Hermione and I'll try to find my old textbooks later and put them on your desk. If I can't find the hard copies then I'll have them put on the server and you can use Jarvis to view them when you have free time," he said absentmindedly.

"That would be great," she said brightly. Pepper looked over at the other younger brunette woman shocked. This was definitely turning out to be one of her better ideas. Hermione seemed completely uninterested in Tony aside from his intelligence and maybe friendship. Tony seemed to like the woman enough to lend her his old college books and he seemed to respect her enough not to leer at her. Pepper was going to do everything in her power to befriend the young woman and hopefully keep her. It would be nice to have another woman as company that didn't have underhanded motives. They both walked out, and Pepper engaged the younger woman in conversation all the way through lunch.


A/N Thanks for reading!

-Blushin